ZABLEYALO by Jennifer Rose and The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices

Published by Ideas and Futures on February 27, 2021

ZABLEYALO is the first of a series of collaborations from the Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices and choreographer/director Jennifer Rose.

Text by Jennifer Rose:

ZABLEYALO is a dance work where traditional folk music is made visceral. The soul made visible. A physical expression to make sense of tradition and use it as map to know where we came from and a guide for those who follow after us. This film was realized with Cinematographer/Editor Robbie Shaw and Performer Maija Knapp. Dance is not just an observation of the body, but an exposure of a human being in its entirety.
It is an excavation of blood, inherited from the generations before us; the same way an archeologist unveils buried and dark histories from below what is visible on the earth’s surface. I am a U.S. citizen. As I move with the sounds of the women from The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, I unveil a deep American immigrant story of history, language and knowledge choked from the female body upon assimilating into a culture for a hopeful future. This music evokes unknown faces and names of women whose songs have been hushed. Their knowledge and wild nature severed from gut to nerve and deemed irrelevant by unconscious culture; scoured clean for the modern world. But we cannot be deaf to their whispers haunting sounds inside of our skulls. Their shadows follow us.

Traveling for performance and education, I have listened to and absorbed the presence of bold family matriarchs from Spain, Java, Mexico, Vietnam, Germany and my own family in search for origins of bloodlines. These women are the bearers of valuable oral traditions and hold stories of loss of identities and self- sacrifice. We dance to speak their narrative to you.

These forgotten women are our real doctors. The only ones who can truly make us whole and collect the dismantled pieces of ourselves; abandoned on the soil from far away continents.The women of the Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices hold root of our physical and spiritual tissue which determines how we breath and think and therefore act in the world. We must dig beneath the earth’s surface to unveil the muck of our own personal histories and unleash the inescapable truth of who and what we are made of. For our bodies are the living containers of our history. We dance to embed unknown stories into our flesh.

The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices (Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares) Female Vocal Choir known in the past as The Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir is an ensemble of rare artistic gift and enormous popular appeal. Created in the 1950’s the choir’s first mission was to record authentic arrangements for multiple voices and choral folk songs to be broadcast on radio and TV. The Swiss music producer Marcel Cellier discovered the beauty of the Bulgarian folk songs, singers and their unique skills. In 1975 he released his first album with songs performed by the choir which he called “Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares”. The album soon became a best seller. Since then and under the direction of Dora Hristova, the choir has performed more than 1,500 concerts outside its home in the most prestigious venues in the world. Choir members have also worked with or been sampled by artists as diverse as Kate Bush, U2 and Drake.

Jennifer Rose is an international choreographer, performer, teacher, and member of internationally renowned Shen Wei Dance Arts. She’s performed at venues such as Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Festival du Cannes and The Olympic Theatre in Beijing. She creates works in collaboration with regional artists from around the globe to produce highly theatrical and visual dance theatre. Her work has been presented at the US Cultural Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, Cultural Consulate of Andalusia, Spain, Congress-Legalize Dance, Los, Angeles, CA and multiple venues across Oaxaca, Mexico. She teaches masterclasses around the globe based on contemporary forms, theatrical expression and martial arts principals. She believes live performance is an opportunity for performers and audiences to insist on real time transformation, express universal agreements and transcend the art of story-telling.

Choreographer and Performer @jnnrose
Performer: @maijaknapp
Camera and Edit: @robbieshawmail

ZABLEYALO by Jennifer Rose and The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices

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