"The Poles" Workshop for Women
The project marks the second installment of the Polish-Georgian cooperation between organisations working in the field of dance and modern choreography, Performat Foundation and Circe Platform. Last year, both focused on the role of women in relation to the centenary of the Polish women’s suffrage. Expanding upon this perspective, this year they would like to discuss the potential relations between artistic work and care, between choreography and humans as well as between choreography and nature.
Performat Foundation (PL) – Circe Platform – Experimental Platform for Dance and Theatre (GE):
During our collective discussions and workshop sessions, we would like to zoom in on artistic practice with special attention to care work and artistic work.
The project comprises a diversity of approaches to care: as a women’s community and a nexus of interhuman relations, as care work that is de-valorised and undervalued by the capitalist system, including the care work performed by women-artists-mothers, and as redefinition of the relation between humanity and nature.
We aim to take a closer look at the choreography of care both on the micro (experiencing one’s own body and taking care of it) and macro level (building relations with others and with the surrounding environment).
Due to the current situation of pandemic, despite strong belief in the power of live encounters we are forced to transform the project into an on-line formula.
Concerning care and your health, this year we are inviting you to participate in free online workshops and performances: choreographic workshops catering to women Choreography of Care, in participatory performances Within dance prepared partly in the natural environment of Tbilisi, and in family-oriented performance _on_line__ for families, including children and parents/guardians, carried out by Polish choreographers and artists: Renata Piotrowska-Auffret, Ula Zerek and Aleksandra ‘Ola’ Bożek-Muszyńska, and Holobiont collective (Aleksandra ‘Ola’ Bożek-Muszyńska, Hanna Bylka-Kanecka).
The Poles. Choreography of Care is supported by Tbilisi City Hall, Adjara Group (GR). Partner of the project is Polka dot Foundation (PL).
Subsidised within the remit of the 2017-2022 NIEPODLEGŁA Multi-Annual Programme, as part of the “Cultural Bridges” Programme conducted by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute www.culture.pl
More at Circe Platform (WWW & FB) & Performat Foundation (WWW & FB) channels
Choreography of Care
Online workshop by Renata Piotrowska-Auffret, jointly conducted by Aleksandrea Bożek-Muszyńska
4-7 October 2021, Monday-Thursday, 20:00, GMT+4
The workshop will be held online.
Detailed information concerning each workshop session will be made available in advance to the workshop participants.
About the workshop:
During our practical and theoretical workshops, we will conduct choreographic and motion/movement activities as well as discuss a selection of texts. From the bodily perspective, we will attempt to create a movement and choreography practice founded on the sense of community, listening to one another, and experiencing one’s body as well as on the strength derived from the bodily organicism and biology. From the intellectual perspective, we will attempt to create a vision of a new system, of new strategies of building an image of a woman’s body and its treatment.
During the workshops, the group will read and discuss feminist and eco-feminist texts by among others Mona Chollet, Sarah Ahmed, Stacy Alaimo and Emilie Hache. Tasks conducted in the course of the sessions will be dependent upon the relation between theory and practice. Choreography is understood broadly: as strategies and ways of relating thoughts and bodies in motion in a given educational, artistic, or social context.
Together, we will take a close look at care in the context of our individual work with our own bodies and creation of horizontal interhuman relations. We will discuss, visualize, and envision what the world and politics, if based on relations founded on care, could look like. We will make a concerted effort to establish a community of women and specify our aims in the social context: how to increase the visibility of women artists, women mothers, and other people with tutelary responsibility. With the assistance of choreographic tools, we will search for relations grounded in respect and care for oneself and the entire group.
Fusing theory and practice, the workshop meeting will enable us all to notice the social dimension of choreography. This experience can be of significance to all the participants “right here, right now”, but it can also become the driving force behind further individual and collective activities conducted in a wider social and political context.
We invite everyone identifying as women, regardless of their age.
Participation in workshops is free of charge. Prior dance and movement experience is not necessary.
If you are interested in the workshop, please send your request to circeplatform@gmail.com
Choreographers and teachers:
Renata Piotrowska-Auffret – choreographer and artist; in her works she uses tools of experimental dance, performative arts, dramaturgy, and theatre. Piotrowska-Auffret contemplates the contemporary world by deriving her inspirations from intimate experiences, real and fictional, embedded in a given social context. She is interested in the perversity of relations between the historical and contemporary body politics, between the public and the private, as well as between text and movement.
She was a priority artist in the frame of Aerowaves Twenty17 and Aerowaves Twenty19. Since 2014, she has started a series of Private Pieces – performances putting at stake female body politics, oscillating between the private and the public. As she describes her works: “I am a female artist, I am a woman, I am a mother – so the polarization of the body touches me directly. I always have a personal and autobiographical urgency to do the work.” As a result of working with politically involved themes, the private pieces have already been created.
Within the Private Pieces series, she has created: Death: Exercises and Variations (2014), The pure gold is seeping out of me (2017) and Flatland of Limp Muscles (2019). Her most recent piece is Danse Macabre (2021).
Since 2019 she is researching in the notion of care in a context of motherhood and artistic practices. She participated in Parent Hood conference organized by Dansehallerne and created podcasts Dare to care for Gand Re Union. Since 2020 she is developing her first curatorial project Institute of Care.
Piotrowska-Auffret is a holder of the Exerce Master Choreographic degree at the Institut Chorégraphique International (International Choreographic Institute) in Montpelier and a graduate of the Theatre Academy in Białystok.
Aleksandra Bożek-Muszyńska – choreographer and performer, improviser, business coach and Russian language interpreter. For many years she has been leading regular classes in contemporary dance and improvisation, gymnastics for seniors, as well as creating her own choreographies. She is a scholarship holder of the Alternative Dance Academy 2015-2017 (Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk, Poznań), Intensive Course at School for New Dance Development (Amsterdam) and a beneficiary of the Global Practice Sharing Program at Movement Research (New York). A graduate of the one-year Experimental Choreography II course organized by Centrum w Ruchu (Centre in Motion) in Warsaw. Her works were presented, among others, in Berlin, Budapest, Philadelphia, New York, Warsaw, and Vienna. In 2017, together with Hanna Bylka-Kanecka, she co-created the Holobiont Collective, which runs interdisciplinary multigenerational projects based around workshops and performance. In her practice, she explores the boundaries between performing and facilitating, between naivety and simplicity, and between finding patterns and breaking them. Excitement and pleasure play an important part of her work.
www.olabomu.com
www.holobiont.pl
Within dance
Online participatory performances (format dedicated for families with children and for teenagers) by Ula Zerek, in cooperation with a Tbilisi-based artist Natia Chikvaidze
2-3 October 2021 | 8-10 October 2021
Detailed schedule:
Within dance – for the families with children 5-10 y.o.
2 October, Saturday, 13:00 GMT+4 – online meeting
Individual practice in natural environment between the online meetings
3 October, Sunday, 17:00 GMT+4 – online meeting
Within dance – for teenagers 13-18 y.o.
8 October, Friday, 17:00 GMT+4 – online meeting
10 October, Sunday, 13:00 GMT+4 – online meeting
Feel invited to join us and participate in on-line zoom meetings which will introduce the concept of performative activities in the natural environment. After individual practice based on provided scores we will meet on-line again to discuss and present excerpts of our small performances.
The performances will involve creating choreographic compositions in relation to the nature surrounding us. During the first meeting, all participants will receive a written score as well as an audio recording of it which will be a manual and a guide for individual activities.
About the performances:
The performative actions undertaken will be based on the scores constituting a source of inspiration for movement, simultaneously allowing individual interpretation. What is only required is carefulness, observation, and taking responsive action.
The program is an invitation to compose choreography through active perception, to communal motor practice, to engagement, and sharing the experience of the careful (mindful) body in direct relation with the natural environment.
The aim of the project is to arouse all the senses and to angle towards the primaeval necessity of communing with nature through a non-invasive interaction and care. Care understood in the feminist vein: as care for nature – and more broadly – for the world.
Shared motor practice amongst nature is of particular significance and carries outstanding power in the context of the ongoing pandemic, which acutely affects our mental and physical condition. The necessity of social distancing in public space and transferring our activities online (also this particular event) has brought several pressing questions concerning the contemporary human condition, the human attitude to others, to the Other, and to the environment. This hybrid formula of on-line meetings and individual practice is an attempt to maintain human connections within one experience performed in different geographical spaces.
The scores for performative activities will be prepared by: Ula Zerek and a Tbilisi-based artist invited to cooperate.
Participation in the project is free of charge.
First event (2-3 October) is open to all participants regardless of their previous experience with dance or performance.
Second event (8-10 October) is dedicated to families with children. All family configurations welcome.
If you would like to participate in the performance, please fill out the registration form in the following link: https://bit.ly/2Xy92eW
The performative activities with the participation of the residents of Tbilisi are a continuation of Within dance: Wrzeszcz, a project conducted by the Polka dot Foundation in the Tricity Landscape Park (Trójmiejski Park Krajobrazowy). Authors of Within dance: Wrzeszcz: Natalia Chylińska, Julia Kathriner, Katarzyna Kania, Katarzyna Pastuszak, Katarzyna Ustowska, Ula Zerek.
Choreographer:
Ula Zerek – freelance artist working on the edge of dance, theatre and performance art keeping her interest in relations through which the language of art is developed. Choreographer and performer since 2009, working individually as well as with collective groups (e.g., In memoriam, 2014, Ties, 2015, Exposure, 2017). She cooperated with the Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre, taking part in many of their works. She also choreographed pieces for children, such as Here and there, Seven servants (dir. Michał Derlatka), Four seasons (dir. Tomasz Maśląkowski).
She graduated from the University of Gdańsk, and from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.
Co-founder of the Polka dot Foundation which aims to promote and develop the art of dance, including diverse discourses and new contexts. Polka dot was a co-organiser of The Polish Dance Platform 2019 in Gdańsk. Mom of Bolek and Teo. Living and working in Gdańsk, Poland.
www.ulazerek.blogspot.com
www.vimeo.com/user16420138
www.fundacjapolkadot.com
Holobiont collective, _on_line__
Interactive dance performance for families with children aged 5-10 y.o.
9 October, Saturday, 13:00 GMT+4
We are inviting you to take part in this unusual family performance online. We will use our floor and some crayons to dance and have fun together!
The performance will be held online. Online booking via a Google form available till September 30th, Thursday. The number of participants is limited.
Detailed information concerning participation in the performance will be given directly to the participants.
If you would like to participate in the performance, please fill out the registration form in the following link: https://bit.ly/2Xy92eW
About the performance:
Running, walking, standing, sitting, laying, rolling, jumping. With family, peers or alone. Vertically, horizontally, on the ground and in the air. Listening to the music tact or to one’s own rhythm. What drawing will remain on paper in response to different type of movement?
The _on_line__ performance explores the issue of the traces left by movement. By dancing together, the participants will create huge scale drawings to transform them later in many different ways. Such constructed event can become a creative experience to tighten the bond between kids and their caretakers. It makes also a unique occasion for unusual art encounter.
choreography: Holobiont collective (Aleksandra Bożek-Muszyńska, Hanna Bylka-Kanecka)
co-creation and performance: Aleksandra Bożek-Muszyńska, Dana Chmielewska, Paweł Grala
technical realization: Łukasz Kędzierski
light design counseling: Joanna Leśnierowska
music/collage: Józef Buchnajzer
graphic design: Michał Łuczak
promo picture: Jakub Wittchen
production: Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk
project’s partner: Społeczne Przedszkole Lipowa Alejka
project co-financed from the budget of the City of Poznań
thanks to Arno Stern and Segni Mossi collective
manager: Karolina Wycisk / Performat Production
www.artstationsfoundation5050.com
www.holobiont.pl
Holobiont collective was established by two artists: Aleksandra Bożek-Muszyńska and Hanna Bylka-Kanecka. Their creative interest is in interdisciplinary, multi-generational projects. Combining experimental dance, visual arts and music, the artists create interactive performances and offer workshops for families with children. The work of the collective is based on the assumption that every participant of the performance – regardless of age and experience – is a fully competent recipient of the performing arts. Their performances include roundABOUT (2017), Moonland (2018), _on_line__ (2018) and Where shapes have necks (2019).
