Ryszard Kalinowski is a dancer, choreographer, and educator. He graduated from the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, where he studied cultural and educational pedagogy at the Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology, majoring in theater and dance (1994). In 1992-1993 he was a student/actor at Halina Studniarz’s pantomime theater company in Lublin. Since 1996, he has participated in numerous theater workshops in Poland, as well as many domestic and international dance workshops. Between 1993 and 2001, he was a dancer with the Contemporary Dance Group of the Lublin University of Technology, co-creating the company’s performances. One of them, entitled Voices (choreographed by Hanna Strzemiecka in collaboration with Ryszard Kalinowski), was awarded 1st Prize at the 7th International Presentations of Contemporary Dance Forms in Kalisz (1999), where he also received a special prize for his role in another Contemporary Dance Group performance, titled. DC 586494 (2001).
Since 2001, he has been a member of the Lublin Dance Theatre, which he has also managed since 2006. It was there that he created his choreography To Good Silence, awarded at the 10th International Presentations of Contemporary Dance Forms in Kalisz (2002), distinguished at the Łódź Theater Meetings (2004), and featured at the Internationaler Wettbewerb für Choreographen competition in Hannover (2005). His subsequent original choreography Bellissimo (2003) won the 2nd Prize at the International Competition Das Beste Deutsche Tanzsolo in Leipzig (2005) and was invited to participate in two other contemporary dance competitions, i.e. Internationales Solo-Tanz-Theater Festival in Stuttgart and Internationaler Wettbewerb für Choreographen in Hanover (both in 2006). His subsequent choreographies for the Lublin Dance Theatre are: I znów, i jeszcze raz (2006), 48/4 (2007), NN. A Tribute to Vaslav Nijinsky (2008), endo (2009), nano (2011), and fatal error (2012).
Together with the Theatre, he participated in many festivals in Poland and abroad, including the USA, France, Germany, Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, as well as Spain and Finland. He also co-created (together with Łukasz Witt-Michałowski), Głód Knuta Hamsuna for the Centralny Theatre in Lublin.
Kalinowski has also been active as a curator of dance and interdisciplinary programs and events, such as the International Dance Theatre Festival in Lublin (1997-2022), Choreographic Territories (2016, 2018), young choreographer projects Tour d’Europe des choregraphes (2009 –2011), as well as Artil: Ukraine, Poland, Austria (2019). Since 2020 (together with the Lublin Dance Theatre) he has coordinated the Spaces of Art: Lublin project, financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and implemented by the National Institute of Music and Dance.
Kalinowski served as a member of the expert panel at the 1st and 2nd Dance Congress (2011, 2020), and Member of the Board of Directors of the Dance Art Community Forum Association (2019-2021). He is a multiple laureate of the Mayor of the City of Lublin award (individually and with the LDT) for artistic creation and cultural merits for the city. In 2021, he was presented with the Annual Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the field of dance.
