Fot. z materiałów Sandler's Wells.
On Friday, 7 June (6 pm) the Museum of Art in Łódź (ms2, ul. Ogrodowa 19) is presenting a multimedia exhibition Przyjdźcie, pokażemy Wam, co robimy/O improwizacji tańca [Come, we’ll show you what we do/About dance improvisation], whose curators are Katarzyna Słoboda and Sonia Nieśpiałowska. The exhibition will be open until 20 October, and is accompanied with a rich programme of additional events. First off, on 7 June (7 pm), is Iwona Olszowska’s performance lecture about contact improvisation, to be followed on 8 June (7 pm), by the performance of Zdarzenia [Happenings] by Pracownia Fizyczna and the SzaZa musical duo.
About the exhibition:
Our everyday experience consists of hundreds of unpredictable situations to which the mind and the body must react simultaneously. We function easier by creating systems, however, when the reality escapes the established frames we make decisions while improvising. Improvisation is not that much a matter of spontaneity and freedom, as of openness and readiness to constant changes.
Getting to know one’s own motor abilities may create a starting point for the constant actualization of awareness, enabling the creative response to the changes in the environment. In the field of contemporary dance this problem was most thoroughly explored by contact improvisation, a technique to work with the body in motion initiated by Steve Paxton in 1972. It is based on a physical contact of two moving bodies and on mutual relation, created between them solely through the fundamental movement qualities – gravity, inertia, momentum. This practice, described by Simone Forti as „art sport”, contradicts the notion of the upright, vertical stance of the body as the superior posture in which we function in space, in the flow of movement which cannot be preconceived.
You come, we’ll show you what we do is an exhibition on dance improvisation. The title is borrowing its name from the first US West Coast tour of contact improvisation in 1973. The title is also an invitation to actively participate in the exhibition, the concept of which assumes constant change whereas its program is filled with the events of various formats, encouraging one to move around in the unpatterned and unpredictable way. It will be encouraged by the interactive architecture of the exhibition, consisting of the „devices for improvisation”, designed by BudCud.
The exhibition in ms² shows the documentations of the performances from the 1970’s until 1990’s – films important for the development of thought on improvisation, understood both as studio and stage practice. They document the actions of such dancers and choreographers as Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson among others. The exhibition also includes the variety of performative events – workshops, presentations, performances/lectures – whose participants will challenge the spaces of the museum.
The exhibition will be encapsulated by the premiere of the book consisting of the translations of the texts which present improvisation from the practical, historio-analytical and philosophical perspective. It will be the first book on improvisation to be published in Poland and one of the very few publications concerned with contemporary dance that are available in Polish language.
Invited artists: Ray Chung, Sebastian Flegiel, Natalia Iwaniec, Witold Jurewicz i Aleksandra Ścibor, Dawid Lorenc, Marcin Masecki, Yaniv Mintzer, Lisa Nelson, Iwona Olszowska, Jacek Owczarek / Pracownia Fizyczna, Jan Peszek, Michał Ratajski, Paweł Szamburski, Patryk Zakrocki, Ilona Trybuła, David Zambrano, Aleksandra Borys / Marysia Zimpel among others.
More info: http://msl.org.pl/en/wydarzenia/you-come-well-show-you-what-we-do-dance-improvisat/
Curators/editors: Sonia Nieśpiałowska-Owczarek, Katarzyna Słoboda.
The book accompanying the exhibition will be published due to the financial contribution from the Institute of Music and Dance under the “2013 Publication Programme.”
Supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
