Following collaboration with a live gypsy kleisma band to showcase a new piece (‘Water’), our next major project, ‘Rasputin’ (2001), was a study of the intense relationship the ‘mad monk’ had with Russia’s doomed monarchy. A family of string instruments, issuing forth like Russian dolls from a double bass, formed the visual storyline by suggestion. Hung from the ceiling and swung like pendulums, they evoked machineries of oncoming revolution and war in a world teetering towards disaster.