MUSIC / DANCE : Russian Folk Troupe Plays Up Its Gypsy Roots

Like legions of little boys, Bibs Ekkel played piano as a child. But at 18, he fell inlove with the balalaika and never looked back. The result is Tziganka, a Russian folk troupe that will bring music, song and dance to Costa Mesa’s Orange Coast College Saturday night.

About half the touring company’s 10 members--three musicians, six dancers and one singer--are recent Russian emigres, and the other half are Westerners of Russian heritage, said Ekkel, a British-born Canadian resident of Russian-Polish descent who founded the group in 1975 while living in London.

“I had been playing the balalaika (a Russian stringed instrument similar to a guitar, but with a triangular body) in all sorts of settings--restaurants, cabarets, TV, radio--but I wanted to reach a larger public,” he said recently. “I thought to do that it would be best if the balalaika was surrounded by a whole troupe.”

So Ekkel rounded up the best dancers and musicians he could find and hired Faina Zinova, an Odessa-born singer who inspired the troupe’s name. Tziganka is Russian for Gypsy girl, and Zinova sings mostly Russian Gypsy songs, one of the group’s mainstays.

“When Westerners think of Russian songs, they think of slow, very sad, haunting beautiful melodies, or the more jolly types,” Ekkel said.

“But Russian music is so rich and diverse. There are Russian-Jewish songs and the folk songs, for instance, with their own characteristics. The Gypsy songs tend to be similar to Hungarian music; they start slow and melancholy and get faster and faster. The slow part is more or less about how miserable life is, then it’s ‘let’s make merry’ and a foot-tapping kind of music. . . . It’s beautiful and lively and easy to relate to. I put our success down to that format.”

Ekkel, who believes his unusual moniker, Bibs, is a Gypsy name, is self-taught on the balalaika and also plays the domra, an instrument similar to the balalaika but with a round body.

“In fact, the domra is believed to be the ancestor of the balalaika,” he said. “The historians think (the domra) probably came to Russia with the Mongol invasions around 1000 when Genghis Khan occupied (the Central Asian region) for many centuries, because it’s still being played among the Mongol tribes.”

Accordion and contrabase balalaika, a huge instrument and the largest of five sizes of balalaika, make up the complement of Tziganka’s musical ensemble. As for dance, they perform several typical Russian folk dances in colorful, traditional garb, such as a lighthearted duet where boy meets girl with the added attraction of a pesky cow represented only by jingling bells.

Another company standard comes from the Ukraine and tells the tale of a boisterous drunkard and his wife. “I call it the ‘Eternal Triangle,’ because it’s man, his woman and the bottle,” Ekkel said.

The troupe’s most popular dance is called the “Fight of the Dwarfs,” he said, and may be familiar to those who have seen the Moiseyev Dance Company from the Soviet Union. Two men, arms locked around one another in battle, tussle and tumble, even fall off the stage. Or is it really two men? That’s for the audience to decide.

As an exuberant finale, there’s a Ukrainian hopak, requiring athletic feats from the men, who leap high in the air, spin around on one bent leg swinging the other in a circle, and balance on their heads, arching their backs and kicking out their legs.

Tziganka, whose members are based around the world, tours six months of the year, recuperating, rehearsing and recording their music the rest of the time, Ekkel said. Soon, they will release their first album in the Soviet Union. The troupe was previously frowned upon there, he said, for allusions he made to the government’s rigid artistic control as part of his explanatory commentary written on earlier Tziganka albums, sold in the Soviet Union on the black market.

“I pointed out that fortunately here in the West, we can sing what the hell we bloody want, so drink your vodka, smash your glass and enjoy this record,” he said with a chuckle.

What: Tziganka Russian folk troupe performing music, song and dance.

When: Saturday, Nov. 9, at 8 p.m.

Where: Robert B. Moore Theatre, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa.

Whereabouts: San Diego (405) Freeway to Fairview exit; south to Orange Coast College.

Wherewithal: $9.50 to $12.

Where to Call: (714) 432-5880.