News from Polska: Polish performance in Bucharest

A performing arts festival, staged by the Polish Institute in Bucharest

Luana Pleşea, 22.04.2017, 14:43

“The Tickler and the Ticklee was the theme of News from Polska a performing arts festival, whose third edition was jointly staged by the Polish Institute in Bucharest and the National Dance Center, over March 31st – April 9th. Larisa Crunteanu, the curator of the News from Polska event explained for us the theme of the festival:

Larisa Crunteanu: “The Tickler and the Ticklee is a theme I set my mind on starting from a concept that was seminal for developmental psychology in early 20th century. The thing is that people cannot tickle themselves. We can have that sensation when somebody else intervenes, but we cannot have it when we try to tickle ourselves. With that paradox in mind, I started thinking of the way in which inner dialogue works. Our mind is filled with other peoples voices, but we do not recognize them as such, we are unable to tell whether what we say to ourselves are our own thoughts or what others tell us. Starting from this alleged paradox, taken further to the mental level through dialogue, I tried to make a selection of works whose concept frame included inner dialogue like a neutral zone, a zone where nobody can tell for sure who the interlocutors are. Its not clear if it is a monologue or a genuine dialogue and who it is were having that inner dialogue with.

Being the one who decides what foreign performances are to be presented at home, on a Romanian stage, entails a certain amount of responsibility. You have to know what and why you bring something before the Romanian audiences, as Larisa Crunteantu says:

Larisa Crunteanu: When I selected those works, I thought of how they would be perceived, how they can fit in and create contrasts with what is available on the Romanian stage at the moment. And I was also interested in the way in which people with a background in dancing relate to text of a play or use certain theater-related procedures in their work. I believe that was exactly why I also chose to label them performing works, so as not to place them by default in the theater-dance area.

The themes approached in the performances presented at the 3rd edition of the News from Polska festival are close to the man of today. “Make Yourself is a performance created by Marta Ziolek, who in this show is joined on stage by five other choreographers and a vocalist. Ziolek presents a futurist universe, which is something resembling a gym, a church and a corporation at the same time. “Make Yourself is a show teeming with vitality, where Marta Ziolek uses, with utmost intensity, the artists energies in order to discuss the topic of identity. Speaking about that, here is Marta Ziolek herself.

Marta Ziolek: “I was interested how, in our diverse society, identity becomes a product, or an object that we can, lets say, become. There is this kind of fiction that is very common for capitalism. Which means that the freedom is something… the freedom actually becomes a bit of a lie. The freedom of individuals is also a sort of prison, actually, in which we are living. So thats the thing about consumerism and a certain way of thinking about ourselves as free subjects. There is this of paradox of contemporary subject, on one hand, its a lot about training yourself and becoming more free and on the other hand its actually becoming a slave or becoming submitted to certain demands or desires. So for me it was interesting if we can emancipate ourselves from that kind of struggle and also, on the other hand if we can expose the sort of mechanism that we are living in. So there is a search for freedom in this performance and I think the freedoms comes from being united in a certain energetic flow – a community and so on.

Marta Ziółek set for herself the task of creating a show that the audience would easily relate to. Actually, “Make Yourself is a big hit in Poland and was a big hit in Bucharest as well.

One of the choreographers who featured in “Make Yourself, Ramona Nagabczynska, was invited to take part in the festival with the pURe solo performance. “PURe is a work about the natural body, starting from the Ur-matter concept created by the renowned Polish stage director and painter Tadeusz Kantor. According to the aforementioned concept, as Ramona Nagabczynska explains, matter has an inherent power and it is all up to the artist to listen to what matter says, which, in our context, is the body itself.

Ramona Nagabczynska: “I have a certain interest in the body as an object and the sort of the process of the performer which is sort of auto-referential for the piece itself, so very often I actually use what happens with the performer during the performance as a sort of the base of the theme of the piece itself. So transformation is a very important idea for me, its something that interests me very much. As a performer, I take this knowledge I have from performing into my choreographic work. Its one thing and also, Im quite interested in sort of using the body as a tool in a more kind of a visual sense, so bringing dance away from theater and closer to visual arts. I dont want to make a very intellectual work. I mean, at the end of the day I am interested in the effect of things on people.“

The News from Polska Festival ended with a musical performance titled Exit Promises, given by the Australian-born artist ZONE-L (Laura Hunt). Speaking about the performance, here is the artist herself.

ZONE-L: “I have worked with sound now for over 8 years in different capacities and in every single realm of sound. Im interested in how it affects people. This sounds really obvious, actually, when you say it because sound is such a huge mobilizer and it changes peoples lives, people revolve their life around different sounds, but I think Im interested in how I can harness that in some way in my music and I guess its a little bit political as well, so Im making a comment on the culture of constantly wanting to be better and needing to be better and in a way Im kind of playing up to it in my music by using samples that say that you will live a better life if you listen to this track for ten minutes, so Im taking samples from YouTube, from DIY self-help culture and making dance music out of it.

The curator of the News from Polska festival Larisa Crunteanu explains why she invited an artist from outside the Polish cultural sphere.

Larisa Crunteanu: Laura Hunt is an Australian-born artist whom I chose to invite precisely in a bid to offer a counterpoise to the increasingly nationalistic tendencies of todays Poland. The Polish Institute was very open to the idea of presenting a stance coming from an allegedly exotic area. At the same time, many of the guest artists share this condition, that of precarious workers, traveling from one country to another, artists who export their works and practices there where they can find a bit of support.