Cracow: On anger in social and choreographic contexts – premiere of Anna Konjetzky’s new piece

Konjetzky’s work has been featured in Krakow, Warsaw, Poznań, Wrocław, Gdańsk and Białystok. Her workshop and project Nomadic Academy was hosted in Wrocław in collaboration with Fundacja Performa and the Jerzy Grotowski Institute. Thanks to the aforementioned events and presentations, the Polish audience has gained insight into formal and aesthetic diversity of Konjetzky’s work, including different endurance- and strength-based movement techniques, as well as other methodologies involving daily movement poetics and socio-political contexts. The artist also runs her own dance company (Anna Konjetzky & Company), which features an international group of performers. In her productions, Konjetzky invariably collaborates with the exquisite dancer Sahra Huby.

In her latest solo piece On Anger, Konjetzky investigates both the sources of feminist anger and the very functioning of anger as an emotion, both at the individual and social levels.

She dissects and thoroughly examines an entire arsenal of personal, political, and pop cultural gestures of anger. Sahra Huby slows down, fragmentizes, rhythmizes, elongates the movements, and in doing so she gives them an unexpected beauty and elegance, only to rage and erupt again in the next moment. Images of revolts, protests, and demonstrations appear, with the dancer adopting them and making them her own. Anger is also analyzed as a form of constructive energy, as an engine and impulse for social change. Iconic gestures – the raised fist of the Black Power Movement, wrists crossed over one another, the middle finger – proclaim an assault on unjust conditions, an attack on prevailing powers, existing hierarchies and structures.

On Anger examines the potentiality of anger – especially women’s anger – with movement, images, music, and texts. On stage, Sahra Huby is an angry woman who also represents angry women from the present and the past as witnesses at her side – from Clytemnestra to Joan of Arc, all the way to Rosa Parks and Audre Lorde. Together with them, Huby contemplates the possibility of a fundamental and radical transformation.

Choreography, stage design: Anna Konjetzky
Dance: Sahra Huby
Music: Brendan Dougherty
Costumes: Michiel Keuper, Martin Sieweke
Video: Susanne Steinmassl
Lighting design: Barbara Westernach
LED-design: Timm Burkhardt
Production: Anna Konjetzky & Co., in coproduction with  DANCE- International Festival of Contemporary Dance Munich, Kammerspiele Munich, and LOT Theater Braunschweig.
Production management: Rat & Tat Kulturbüro.
PR: Simone Lutz
Online premiere: May 15-16, 2021 as part of the international festival DANCE 2021

Co-financed by the Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich and the Fonds Darstellende Künste Foundation. Supported by fabrik Potsdam.

Partners of Polish production: Fundacja Performa, Teatr Łaźnia Nowa
Curator of Polish production: Anna Królica

Anna Konjetzky creates dance performances and dance installations in which choreographic thinking is a practice of reflection and transformation and is imbedded in a socio-political context. Her work has been shown in Munich (Spielart, Tanzwerkstatt Europa), Potsdam (Unidram), Krakow, Warsaw, Brussels (Danse Balsa Marni), Luxembourg, Ghent, Salzburg, Istanbul, Kampala, Nairobi, and Hanoi. She regularly cooperates with renowned dance companies, among others the Staatstheater Saarbrücken and Staatstheater Braunschweig. A laureate of numerous dance prizes and scholarships, she is the recipient of the scholarships of the Berlin Senate (2006) and the City of Munich (2011), as well as the “Operare” prize awarded by the Contemporary Opera Berlin (2009), the Euro Scene Festival (Leipzig, 2009), and the Förderpreis Tanz presented by the City of Munich (2014). Her dance installation Abdrücke was featured during Tanzplattform Deutschland (2012).

More information: annakonjetzky.com; nomadic-academy-ak.com