To Kazan!

Through connections made on this first trip, La Follette was invited to speak about her work the following year in Kazan at the International Theater Festival of Turkic People.  This helped her to start to grasp how huge Russia is and all the different cultures that live inside of it (http://mincult.tatarstan.ru/eng/index.htm/news/1486276.htm ).  While in Kazan, La Follette was warmly welcomed by traditional Tatar artists, with many studio visits and ​an opportunity to share her ideas about the Sites of Passage projects.  These ideas were very well received and La Follette knew she was on the right path.  

​While traveling, La Follette had been reflecting on two previous international moments.  She explains, “The first was in China.  I was riding the metro in Shanghai and across from me, on the train was a group of young “hip” people.  They had their fancy Apple computers out, plugged in, working on music with elaborate headphones, tapping to the beat with $300-dollar sneakers. Now, this could a be scene from any big city but what seemed so oxymoronic was the Mao T-shirt…very similar to a Che T-shirt.  The fancy equipment, the $300 sneakers and the T-shirt just didn’t fit. The extravagant outfit and props did not seem very Maoist in nature.”
            “The next moment was when I was working on the South African Sites of Passage project. We flew out of Washington DC, Dulles.  Obama was president and all the usual DC paraphernalia was all over the airport: snow globes with the white houses, DC T-shirts and toy airplanes. When we flew back into the county, Trump had taken over – not only the country but the airport as well.  “MAKE AMERICA GREAT” was plastered everywhere and made us want to turn and run back to South Africa, with our tails between my legs. We left one country and came back to another.”