Na zdjęciu: Xavier Le Roy „Untitled”. Fot. Jamie North - Kaldor Public Art Projects.
On Wednesday, 14 October (7 pm), the New Synagogue in Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz will host the premiere of Kantor_Traces: COLLAGE which opens the autumn tour of the Polish-Japanese theatre project Kantor_Tropy initiated by Misako Ueda (Theatre, X, Tokyo) and dr Katarzyna Pastuszak. The highlight of the interdisciplinary theatre project devoted to the ouvre of Tadeusz Kantor is the performance titled Kantor_Traces: ON A SUNNY DAY choreographed by outstanding Japanese choreographer Saburo Teshigawara/Karas, which will be presented on 29 October at the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre.
One important addition to the project will be the photo exhibition ?At Schulz’s? presenting photographs by Mariusz Kubielas. The project will also include presentations of a documentary on Tadeusz Kantor by Krzysztof Miklaszewski, entitled tadeusz.kantor@europa.pl, a lecture by Anna Królica Dance in Tadeusz Kantor?s Works, and a presentation of the sole complete recording of Kurka wodna (Tadeusz Kantor?s British debut in Edinburgh, 1972), supplemented by a meeting with Richard Demarco.
The first October premiere, Kantor_Traces: COLLAGE, is a performance/happening piece which combines contemporary dance with butoh, performance, modern music and visual arts. The event will be hosted at the New Synagogue, courtesy of the Jewish Community in Gdańsk.
The project Kantor_Traces: COLLAGE was directly inspired by the deep yet unplumbed relation between Ankoku but? developed by Hijikata Tatsumi and aesthetic theories and art of Tadeusz Kantor. To both artists, the eponymous collage constituted one of the main creative tools in processing their realities and extracting the existential crisis of 20th century human beings. The project features butoh dancers Kawamoto Yuko, Ishimoto Kae, Rui Ishihara, and Polish artists such as Daniela Komędera, Jan Grządziela, dancers and artists tied to the Amareya Theatre such as Aleksandra Śliwińska, Agnieszka Kamińska, and Katarzyna Pastuszak. Original live music will be provided by Joanna Duda and Jan Młynarski (J=J), while the costumes have been designed by a Japanese designer Rebelis (Daisuke Tsukuda). Stage design has been provided by sculptors Adriana Majdzińska and Grażyna Tomaszewska-Sobko, and visual artist Mon Decoded (Monika Matsumoto Art).
Although geographically removed from one another, Hijikata and Kantor were interested in the subjects of memory, death and decay. While Kantor used death to explore life, Hijikata?s ankoku butoh showed the beauty of ugliness. In a very precisely composed stage image both of them tried to revive something which has passed and showed the fragility of human being here and now. Following in the footsteps of Kantor and Hijikata, we are looking for things common to us, artists born at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. We have chosen three important dates – 1945, 1986, 2011 ? and ask the question: who is the man covered by the dust of the past, the man living in the era of psychological, digital and ecological pollution, adds director of the piece, Katarzyna Pastuszak.
The premiere of Kantor_Traces: ON A SUNNY DAY, coproduced by the Amareya Theatre & Guests in collaboration with Saburo Teshigawara, will take place at the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre. Inspired by the art of Tadeusz Kantor, the piece strives to extract and reinterpret the ?traces? left by the versatile artist. The Gdańsk performance will be followed by presentations in the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor Cricoteca in Cracow and Theatre X in Tokyo as part of the Tadeusz Kantor GoEnNen Performance Festival 2015.
Kantor makes me imagine of somebody totally soaked in rain. Schulz makes me imagine someone standing when the sun comes out just after it has rained. But no one knows when a sunny day will come. That is because both of these men’s bodies are maybe already like rain. Like a fall, not literally, but physically. Your interior rain endlessly falls from an endless height. Though it may be sunny outside, these people are soaked because they carry rain within, says Saburo Teshigawara.
The project is also accompanied by its own publication in the form of a booklet promoting the event and including unique texts and visual materials about the reception of Tadeusz Kantor’s art in Japan and the relationship between Kantor and the world of dance. The booklet has been edited by Nikodem Karolak (Adam Mickiewicz University), Anna Królica (Jagiellonian University), and project coordinator Katarzyna Pastuszak (University of Gdańsk).
Biographies of the artists and guests of the KANTOR_TRACES project
PROJECT PROGRAMME:
14 October 2015 ? New Synagogue ? Jewish Community in Gdańsk
7 pm – premiere of the performance /happening Kantor_Traces: COLLAGE dir. Katarzyna Pastuszak
8:30 pm ? exhibition of Mariusz Kubielas’s Photographs ?At Schulz’s?
28 October 2015 ? Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre
6 pm – Anna Królica’s lecture. ?Dance in Tadeusz Kantor’s works?
7 pm – presentation of the documentation of the performance “Kurka wodna” (the British debut of Tadeusz Kantor, Edinburgh, 1972)
8:30 pm ? meeting with Richard Demarco
29 October 2015 – Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre
6 pm – exhibition of Mariusz Kubielas photographsAt Schulz’s ? Mannequin ? Stagings (Curators: Lidia Głuchowska, Ewa Popiołek)
7 pm ? premiere of the performance Kantor_Traces: ON A SUNNY DAY chor. Saburo Teshigawara/Karas
8 pm ? presentation of the film tadeusz.kantor@europa.pl dir. K. Miklaszewski
9 pm ? meeting with artists participating in the Kantor_Traces project and Mariusz Kubielas
3-4 November 2015 – Centre for Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor ? Cricoteka (Cracow)
3 November, 7 pm – presentation of the performance Kantor_Traces: ON A SUNNY DAY chor. Saburo Teshigawara/Karas
4 November, 7 pm – presentation of the performance /happening Kantor_Traces: COLLAGE dir. Katarzyna Pastuszak
1-14 December 2015 ? Amareya Theatre & Guests and ?Kantor_Traces ? in Japan
5 December, 7 pm – presentation of the performance Kantor_Traces: ON A SUNNY DAY chor. Saburo Teshigawara/Karas at Theatre X (Tokyo) during the international ?Tadeusz Kantor GoEnNen Performance Festival? (Japan)
Organisers and co-producers: Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (?Młoda Polska? scholarship), City of Gdańsk, Adam Mickiewicz Institute (culture.pl), Agency for Cultural Affairs, Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre, Jewish Community in Gdańsk, Admirał Hotel, Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor ? Cricoteka, Theatre X (Tokyo) ? Misako Ueda, Polish Institute (Tokyo), Ewa Popiołek (President of the Board) ? The Commerce Sp. z o.o.
Media partners: TVP Kultura, Trojmiasto.pl, taniecPOLSKA[pl], Japonia ? online, Radio Gdańsk, Wrota Pomorza, Kultura Enter, Gazeta Wyborcza
Supported by the ?Młoda Polska 2015? scholarship programme of the Ministry of Culture and National Education, the City of Gdańsk, and the grant of the Agency for Cultural Affairs Government of Japan awarded for the fiscal year 2015. Special thanks to the Jewish Community in Gdańsk.
