Prague: This is Poland! Project Idiom Festival

The opinions of Poland abroad are often based on stereotypes and information taken from foreign media, which in turn are based more on their projections than on an actual knowledge of our culture. We wish not only to discuss the topic of Polishness and Poland as seen from the inside, but also to present the opinion of Polish expatriates and foreigners.

The project ?This is Poland!/To Polska właśnie!?, conducted in Prague, will entail both a review of Polish performance art, and a workshop culminating in a work-in-progress show. The shows featured during the Idiom Festival are examples of the newest trends in Polish dance and performance art. They are focused on the subjects related to Polish history and tradition and the image of a Pole.

So far, the project has included September workshops with Maćko Prusak (actor, mime, choreographer). This Friday, Rafał Urbacki, director, critical choreographer and anthropologist of movement, will conduct a workshop on alternative motorics.

The main part of the project has been planned for 6-8 October 2016 as part of the Idiom Festival, co-organized by the Prague-based Studio Hrdinů, Prague (venue: Dukelských Hrdinů 530/47). The event is organized by the Performat Foundation. Partner: Polish Institute, Prague.

Idiom Festival

Dance can be seen as a medium for storytelling. A story written into the body of dancer is both a private and a public one. How should we communicate our identity through dance? What conditions create such an expression? Must the story always be biographical, filtered by the dancer’s physical presence? How to materialize such a story, how to add space-time constrains of an event in which both performers and spectators take part? What is the universal aspect of this story, one making it ?my? story as well? These are the questions that outline the thematic horizon for the review of Polish choreography in Prague.

In her dance solo, meaningfully titled Polska, Agata Maszkiewicz, who has lived and created in France for many years, will confront the image of Poles abroad. The embarrassment of Poland as a collection of stereotypes and prejudices will be performed in a dance-motion spectacle by Rafał Urbacki. Rafał, who suffers from untreatable motor disabilities, fights against the social injustice towards motorically challenged. His play, Protected Species, employs a number of disabled and motorically challenged actors. The (anti)hero of Irena Lipińska?s !GROT! is the famous Polish director Jerzy Grotowski. The play deals with the Polish cultural tradition, but also with the moment of freeing oneself from its yoke and the necessity of setting out on one?s own creative path. Komuna//Warszawa (Magda Jędra, Weronika Pelczyńska, Iza Szostak), through their play Europa. Inquiry, pose a question about the state and future of our country.

The review will present different ways of understanding Poland and being Polish, as presented by modern choreographers and performance artists. The choice of participants is in no way accidental ? all of them deal with the topic of public debate, and yet each one represents a different aesthetic and art form. Each performance will be followed by a meeting of artists with the spectators.

TRAILER

Programme

6 October

20.00 – POLSKA, Agata Maszkiewicz

Discussion with artists

7 October

10.00-13.30 – On Limited Movement, workshops with Rafal Urbacki (Studio Alta)

19.00 – PROTECTED SPECIES, Rafał Urbacki, Anu Czerwiński

20.00 – !GROT!, Irena Lipińska, Collective WEDO

Discussion with artists

8 October

19.00 – EUROPE. INQUIRY, Magda Jędra Weronika Pelczyńska, Iza Szostak, production: Komuna// Warszawa