Dominik Więcek “Café Müller”. Photo by Klaudyna Schubert. Graphic design by Dominik Więcek
Representatives of partner organizations, affiliated with the Aerowaves/Dance Across Europe network, have made the final selection of artists promoted as part of the Aerowaves Twenty23 project. The authors of the promoted pieces represent 16 European countries. The selection took place from October 27-30 during the Romaeuropa Festival at the Mattatoio Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, curated by Francesca Manica. We are pleased to announce that next year’s Aerowaves Twenty23 list includes Dominik Więcek and his performance Cafe Müller. Our congratulations to the laureates!
Dominik Więcek on his piece:
Café Müller is the title of a four-part dance night that premiered on May 20, 1978. In addition to Pina Bausch’s choreography, which is still regularly performed today, the bill originally featured pieces by Gerhard Bohner, Gigi-Gheorghe Caciuléanu and Hans Pop. The artists jointly resolved that each of them would create a performance that would include the following elements: a café, darkness, someone falling, someone rising, entry by a redheaded woman, and an all-encompassing silence.
Pina Bausch’s Café Müller is a story of loneliness, isolation, unrequited love, grief and despair. A performance that moves, because it addresses topics that hit home to everyone; an iconic piece that accounts for what Tanztheater is; a unique choreography that once featured Pina herself. To me, it is simply brilliant.
My Café Müller is a fanfiction piece. I use an existing show, its setting and characters, to create images that relate to my own story. Born in Iserlohn, a small town in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, and raised in Poland, I have been asking myself for some time: what would have happened if my parents had not made the decision to return to their home country? In pursuing an answer, I let my imagination run wild and created hypothetical scenarios by traveling around Germany, wandering around my hometown, researching the German language, and meeting Polish expat artists who live and work there. However, my show is not a story of what could have happened. I did not aim for an alternative biography; rather, my goal was to convey the emotions I felt every time I asked myself, “What if…?”
Concept, choreography, performance: Dominik Więcek
Music: Przemek Degórski
Lighting direction: Klaudia Kasperska
Costume:
Design: Nikola Fedak
Execution: fashion system/ Serafin Andrzejak
Linguistic consultation: Joanna Pędzisz
Martial arts consultation: Patryk Kołodziejski
Centre for Culture in Lublin as part of the Spaces of Art program
Research support: Tanzrecherche NRW, Theater im Pumpenhaus, Tanzfaktur Köln, Folkwang Universität der Künste, Lublin Dance Theater.
Premiere: November 11, 2021 / 25th International Dance Theatres Festival in Lublin.
Created as part of the Spaces of Art program, financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, implemented by the National Institute of Music and Dance and the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute. The operator of the project for Lublin is the Centre for Culture in Lublin.
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About the artist:
Dominik Więcek (b. 1992) is a dancer, choreographer, performer, fashion photographer and stylist. A graduate of the PWST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Cracow, Department of Dance Theater in Bytom, and a scholarship holder at Folkwang Universität der Kunste in Essen, he has collaborated with such artists as Jacek Łumiński, Jerzy Stuhr, Giorgio Maddamma, Idan Cohen, Jens van Daels, Sylwia Hefczyńska-Lewandowska, Eryk Makohon, Karolina Kroczak, Tomasz Wygoda, Mariusz Trelinski, and the German group Bodytalk (Yoshiko Wakki, Rolf Baum). Between 2016 and 2019, he was a dancer with the Polish Dance Theatre in Poznań, where he performed in performances by Aleksandra Dziurosz, Iwona Pasińska, Jacek Przybyłowicz, Ewa Wycichowska, Kai Kołodziejczyk and Tomasz Rodowicz, among others.
Więcek is the author and co-author of several original performances. He began his search for his own expressive idiom by creating short forms, including the solo Goldfish, and the solo Dominique, co-created with Maciej Kuźmiński. These pieces were awarded at the Solo Dance Contest at the Gdansk Dance Festival (2015), 30th International Choreographic Competition in Hannover (2016), 20th Solo-Tanz-Theatre Festival in Stuttgart (2016), and the 21st Festival of Choreographic Miniatures in Belgrade, among others.
Więcek’s full-length pieces are nimble form-wise, as they boe the line between fine arts and theatrical genres and involve the artist’s interplay with his own image. Więcek is the author of the choreography for Marcin Liber’s play Ach, jakże godnie żyli (Oh, Haven’t They Lived with Dignity). Together with Michal Przybyła, he created the performance Bromance, which won the 2nd “The Best Off” Independent Theater Competition and received a special mention from the jury of the 54th Small Theatre Forms Review “Kontrapunkt” (2019). Together with Dominika Wiak, Daniela Komędera-Miśkiewicz and Monika Witowska, he created the award-winning performance Sticky Fingers Club, which was recognized at the 55th “Kontrapunkt” review (2021) in Szczecin. His latest premiere, Café Müller, was first performed in November 2021.
The Aerowaves Twenty23 artists are:
- Ioanna Paraskevopoulou with MOS, Greece
- Olga Dukhovnaya with Swan Lake solo, France
- Eva Recacha with Because I Can, UK
- BRABA platform with Atlas da Boca (Atlas of the Mouth), Portugal
- Loraine Dambermont with Toujours de 3/4 face!, Belgium
- Boglárka Börcsök & Andreas Bolm with Figuring Age, Germany/Hungary
- Sebastian Abarbanell with HOME, Germany
- United Fall | Emma Martin with Birdboy, Ireland
- Leïla Ka with To cut loose, France
- Camilla Monga & Emanuele Maniscalco with In the Moment, Italy
- Structure-Couple with Believe, France
- Lovísa Ósk Gunnarsdóttir with When the Bleeding Stops, Iceland
- Ching-Ying Chien with Vulture, UK
- Mélissa Guex with Rapunzel, Switzerland
- Dominik Więcek with Café Müller, Poland
- Deyan Georgiev with Wired, Bulgaria
- Company Les Vagues with W̶E̶L̶COME, France
- Laura Cemin & Bianca Hisse with How the Land Lies, Finland & Norway
- Tamara Gvozdenovic & Kangding Ray with METRONOMIJA, Serbia
- Jean-Baptiste Baele with Nabinam, Norway
The Twenty23 artists will present their work at the Spring Forward Festival from 27 – 29 April 2023 in Dublin (Ireland).
Aerowaves is a European network of dance professionals that supports young choreographers by showcasing their performances on foreign stages. Each year, Aerowaves members (44 partners in 35 countries) meet to select the most compelling choreographic submissions by young dance artists, who are subsequently promoted as Aerowaves priority artists.
To learn more about Aeorowaves, visit https://aerowaves.org/
