Marta Wołowiec’s international tour with the spectacle “WoW” as part of the Poland Dances Tournée program

WoW has already been presented twice in Dresden, Germany, on September 6 and 7, 2024, and on October 22 in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the artists will have more performances this year – on November 1 and 2 in Basel, Switzerland.

The project partners are: Projekttheater Dresden, Derida Dance Centre in Sofia, and Verein Tanz Haus in Basel.

The beneficiary of the program and its co-organizer is: Agencja Artystyczna Alan Pakosz.

Description of the performance:

In times of darkness and anxiety, we wonder what pleasure is – pleasure in life, pleasure from dancing or watching dance. The creators are inspired by the phenomenon of choreomania – a dance plague that has appeared in various parts of Europe for over ten centuries. The street dancing mania has brought together hundreds of people in a crazy dance to exhaustion, to loss of consciousness, and sometimes – to death. To this day, the causes of these ecstatic movements are associated either with the unconscious use of psychedelics, in the form of poisoning with ergot, a fungus that feeds mainly on grass and cereals, or with a disease called chorea. One theory also states that the incessant dancing was the result of a nervous breakdown, the cause of which was a specific time full of plagues, wars and natural disasters.

Creators:

Concept, direction, choreography: Marta Wołowiec
Creation, performance: Marta Wołowiec, Tomasz Pomersbach
Dramaturgy: Janusz Orlik
Music: Wojciech Kiwer
Lighting direction: Klaudia Kasperska
Costumes: Dominik Więcek
Production: Przestrzenie Sztuki – Taniec 2023, Wrocławski Teatr Pantomimy

Premiere: September 20, 2023, Centrum Sztuki Performatywnych PIEKARNIA during the Przestrzenie Sztuki Festival.

Duration: approx. 60 minutes

Marta Wołowiec

Performer, choreographer, dancer, certified dance instructor. Graduate of cultural studies and cultural and media management at the Jagiellonian University. In the years 2018-2023, Head of the Krakow Choreographic Center at the Nowa Huta Cultural Center, curator and initiator of the Krakow Dance Festival.

As an artist, she has performed on stages in Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Lebanon, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, France and Lithuania. Author of solo and collective performances, created in cooperation with Polish and foreign creators: WoW, Lil, Tens, Light Darkness, Guppy 13, TYTUM, Naturgemalde, Women of Wyspiański, Hold on, spectral layers of movement. Creator of choreography in the performances Woman and Life, The Unbroken Prince, Universes of My Dad, performed in drama theaters. She has collaborated with KORZO Theatre (Holland), Dancehaus piu (Italy), National Stary Theatre in Kraków, Wrocław Contemporary Theatre, Capitol Musical Theatre, Grotowski Institute. Winner of the Special Prize in the Stanisław Wyspiański Theatre Award Competition. She has presented her own performances at festivals in Poland and abroad, including TANZWERKSTATT EUROPA in Munich, New Baltic Dance Festival in Vilnius and MILANoLTRE Festival in Milan.

She has participated in international projects: Crossroad – inhabiting the world, during which she held artistic residencies in Lebanon, Belgium and Italy, and iCoDaCo 2018-2020, artistic residency in Sweden and Hong Kong.

In her own choreographic works, the artist explores the topic of energy and progressive-trance movement. Natural flow is important to her, as well as the engagement of the viewer through mutual stimulation of mindfulness of the body and mind. A minimalist who seeks authenticity in every stage action.

Honored in the monthly “Teatr” by Anna Królica in the summary of the 2021/2022 season: “(…) an artist who is increasingly marking her presence on the Polish dance scene and her own choreographic language is Marta Wołowiec, searching in movement and in nuances, between small gestures, trance action and choreography. Intriguing both in her own creations and in her performance parts in performances by other choreographers.”

Tomasz Pomersbach

Dancer, dance instructor and practitioner of the Ilan Lev Method. He comes from Wrocław, where he began his dance education in the ballet studio of the Lower Silesian Operetta. He studied at the London Contemporary Dance School, obtaining a higher education certificate from the University of Kent in 2010. In the years 2010-2013 he was a dancer at the Polish Dance Theatre in Poznań, where he performed in performances by Ewa and Paulina Wycichowski, Andrzej Adamczak, Yossi Berg, Ohad Naharin and Jo Strømgren. Since 2013 he has been active as an independent artist. In the years 2013-2022 he was a permanent member of the Pink Mama Theatre, with which he created 6 full-length performances combining dramatic theatre with dance and physical theatre (Psittacus Erithacus, Dynastia, Olimpiada, Jungle, Fashion and Shaved Town). With the Pink Mama Theatre he performed, among others at the Polish Dance Platform, the Dance Days Chania festival in Greece and the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh.

In addition, he has collaborated with the following artists: Rosalind Crisp, Sjoerd Vreugdenhil, Loredana Parella and Maciej Kuźmiński. He is constantly looking for new ways of development as a dancer and movement artist. He has participated in many training courses and workshops in Poland (International Dance Workshops in Bytom, International Jazz Dance Workshops in Kielce, National Contemporary Dance Workshops in Połczyn Zdrój) and abroad (including Gaga Intensive and Hofesh Sechter Intensive). As a dance and movement instructor, he led workshops as part of the SPACER Contemporary Dance Festival in Krakow and the Cyrkulacje Festival in Wrocław, and also lectured on dance at the Institut za Umetnicku Igru in Belgrade. In recent years, he has also been active as a practitioner and a great enthusiast of the Ilan Lev Method, of which he is one of the few Polish practitioners (he completed the first course of the method outside of Israel).

more information: www.martawolowiec.com/wow