Indulis & Arija: Why Wasn’t This Play Filmed?

This month – on Lāčplēš day – two performances of “Indulis and Āria” took place in “Xiaomi Arena” in Riga, which were full of spectators. At the end, the audience thanked everyone who participated in the creation of this show with a standing ovation.

Two anniversaries meet this year – Raini’s 160th anniversary and the 40th anniversary of the dance school “Dzirnas”. In honor of this event, director Intars Rešetins-Petersons, composer Valters Pūce and choreographer Agris Daniļevičs created a completely new production based on Rainis’ romantic tragedy “Indulis and Āria”. Especially for this performance, Valters Pūce created original music, which was performed live by the chamber orchestra Sinfonietta Rīga and the youth choir BALSIS. The performance was danced by present and former Dzirnians of all generations, together with their parents and dance friends.

Both in person and on social networks, people expressed great excitement about what they experienced, but there was also some disappointment that the show was not recorded by any television, although it was definitely an event that should be shown to as wide an audience as possible. There were even rumors on the sidelines that initially Latvian Television promised to film everything, but later changed their minds.

A reader who also attended this concert in person encouraged the LA.LV portal to research this topic. She writes:

If no private television could afford it, maybe at least Latvian Television could be there and broadcast the wonderful show live and later – in repeats? I was there, I enjoyed it, but it feels like you want everyone to see it… Unbelievable energy!”

It is clear that filming such events is expensive, most likely there were not enough resources, but what about our public television? In order to find out whether the filming of this show was considered, I contacted Raina Anna Ločmeli – head of corporate communication of Latvian Public Media.

She points out that the task of Latvian Television is to offer diverse and socially important cultural content that is binding for different audiences. It includes both children’s, popular and academic music concerts, as well as dance performances, commemorative events, award ceremonies and other events of Latvian cultural life.

“This year, we have recorded or purchased licenses for more than 20 cultural events, as well as widely covered Latvian school youth song and dance festivals. We are happy to see that Latvian cultural events are important and interesting to society. We highly value both theater performances and concerts, including the big performance “Indulis and Ārija – DZIRNĀM 40″, as well as other events that create value for our cultural space. At the same time, when planning the content, we take into account several practical conditions – available human resources, technical support, as well as the budget. These factors determine how many and what events we can offer in a given season in order to provide more diverse content for different audiences,” comments Raina Anna Ločmele.

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