Muzeon Park of Arts in Moscow for the first time celebrated the Old New Year with colorful etnofestival of northern nomadic peoples.

      Mushers wearing embroidered fur coats and shoes made of reindeer skin walked on Krymskaya embankment between Nenets tents, Mongolian yurts and Chukchi yarangas. Representatives of the Extreme North, who arrived from Yamal and Chukotka, taught everyone throwing lasso around a deer effigy – branched antlers tied to a pole.  

      Sled dogs – huskies and malamutes – grinned cheerfully and allowed to stroke themselves; friendly reindeers tried to get from Moscow folks some delicacies, like biscuits and ring crackers.

      Inside the odd dwellings one could learn about everyday life of nomads, to taste traditional Buryat buuza and then to take aromatic herbal tea. The guides told how the portable house is set up and what sacred meaning each piece of the interior has: from the support pole to the ceiling hole through which the smoke flows up and out. The festival guests could visit the national thematic fair of national ornaments, handmade amulets and souvenirs made of bone, wood and leather.

      Choreographic ensemble "Angara" from Irkutsk performed traditional and stylized dances of the peoples of Baikal region and Mongolia. Singer Namgar – Buryat music star, whose name means "White Cloud" – played the national instrument yataga and sang drawling songs about epic heroes and endless steppe. Throat singing and Jews' harp playing of Olite Tevlyanaut from Anadyr carried listeners away to the endless distances of northern tundra.  Most of all, perhaps, the capital residents were struck by the performance of singer Olga Letykay-Chonka from Chukotka. Accompanying on tambourine and harmonica, the woman praises Mother Nature and animals, which play the key role in northern myths and in people's lives. Olga Letykay-Chonka incomparably imitates the cries of seagulls and crows, copies movements of walruses and reindeers, and shows the grass making noise in the wind. According to Muzeon Park of Arts’ director Helena Tyunyaeva, in order to create a genuine atmosphere of northern ethnic festival, the organizers have invited real artists with authentic instruments.