Na zdjęciu: Atsushi Takenouchi. Fot. materiały Fundacji POMPKA.
On 18-25 February 2017, the Groteska Theatre in Cracow will host the fourth edition of the outstanding International Festival of Form Theatre ?Materia Prima?. The festival will feature top notch form theatre pieces from around the world, including France, Holland, Canada, Lithuania, German, Vietnam, Italy, Switzerland, and the USA. ?Materia Prima? highlights inventive and surprising performances which combine theatre with new circus and dance theatre, intertwine dance with multimedia and puppet/mask theatre.
The 4th edition of the festival will be headlined by two dance pieces presented by companies led by eminent choreographers: the Canadian Compagnie Marie Chouinard, and the French CCN Créteil & Val-de-Marne/Compagnie K?fig. The festival will also include a presentation by the NoGravity Dance Company, who return to Cracow with an amazing choreography ?suspended? several meters above the ground; and the first visit to Poland by the Swiss-based Compagnia Finzi Pasca, who will present La Verit?, a piece straddling the fields of theatre, new circus, acrobatic theatre, dance theatre, music and song, featuring twelve acrobatics artists.
On 22-23 February 2017, Compagnie Marie Chouinard will present the fundamental work of its founder, bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG _vARIATIONS. The audience is going to contemplate beauty and ugliness, as well as the strength and weakness of the human body at the same time. It is a poetic and highly emotional story of human condition in the universe. The Canadian artist previously visited Poland in 2010 as a guest of the International Contemporary Dance Festival ?Body/Mind?, where she presented 24 Chopin Preludes and her original interpretation of The Rite of Spring. The Cracow presentation will be a unique chance for an encounter with Chouinard?s choreographic vision, which has redefined the understanding of the art of dance and the means of representation of the body on stage.
Pixel (18-19 February 2017), produced by the CCN Créteil & Val-de-Marne/Compagnie K?fig, was choreographed by Mourad Merzouki, who has transformed street hip-hop into a form of art presented on major world stages. In his childhood he practiced martial arts and circus. Merzouki is the managing director of the Centre Chorégraphique National de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne and Compagnie K?fig in France. In his own words, ?the Pixel project came to my mind when I first saw the works by Adrien Mondot and Claire Bardainne. That was a fascination at first sight: I could not tell the real from the virtual, and all at once I made my decision to try and combine the world of interactive video projections with dance, in cooperation with Mondot and Bardainne. It was a huge challenge to find the right balance between dance and abstract images. The work reversed my perception of gesture and movement on the stage. The energy and virtuosity of hip-hop mingled with the world of poetry and dream.?
The NoGravity Dance Company, in collaboration with Accademia Filarmonica Romana and Teatro Olimpico, will present Emiliano Pelisari?s Aria (23-24 February 2017). Acrobatic dancers in grotesque costumes are going to perform a number of geometrical figures in the air in kaleidoscopic sequences. The audience will listen to Baroque music and songs performed by a live ensemble. They will present the music by such composers as Antonio Vivaldi, Claudio Monteverdi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Giuseppe Tartini. The event will feature an extraordinary combination of dance, music and singing ? a theatre performance and a concert in one.
Compagnia Finzi Pasca?s La Verit? features poetic images grouped into dreamlike sequences of breath-taking acrobatics, alternating with witty scenes of excellent clownery. La Verit? is a tribute to Salvador Dali. Daniel Finzi Pasca is a director, producer and actor at the same time. His Corteo produced in 2005 for Cirque du Soleilhas been attended by three million spectators now. In 2016, he created Luzia ? a new masterpiece for this world-famous contemporary circus.
Festival website: http://materiaprima.pl/
