Photo: Futoshi Sakauchi.
Following their July visit in Tokyo, the Amareya Theatre is travelling abroad again. On 27 September, Amareya and their guest artists are to present NOMADKA (Nomadic Woman) at the Taseralik Cultural Centre in Sisimiut, Greenland. Amareya Theatre & Guests consists of: Louise Fontain (Greenland/Norway), Katarzyna Pastuszak (Amareya Theatre, Poland), Joanna Duda (Wojtek Mazolewski Quintet, J=J, Poland), Dorota Androsz (Wybrzeże Theatre, Poland), Agnieszka Kamińska (Amareya Theatre, Poland), Aleksandra Śliwińska (Amareya Theatre, Poland), performer Anna Kalwajtys (Academy of Fine Arts, Poland), Magdalena Jędra (Good Girl Killer, Poland). The artists will also run master classes devoted to dance, drama, and vocal training.
The piece to be presented in Sisimiut is an extended version of a performance of the same title produced in 2012 under a cultural scholarship awarded by the City of Gdańsk. The project is also a follow-up on Amareya?s collaboration with Louise Fontain and The Wild Women Conference (Villkvinneseminar) held in Mosj?en, Norway, which goes back to 2011. Nomadic Woman revolves around the life of Fontain, who was deported from Greenland to Denmark as a child as part of a Danish governmental project envisaging re-education of young Greenlanders. As a result of different twists and turns that her life took, Fontain was forced to live in exile for many years following her relocation, forgetting her native tongue and losing touch with her family as a result. She came back to Greenland many years later, setting out to gradually re-establish the bonds she had lost. Nomadic Woman takes the audience on a journey beyond their everyday experience as they listen to Fontain and the other artists tell the moving stories of their lives.
The presentation of Nomadic Woman at the Taseralik Cultural Centre in Sisimiut has been made possible by Tips og Lotto Midlerne, Namm, Oqartussat kulturikkut aningaasaateqarfiat, Nuna Fonden. Special thanks to Ms Arnajaraq St?vlb?k, director of Taseralik Cultural Centre, Sisimiut, Greenland.
NOMADIC WOMAN
Conception, direction: Katarzyna Pastuszak
Choreography: Katarzyna Pastuszak, Dorota Androsz (actress with the Wybrzeże Theatre)
Consultants: Dorota Androsz, Aleksandra Śliwińska, Agnieszka Kamińska, Anna Kalwajtys
Performers: Louise Fontain (Greenland/Norway), Dorota Androsz, Magdalena Jędra, Katarzyna Pastuszak, Aleksandra Śliwińska, Joanna Duda, Anna Kalwajtys (Poland)
Texts: Barbara Szamotulska (Poland), Louise Fontain (Greenland/Norway), Katarzyna Pastuszak, Dorota Androsz (Poland)
Nomadic Woman is a performance project about women and their internal and external emigration. The project revolves around stories of women who lived most of their life in motion and in a peculiar isolation, without a permanent address or the sense of putting down roots anywhere. By revealing to the world the difficult truth about themselves, the women gain back their dignity and are reborn. The project is to discuss the issue of exile and to draw attention to the unique richness of what is popularly called “the other” and what is often stigmatised. Nomadic Woman is a return to oneself and to the world. On a theoretical level, the project also refers to the concept of inconstant human identity, as expressed by Rosi Braidotti (the concept of ?a Nomadic subject?).
From a review:
“(?) This is a Polish-Norwegian parable on wandering women (…). Nomadic Woman is a successfully implemented, communicative project, made up of a multitude of elements whose diversity, however, does not obscure the whole picture, but makes the piece more intense and puts it in context. It is an artistic research, a specific laboratory roamed by women. (?) Owing to the consistency of its methodology, imaging, and narration, the piece must be ranked high among other alternative productions. Pastuszak approaches narration in an ambitious manner, giving voice to eight characters, yet she leaves her audience time to familiarise with the space and time in which the production unfolds.?
Katarzyna Wysocka (portkultury.pl, 14 December 2012, translated from Polish by IMiT)
