Ilona Trybuła – dancer, improviser, choreographer, teacher and culture organizer. She graduated from the Gdańsk Ballet School and the University of Music in Warsaw. For 15 years she has worked in Warsaw as an independent artist in the field of contemporary dance. She started her professional career by collaborating with Janusz Józefowicz during his work on Metro. She was also a teacher in the Buffo ‘s dance studio. She specialized in improvised dance, promoting and popularizing this field of contemporary dance. For 10 years she has taught dance improvisation and given classes dedicated to body consciousness, according to her own programme, at Halina and Jan Machulscy’s acting school. Many of her students became professional dancers or actors. She has also run Laboratory of Improvisation – a cycle of dance improvisation workshops with outstanding Polish (e.g. Dziemidok, Marysia Stokłosa and Trybuła herself) and foreign teachers, taking place in Body Studio founded by her in the Łowicka Culture Centre.
She is the founder (2007) and has been art director of Sic! International Dance Improvisation Festival. The festival consists of presentations of the most outstanding world improvisers and workshops run by these artists, as well as of lectures and discussions with the guests. The latest edition of the festival was merged with Ad Libitum Festival of Improvised Music, which resulted in an interesting dialogue of these two fields of art. It is planned that the idea will be continued in the future.
She produced numerous performances created based on improvisation technique. These include Krótka historia na instrumenty i głos kobiecy (1995), Now (1996), To co Jest (1999), Na Nowo (1999, rewarded at the International Presentations of Contemporary Dance Forms in Kalisz, To Tu (2000), Shining (2001), So Fresh (2005) and Statio (2008). Her latest performance, dd.mm.rrrr created together with DJ Lenar, was premiered at “Rozdroże” (Crossroads) – 17th International Action Art Festival (2010) in Warsaw.
In 2007 she founded Melba group – the first Polish group of professional dancers and improvising musicians. The group consists of: Trybuła, Marysia Stokłosa, Rafał Dziemidok and Dominik Strycharski. Melba invited various artists, such as Jacek Owczarek and Raphael Rogoziński, for collaboration. To date, the group had performed at SIC! Festival and at Re:Wizje Independent Art Festival in Warsaw, as well as at the events accompanying the Polish Dance Platform in Poznań 2010.
She collaborated with a visual artist Anna Baumgart as well as Jacek Owczarek and Marcin Dymiter in an interdisciplinary work-in-progress project Chantier (Temps D’image festival). The performance was presented in Rome at Roma-Europa festival.
In 2010 she received the medal of the Commission of National Education (KEN) for outstanding achievements in education and she won a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
