Creature
>> at the Krišjānis Barons Museum
The Father Hidden in the Cellar * The Freeholder’s Our People’s Tales I, 43, 21.L. P. VII, II, 29, 2, 1a
In days of old, there once was a land with the following custom: old people, who could no longer earn their crust were slaughtered like old horses, taken off to the forest and disposed of like vermin.
Back in the day, an old man lived on that there land. The man had a son and the son also had a son. The old man’s son began to notice that his father was no longer a full-time worker. It was time for him to depart this world. Having noticed this, the son took his son’s sled, sat his old father down on it and pulled it towards the forest. The son’s son followed in the wake of his sled.
Having pulled his father into the forest, the son turned over the sled and said, “Let him lie here together with the sled!” But his son, a quick-witted lad, said, “No, dad, I’m not leaving my sled here!” “What do you need a paltry sled for?” “If I don’t have a sled, how will I get you out to the forest, when you become old and feeble?”
Upon hearing his son utter these words, the man became thoughtful. “Is it not the case,” he thought to himself, “That my own son is promising me the same end that I am inflicting upon my father? No. This isn’t good!” The son took his father, sat back down on the sled and pulled him back home. But at home the son could not, before everyone’s eyes, keep his feeble father: so he took him and put him in the cellar, where he kept him fed and watered.
After some time, a great famine arose in that same land. Nobody had even a grain of wheat any longer; and very few had even a smidgeon of barley. For a while now, down in the cellar, the grandfather had noticed that things were not good, because his son was only feeding him tiny portions of bread. The grandfather once asked the son, “Why don’t you give me even a hunk of wheat bread anymore?” The son replied, “Throughout the land, there is a great famine; nobody has even got a grain of wheat left, so we’re in great strife, because nobody has got anything to eat or even a fistful to sow in the ground.”
“Hard times,” said the old man; “But listen to what I’ll teach you son, so that you can get enough wheat for seeds. Take the roof off half the barn and thresh the old roof straw anew, and then you’ll see how much grain it still contains.” The son did as his father told him: he took the roof off half the barn, threshed the old roof straw anew and obtained a whole quart of wheat grain.
Having done this, the son returned to his father in the cellar and told him that he’d threshed a whole quart of wheat from the straw from the old barn roof. His father told him, “Take the roof off the other half of the barn and thresh the old roof straw anew, and then you’ll see how much grain it still contains.”
The son did as his father had told him to: he removed the roof from the other half of the barn and threshed the old barn roof’s straw anew and obtained a whole quart of wheat grain. Now his father said, “Now sow wheat!”
The son sowed the wheat and the following summer he produced some really impressive wheat, which provided him with a lot of grain for the following year. Having seen the old man’s son’s wheat, all the folks in the famine-stricken country could not understand where he’d got the wheat from, because nobody else even had a grain of it.
Having heard about this wheat, the squire of the land summoned the grower of the wheat and asked him, “Where did you get a whole field of wheat, when there is not a grain of wheat to be had by anybody throughout the land?” The son paused for thought and, having summoned the requisite courage, told him everything that had occurred as a result of his aged father giving him good advice. But now the squire asked, “Where is your father? We can’t see him.” The son replied, “I’m keeping him in the cellar!”
Suddenly the squire and all the other folks in that land became wiser upon seeing that old folks are also useful – useful for offering good, sound advice. From that time on, people no longer killed their feeble parents anywhere.
Performance
She Sits on a Chair
>> at the Eduarda Smiļģis Theatre Museum
The average life expectancy in Latvia is slightly less than 75 years of age. These years are made up of 27,320 days when we get up in the morning, use the toilet, wash, get dressed, eat and go about our business, only to do it all again in reverse order in the evening. These are monotonous activities that we pay attention to only when, for some reason, it is difficult to perform them.
The performance 'She Sits on a Chair' was inspired by the World Health Organisation's care dependency measure which examines six activities of daily living - bathing, dressing, eating, getting in/out of bed, using the toilet, and walking across a room. A person's ability to perform these activities is assessed in order to determine whether care is needed.
In the performance, former Latvian National Opera and Riga Operetta Theatre ballet artists perform these everyday activities, turning them into short performances. It is both a celebration of these actions and an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between movement and ageing, which is especially fierce in the world of ballet since a dancer’s career is a relatively short one.
The performance was made in collaboration with choreographer Rūdolfs Gediņš and ballet artists Inese Čača, Maruta Dinga, Dagnija Jaunkalne, Janīna Nurka and Dzidra Treija.