On 22 November, the Polish Dance Theatre will embark on its most distant and exotic international tour this year. The company will tour in China, performing six times across the world?s most populous state. The trip marks the Polish Dance Theatre?s longest Asian tour so far, as the company will perform Harvest, Let the Living Bury the Dead, and Bitterness at the Harbin Opera House, Tianjin Opera House i Poly Theatre w Shenzhen. The Harbin, Tianjin, and Shenzhen partners invited the Polish Dance Theatre to enable the Chinese audience a closer look at the Polish theatre. Harbin and Tianjin have already showcased such Polish directors as Krystian Lupa (with whom the Tianjin Grand Theatre co-produced Woodcutters and Heroes? Square), Krzysztof Warlikowski, Grzegorz Jarzyna, Jan Klata, and Paweł Passini.
The Tianjin Grand Theatre has had a long-standing collaboration with the Polish Embassy in Beijing. The recently established Harbin Opera House promises to become a fitting platform to showcase the Polish Dance Theatre to the local cultural community that aims to establish Harbin as a major dance theatre and contemporary dance centre in China. In 2016, the centre was awarded the ArchDaily ?2016 Building of the Year Award? and remains the sole building in China to have received an architecture prize this year. The outside of the building boasts a unique architectural design, the so-called ?four dancing ribbons.?
The third venue to host the Polish Dance Theatre is the Shenzen Poly Theatre, which has established itself as a stage for theatre presentations in the up-and-coming creative hub of Shenzhen, a sister city of Poznań (home to the Polish Dance Theatre), which sought collaboration with the Polish Dance Theatre as part of the cultural platform for sister cities organized as part of the International Friendship Cities Culture and Arts Week.
Presentation schedule:
24 November: workshops with the Polish Dance Theatre at the Harbin Opera House
25 November, 7 pm: Harbin Opera House, Harvest
26 November, 7 pm: Harbin Opera House, Let the Living Bury the Dead
27 November, 7 pm: Harbin Opera House, Gorycz
28 November: workshops with the Polish Dance Theatre at the Tianjin Opera House
29 November, 7:30 pm: Tianjin Grand Theatre, Let the Living Bury the Dead
30 November, 7:30 pm: Tianjin Grand Theatre, Harvest
4 December, 8 pm: Shenzhen, Harvest (as part of the 6th Shenzhen International Friendship Cities Culture and Arts Week Poly Theatre)
The Chinese tour of the Polish Dance Theatre is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Self-Government of the Wielkopolskie Province (within the frame of the project ?Presentations of pieces by Polish choreographers and artists during the 2017 Chinese Tour of the Polish Dance Theatre?); the tour is supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.