~ St. Petersburg: Anna Akhmatova Museum. End of tour

" The last day of our tour, the last performance is at the Anna Akhmatova Museum. In order, Zhanna met us at 4 pm. Together we looked at two possible rooms where we could present and discuss the performance. A very small company was planned, only employees of the museum and Sergei Vasilyev, auction manager, friend of the museum and our good friend. First we were treated to tea and apple pie. Then we settled in one of the rooms, very small, four by four meters in size. Everything was very intimate. Only from all of our performances it turned out to be the strangest.

We can say that we stumbled upon misunderstanding and rejection. Not everyone had such a reaction, but mainly two elderly ladies spoke: the directress and Tatyana Sergeevna, also a very respected employee of the museum. The young girls from the team did not say a word. Although we had a dialogue, understanding was completely absent. I felt out of place, there was a feeling that Trixa and I had to make excuses for something. I won't go into details, but it was an experience. A kind of experience. You have to be ready for this. Of the five songs, I sang only three, the rest seemed simply inappropriate to perform. An hour later we finished, the dialogue after the speech did not work out for us.

Tatyana Sergeevna took us through the house of Anna Akhmatova, talking about her life, about her shame. After that, we got the feeling that when you constantly talk about the shame of others, then the need to think about your own shame disappears. Apparently because of this, there could be a certain barrier between us. We had an unpleasant aftertaste and all evening Trixa and I discussed what happened – what could we do differently, why we could not find contact with these women. After that, we came to the conclusion that in our project it is important for the public to be ready for empathy. This was noticed by someone from the audience on this tour and we absolutely agree with him/her. After all our reasoning and a walk around the museum, we said goodbye to everyone and went with Sergei to drink beer. With that, our evening ended.

Now, while I am writing this message, we are sitting in a bus on the way to Tallinn. We crossed the Russian border an hour ago, it was a glorious tour. Thanks Gorod Ustinov, thanks Yura! We will digest everything properly and make a full report on our tour of Russia. It was cool! "