The versatility of Ksenia Parkhatskaya is unmatched. Dancer, choreographer, singer and actress; every talent she has under her belt she does with ease. The artist has regularly performed with live ensembles and orchestras including Postmodern Jukebox and the Barcelona Jazz Orchestra.
Now, with her husband, bass player and composer David Duffy, the duo have created Parkhatskaya’s debut album “Colours”. Started in 2018, this project has been a journey for the couple.
We work on our songs, music, our video clips, my dance, dramaturgy for anything and everything, online school, marketing, pr and many many more things together. The river of ideas flows non- stop. We might be hiking on the island and the cricket sound might get us ideas for the new rhythms and we will start recording it right there and then, spend the rest of the 8 hour hike creating this new piece.
On what Parkhatskaya had said about the completion and release of her album, she divulges in how fleeting that moment is.
The online release is a short moment of you maybe expecting some unbelievable response, comments, fountains of love, and excitement from everyone else. And that expectation is…not as satisfying somehow as one might think it is. So I choose the connectedness, energy and the moment of actually transforming and transmitting.
You can read the full interview, and Parkhatskaya insightful words, below.
Reading the behind-the-scenes of your music video “Rose and Blue”, Director Julie Boehm implemented your beliefs in energy and the ability of the soul to move and change form to animation. You also bring this idea of energy and connectivity of the body and soul when discussing solo dancing in your interview with Tonia Christie. I’d love to know what you feel when you channel this sort of energy?
What a beautiful question, Michelle. The connectivity is something I try to find in my everyday life as well as in performance or creation state. To feel a connection with the moment, ground, every part of your body, eyesight is so important I find. That connection is bringing you in the now. It is now.
For me the opposite of it would be oblivion. When we forget what is and who we are and where we are. We are so consumed by the unimportant things that are rushing under the roofs of all the buildings. That state where you don’t feel your body but only your head. You don’t actually see but you superficially scan and can’t focus, only see the blurry picture.
And energies. I think everything has an energy and we can just connect, feel, understand on an energetic level. The frequency of vibration is what “talks”. When you feel drawn to something that something or someone vibrates on a higher frequency. I am listening to that, and that makes me as well bypass the constantly present mind and thinking. I want to be able to live not only through mind.
In terms of how those 2 ideas relate to the creation process, I really like and am interested in the idea that Julia Cameron expresses in her book “The Artist’s Way”. She says that Artists they work and perfect their skills in order to be ready to receive and channel the ideas when they come. Artists do not create from themselves, they channel. To channel you need to be aware, available, connected, present and be ready when the time comes to reproduce what arrived.
I am gladly welcoming things that arrive, that come up in my mind, body and happy to express them.
Have you ever continued a performance despite something internally feeling “off”?
Yes, definitely. You know, I think this feeling of “channeling” and being “in the zone” is that precious miraculous state that every artist seeks to enter when they are in the creative process or perform. You have to practice to enter this state faster and more often.
I had numerous performances where I was not “in the zone”. Instead my inner voice was so loud and present and judging that it controlled every move, look and gesture I did. So you can say I was absent from the moment of the action.
You might still have a good performance if you are experienced and those kinds of things will not be in the way of your skill and professionalism as a performer. The audience can be fascinated and clap and even come tell you how amazing the show was. But you know you were absent, you know you didn’t channel, you yourself missed the gig 🙂
You have to continue no matter what. Sometimes you are simply not in the zone, whatever the reason. Life. The journey is to develop the skills to bring yourself into the “zone”. That can be through breathing, through inhabiting your body, through dissociation with your ego.
How has it been working on your next album, Colours, with your husband, David Duffy?
It has been and is just fantastic. David is a multi talented artist and musician. He can do almost anything musically. He is a brilliant bass player and composer. I think one of his strengths is storytelling and creating an emotional journey through music. His interest in music and the sound world is so broad that it’s very easy to travel different directions in a creation process with him.
We understand each other with almost no words. I sometimes just need to mumble a phrase and he “jumps” on the creative wave of it. You know we have a very similar sensitivity to sound and imageries. So it’s a joy to create together. I feel so comfortable with David, I can try different things even if they are silly, insecure, clowny, idiotic … I feel space and all the freedom to do it. It’s precious, really.
Usually when we create a song, I sing loads of voices and melodies. I just go for it, explore without fear (maybe still with a little fear 🙂 of going the wrong direction and to create the lyrics I start with streaming whatever comes, mumbling some nonsense words. And I can allow myself to explore.
We create non-stop. At times actually too much, so we need a break. We work on our songs, music, our video clips, my dance, dramaturgy for anything and everything, online school, marketing, pr and many many more things together. The river of ideas flows non- stop. We might be hiking on the island and the cricket sound might get us ideas for the new rhythms and we will start recording it right there and then, spend the rest of the 8 hour hike creating this new piece.
I’d love to learn how you and your husband met.
Oh that is a special story. I have a long theatrical version that usually I tell accompanied with demonstrations and imitations, but I’ll do my best to keep it short.
We met in the beautiful country of Ireland. I was invited to come teach and perform at Lindy Express in Cork city by Daragh Regan. It was my first time visiting the Emerald Island. We met in a busy Porterhouse bar on a closing blues night of the festival. David was playing bass with a Blues Momentum band with a fantastic guitar player and lead singer Eoghen Regan.
I myself was for some time an admirer of bass sound and was deep into my jazz bass players. My ears caught those low essential notes in an instance and you know…I was really impressed!
Then there were some interesting juicy details of how I came to David to say how I loved his bass playing and then vanished to my hotel and David ran to the organizer of the festival to say: “where did you take my future wife?”, a phrase that was later passed to me and I was digesting that sentence for some time until the next day. That was the 9th of February.
Next day he found me in another jazz corner in Cork surrounded by all the dancers, theatrically entering with his friends in leather jackets and guitars, creating a whole suspense in the air and then he invited me for a dance!? An irish guy invited me for a dance in front of the whole Cork jazz dance community.
Having the best dance of life with him stepping…no, just simply remaining on my feet constantly and stirring me like a soup, we decided to meet again the next day for a surf. It was February. And then, I left for Saint Petersburg, crying the whole airplane in a full realisation I was leaving from where I belonged. Then I moved to Germany, and we started flying…Lyon, Paris, Dublin, Berlin, Malaga, somewhere else and somewhere else.
Long story short, exactly a year after we met, I came to teach and perform to Lindy Express and on the 9th of February we went for a nearly vertical hike in Kerry. In the midst of the Irish winds and tops of the mountains, surrounded just by few faraway sheep calls, David proposed. Half a year later we got married with poems, music, karavai, vodka, dancing, international friends and family from all over the globe.
Now we are in Barcelona, still jumping around the planet exploring and creating.
How have you been enjoying living in Spain (and what are your kittens names)?
I absolutely love living in Barcelona, Catalunya. I lived in Saint – Petersburg, Berlin, Jonkoping (Sweden), Cork and now, Barcelona, and you know, I can really call it my home. Even when I lived in Ireland, I still had clothes and stuff in Russia, Sweden and Germany. “Live” is as well a strong word, maybe “visit”. For the last 7 years I have been travelling the world teaching dance and performing. I knew how to get around airports better than my hometown, hahaa. Nearly every single week I would fly to a new place to dive into the world of swing, jazz, and show. Of course I chose it and love it so much.
Since we moved to Barcelona together with David, I sorted all my things to be here with me in one place. I chose to travel less, to have a smooth transition from air to the ground to start growing my roots and get acquainted with life in this city. Discover it’s people, it’s art scene, it’s coffee places and little streets and parks. To as well start giving my energy and knowledge and passion here and see how it can grow in one place. Like a flower that is rooted in one place, taken care of, given attention, given water once in a while. So I started taking care of my flower – my life in Barcelona. And that flower really blossoms! I have to say there is joy in flying and discovering the world and spreading yourself, going wider. And there is joy, a different maybe flavour of joy in rooting (even if just a little bit) in one chosen place and going deeper.
I love my hometown Saint Petersburg forever. It’s beauty and jazz life is precious. That is where my deep love for jazz was born and developed. I was such a midnight cat. Nearly every day no matter the impossible wild and cold and darkness I’d fly into the city center to go to The Hat jazz bar or Dom 7 jazz bar and spend hours listening, dancing (even if I was the only person on the “dance floor”, or let’s call it free space in the bar) and later on singing at jam sessions.
Our kittens are called Duke and Dizz. One dark Barcelona night a little something fell from the sky through our clothes strings on the balcony. That little something meows at the bottom of the yard well. My heart squeezed and exploded in 1 sec, scared that he would die, we ran knocking at the doors of all neighbours to check where this little one was.
The kitten was safe and sound, the eyes full of fear. When I picked him up, I said “You are some Bird”. The second I said Bird, I thought- Charlie Parker! The sky was apparently the attic apartment where the Lady had 10 other little wonders born during confinement. Bird was already taken, so she pointed to 2 ginger muffins, which bursting with Joy and Love took to live with us. The names just popped up; Bird, Duke, and Dizzy! One was a serious bebopper cat as well, bouncing off the walls. With no offense to the great Jazz Maestros of course, but only love and respect.
From working with Postmodern Jukebox to starting your online dance school, Secrets of Solo, to now pursuing your life-long passion as a singer/songwriter, your talents and passion for what you do have inspired countless others to pursue their own creative endeavors. What has been the most memorable moment in your career?
Thank you for these words.
I think the most memorable moment, or moments if I can, were two theatre pieces that I played.
One was, when I was still living in Saint Petersburg and was a cast member of Uventa musical theatre, directed by Viktor Nikolaev. There, after completing the course on dramaturgy inside the theatre, I created my final work of the course – a mono play, one woman piece called “Black Coat” by the novel of Ludmila Petrushevskaya. The play later on went into the repertoire of the theatre. It was an honor.
The second one was connected with “Radio Hermitage” play. This was a one woman show with a live jazz quartet. It was a dance piece. Though I sang and acted there as well. I think it was exactly what I always wanted to do, to combine all the things I can do in one piece and through all these means tell a story.
The show intertwines a history of jazz dance with my personal story escaping a tragic moment in my life, the passing away of my mother, through a radio station. The story is based on my life. Radio Hermitage is a real radio station in Saint Petersburg that plays jazz.
We created it in 2016 I think. Which was 11 years after my mother died. One day I had a chance to look back and process how I came here where I am now. And see the thread of the days and situations that lead me here. I realised then I would like to tell this story. As well it was a moment in my life where I was digging deeper in jazz history and essence. I started dancing swing and jazz dances in 2009. After dancing for a few years 20s Charleston, doing flappers shows and it all being about the viral joy of jazz, I started wondering why and how come it was about joy in the midst of the turbulent era and coming from a place of pain.
I started discovering that jazz was an art form of survival. In some way, very different of course, jazz was a survival, reinvention and escape too. So the story was about that. Together with my dear husband David we created this full length piece.
David is not only a composer and bass player, for many years he actually had a company Eat My Noise with his friend Peter Power. Together they were a strong duet creating immersive pieces with light and video installations, electronic music combined with live music in Ireland. So David really knew how to do a lot of things. He created all sound design, scores and responsive lights for our show.
And you know I chose this quote for Radio Hermitage: “To us, life with its rhythms and cycles is dance, and dance is life” A.M Opoku.
So both of those happenings are my most memorable ones. And if we talk about the specific moment it was that moment when I stood in front of the audience at the end of the piece, covered in sweat, empty because I gave everything I had, exhausted and ….so impossibly satisfied, so fulfilled… as if reborn. That intensive little life and intensive strong final moment, ah…I feel it on my skin now.
What has been your favorite thing about creating and performing your songs?
My favourite thing is feeling free. Freedom of expression and freedom in transforming. Through songs I can tell stories and become this or that character or emotion. I am a theatre person. I love transforming, becoming, experiencing and imagining. For many years my body and movement have been my main instrument to transmit and transform. Now it is as well my voice and words.
What are you most excited about when your album, Colours, releases?
I am actually not thinking so much about that day, when my album will be released. I most likely will be already in the process of planting and developing some other things, video clips, other songs. Over years I realised that the release day no matter how amazing that world sounds and no matter what grandiose connotation it has, usually is not so over the moon exciting. I am talking as well about online releases that are becoming normal in the latest years and of course in our current situation in the world.
What I am excited about is everything else, finishing lyrics, going to the studio, recording the remaining songs. This process is what actually IS.
The internet release is a short moment of you maybe getting or maybe just only expecting some unbelievable response, comments, fountains of love and excitement from everyone else. And that expectation is…not as satisfying somehow as one might think it is. So I choose the connectedness, energy and the moment of actually transforming and transmitting.
Ksenia Parkhatskaya
