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Qyrq Qyz Concert

Saturday, March 10, 7:00pm

KIDS FREE! One free kids ticket will be offered for every adult ticket purchased for this event. Please select seats at the time of purchase. Enter the code KIDSFREE and checkout.

BEFORE Margaret Mead, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Goodall, Sarah Bernhardt, Rosa Parks, Carry Nation, Clara Barton, Amelia Earhart, Nightingale, Gertrude Stein, and Susan B. Anthony, CAME: QYRQ QYZ

QYRQ QYZ is about WOMAN POWER. Enduring for centuries in a male-dominated epic tradition, this powerful matriarchal narrative comes to life in an avant-garde multi-media concert.

In the wind-scourged steppe of Central Asia, nomadic Turkic clans rise to defend themselves against invaders from the east. Leading the defense is Gulayim, a teenage girl who gathers around her a group of forty young female warriors – Amazons of the steppe. Vanquishing the invaders, the forty girls secure their clans’ freedom and build a society founded on justice and compassion. 

QYRQ QYZ is inspired by their story, which lives on in Central Asia as an oral epic, and in the form of legends and sacred pilgrimage sites consecrated to the immortal spirits of the Forty Girls. Amazons have typically been regarded as a figment of the ancient Greek imagination. New research shows that female warriors were a widespread historical reality in the ancient world. The QYRQ QYZ epic is thus not a fairytale, but, like the great epics of ancient Greece, a tale rooted in historical events.

QYRQ QYZ is collaboration between two of Uzbekistan’s greatest contemporary artists: filmmaker Saodat Ismailova, and composer Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky. 80 minutes without an intermission. The music and lyrics portray emotions and a sense of inner state rather than narrative. Projected images transport us to the wind- scoured steppes of Central Asia.  Seven virtuosic young female bards from that region sing, recite, and play traditional instruments to share an ancient oral epic of female courage and empowerment. There are some subtitles, but not for all the songs. The audiences will follow the narrative through a combination of the visual imagery in the film, the music itself, and the movement and gestures of the performers onstage. Text is in the program booklet, which can be read before watching the show. Appropriate for ages 10+.

Presented in collaboration with the Aga Khan Music Initiative.

Click here to learn more about the Three Day Qyrq Qyz Residency in Stowe!