David Rousseve / REALITY
CURRENT WORKS
Ecstacy of the Pomegranate
(2006)
In 2006, David Roussève went to Tashkent, Uzbekistan to create Ecstasy With the Pomegranate, a collaboration with the progressive Uzbek theater company, Ilkhom. The evening-length theatre work is based in part on the life and (homoerotic) visual art of early 20th Century Russian-Uzbek artist, Aleksandr Vasilevich Nezhdanov (Usto Mumin), and in part on the lost Uzbek Moslem tradition of Bocha boys, or dancing ‘geisha’ boys. Ecstasy With the Pomegranate combines text, choreography, an original score, set design, and projected digital imagery of animated paintings. For the premiere of the work, the lobby of the Ilkhom Theatre was turned into a gallery to house one of the largest ever exhibits of Usto Mumin’s original works collected from various Uzbek and Soviet museums. Ecstasy premiered in Tashkent in October 2006 and has since been playing as part of the Company’s repertoire. In 2008, the work will tour internationally, including to the U.S.