Modern culture and craft, folklore groups and professional art

The current trends of Itelmen cultural evolution are defined by their goals of reviving their native language, ethnic festivities, rituals, folklore and art.

The pivotal role in this process which started in the mid-1980s has been played by the Itelmen artistic intelligentsia which emerged during the Soviet era. Among the well-known figures of Itelmen culture were the first professional writer, Itelmen Georgi Porotov (1929-1985); folklorist and writer in Itelmen, former director of Elvel folklore ensemble Tatyana Gutorova (1930-2003); linguist, public figure, author of textbooks of the Itelmen language Klavdia Khamoilova (1934-2018), poet and prosaist, Itelmen folklorist Nelya Suzdalova (1937-2023) etc.

In the late 1960s, T.E.Gutorova, then the director of Kovran House of Culture, wrote a poem called Elvel in Itelmen, themed on an Itelmen legend about a sacred mountain. It became the foundation for the first Itelmen ballet production Elvel . It was premiered in 1970 at a regional festival of amateur performances in the settlement of Tigil, and its production inaugurated the birth of the Itelmen Elvel Dance and Choir Ensemble. One of the founders of the ensemble who led it was Tatyana Evstropovna Gutorova. In 1980, the leading soloist of the Mengo Koryak ensemble Boris Alexandrovich Zhirkov took charge of Elvel .

In 1982, the Elvel Ensemble was awarded with a title of “ People’s Collective” . In 1985, on the initiative of the Tkhsanom Council of Kamchatka Itelmens and by creative efforts of the Elvel Ensemble, the ancient Itelmen festival of Alkhalalalay (Festival of Thanksgiving) was restored. It was first organised in the settlement of Kovran.

Gradually the Elvel Ensemble became famous not only in Kamchatka, but also in other regions of Russia and even abroad. In 1988, the ensemble went on tour to Vietnam, in the same year it took part in the 1 ^st International Folklore Festival in Moscow. In the 1990s-2000s, Elvel toured Germany, Norway, France, Finland where it showed with great success the unique Itelmen song and dance traditions.

In 2007, in the settlement of Sosnovka (Yelizovski District, Kamchatka Krai), Boris Zhirkov founded the Nyta Aivon (The Soul of the North) Itelmen ensemble. In 2010, B.A. Zhirkov won the annual Dusha Rossii ( Soul of Russia) RF Government Award for his contribution into developing ethnic arts in the Traditional Ethnic Culture nomination.

Since 2006, on an initiative of the head of the Tkhsanom CKI O.N.Zaporotski, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy became the centre for “dancing marathons” of the indigenous ethnic groups of Kamchatka, in which different folklore groups from Kovran, Esso, Anavgai, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy have been taking part. The Lach Ethnoecological Informational Centre, founded in 2001 in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, made a huge contribution to revive traditional cultures and protect the rights of indigenous ethnic groups.

The revival of the Itelmen traditional culture is made easier by the annual celebration of Alkhalalalay in Itelmen settlements. Part and parcel of the festival are ritual dances, songs and rites. Different dance groups take part in their presentation. Large-scale participation of locals and guests in these festivities makes them familiar with the well-forgotten traditions. This is a description of certain moments of the Alkhalalalay festivity in Kovran by present-day specialist in Itelmen culture O.A.Murashko: “The central point in the celebration belongs to a ritual called by all “cleansing of all the sins”. The ritual is held in the evening on a special place (“Balagannaya”) on the river bank. It features dramatized songs and dances with a tambourine which show the dances of gamuls (volcano spirits), a dance of the Raven (Kutkh), the salmon run, seals’ love play, grimacing (as a way of driving evil spirits off). The ritual ends with every local and guest going through a ring of birch branches (cleansing) and putting on the gathering place of the next “khantai” pole depicting likeness of a human face and of a raven head on a fish body, carven out of a tree bole by local artists. The master of ceremonies at this ritual, which lasts around two hours, is Boris Zhirkov, director of the Elvel ensemble”.

In 2015, the Pimchakh Ethnocultural Centre (in the settlement of Sosnovka, Yelizovsky District, Kamchatka Krai) became the site for a newly opened monument to Boris Alexandrovich Zhirkov.