Pictured: 2 - an improvised duo. Photo: Piotr Poloczanski.
The Amareya Theatre is constantly on the go. Fresh from Greenland, where they presented Nomadic Woman, the artists are travelling to Israel to show a duo titled 2 at the Sukkot Dance festival at the Adama Dance Centre in Mitzpa Ramon (8 October). While at Adama, they will also run workshops on dance improvisation set to live music played by Joanna Duda (9 October), who will also give a solo concert of her compositions, which won the hears of Japanese music lovers. Amareya’s trip to the Sukkot festival is supported by the Polish Institute in Tel Aviv, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, and Adama Dance Centre.
About the duo:
2 by Katarzyna Pastuszak and Joanna Duda is about dialogue, about becoming the other in relation to the other, about being in-between one and another, and being one and another at the same time. The duo celebrates then years of the Amareya Theatre and is part of Katarzyna Pastuszak’s project 33_33_33, a series of 33 performances and artistic actions to be carried out over the 365 days between her birthday on 16 August 2013 and her birthday on 16 August 2014. The project’s backbone are dialogues with artists that Pastuszak has never worked with before, on one hand, and those she has been collaborating with for years, creating a distinctive movement dialect, on the other.
2 | an improvised duo |
Katarzyna Pastuszak_Joanna Duda
Conception: Katarzyna Pastuszak
Movement: Katarzyna Pastuszak
Live music: Joanna Duda
Consultants: Agnieszka Kamińska, Aleksandra Śliwińska, Dorota Androsz
Video: Katarzyna Pastuszak
Premiered: 25 October 2013, Club Żak, Gdańsk, Poland
About Joanna Duda’s concert:
Joanna Duda ? piano solo
Joanna Duda’s solo concerts feature improvised music inspired by contemporary music in a broad sense. She plays compositions notated in her own system. You’ll her quotations of every epoch transformed with the use of all and any composition tools at hand. Repetition, minimalism, and the depth of sound force the listener to travel beyond the determined, the named, and the pigeon-holed.
“My piano playing follows from countless musical and situational inspirations. An unconscious, yet direct, influence have been the years I spent practicing at school and music collage. In neighbouring rooms other pianists would be honing their technique, unwittingly creating together two or three different planes. I found it amusing to play in concert with one of them, sometimes repeating precisely what they have just played, and waiting for an answer from behind the wall. If I knew who was playing next door, I was especially tempted to provoke them with their own phrase. My strongest aural memory is walking down a long corridor, dubbed the ‘piano passage’ by the students, at different times of day. On both sides of the corridor there were rooms for piano practice only. Late in the afternoon, when the most conscientious virtuosos would be busy working, the corridor was throbbing with a chaos of blaring music which matched up with the smell of floor paste wax and dull light seeping from round ceiling lamps to give you the essence of the school in Gnilna street of that time. As the day passed, the cacophony would evolve into distinctive strata of different compositions. Sometimes the strata, despite being independent, would interweave into a pretty logical whole like some sort of unintentional, primeval DJ’ing in pure form. And right there, the moment when a sudden spell of science was broken by a vague motif escaping through the doors of the farthest room on the second floor was inexplicably magical.” [Joanna Duda]
About the artists:
JOANNA DUDA is a pianist and composer involved in many projects, for example J=J, or Wojtek Mazolewski Quintet. She received scholarships from the city of Gdańsk in 2010, 2012, and 2014, and was nominated for TVP Kultura’s Gwarancje KulturyAward as “Debut of The Year” in 2011 and for the Grand Prix Jazz Melomani as “Music Lovers’ Hope”. She has composed music for a range of theatre productions: Station des Corps (directed by Tomasz Bazan), Balladyna (directed by K. Garbaczewski), Herb Brecht (directed by K. Garbaczewski), 2 (directed by Katarzyna Pastuszak), Fetish.WTF (directed by Dorota Androsz), and Nomadic Woman (directed by Katarzyna Pastuszak). She is the musical element of the performative group Offelia Collectiv. Her inspirations are varied, embracing classical music, jazz, electronic and experimental music, and so is the music she creates. You can trace an eclectic quality in her projects and compositions but also in her general approach to contemporary pianism. In 2013 Joanna Duda released the album The Best Of, summarising her work so far. In July 2013 she recorded Julius Eastman’s “Gay Guerilla” and “Evil Nigger” together with pianists Bartłomiej Wąsik, Emilia Sitarz, and Michał Kozłowski. The album will be officially launched on 16 November at the Kwintesencja (Quintessence) festival in Warsaw. Duda has been also involved in the recording of Wojtek Mazolewski Quintet’s albums Smells Like Tape Spirit, Wojtek w Czechosłowacji, Nionio (the remixes); Mazolewski/Gonzales Quintet’s Shaman; and Iza Kowalewska’z Diabełmi ciędał. Her own pieces have been released on AuAuA’s Muzyka do bólu, J=J’s 2013EP, 3D’s Maty rertuar, and Joanna Duda’s The best of. She has performed in Sisimiut, Greenland; Tokyo; Berlin; Paris; Prague; Brussels; Kaliningrad; Beijing; Shanghai; Singapore; Delhi; and Bangalore. In 2014 she contributed to the following performances and performative actions: VHS nr 33 ?WCZASY 1983 (Katarzyna Pastuszak, Joanna Duda; premiered at Streetwaves 2014); Mushi no Hok? (K. Pastuszak, J. Duda, A. Śliwińska; premiered at the MADE IN AZJA festival, 12th Baltic Festival of Science, University of Gdańsk); Fragile (K. Pastuszak, D. Androsz, J. Duda, A. Kamińska, A. Śliwińska; premiered at the International Festival Sound Around Kaliningrad, BBNCCA ? Baltic Branch of National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Kaliningrad, Russia), Ocalony (premiered at the 11th International Dance and Theatre Festival, Theatre X, Tokyo). In 2014 Duda performed at the 11th International Dance and Theatre Festival at Theatre X in Tokyo, and in Taseralik ? Sisimiut Cultural Centre, Greenland together with the rest of the cast of Nomadic Woman, a performance directed by Pastuszak.
KATARZYNA PASTUSZAK is a dancer and translator. She holds a degree in Scandinavian studies from the University of Gdańsk, in theatre studies from the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, and has done a PhD on “Hijikata Tatsumi’s Ankoku but? ? theatre of the body-in-crisis? at the University of Gdańsk (2010). Since 2003 she has been part of Gdańsk-based Amareya Theatre. She chairs the Amareya Art Association, and was the curator of the Gdańsk Dance Festival in 2009?14 (Club Żak). She is a member of the International Dance Council, Polish Society for Culture Studies (PTK), and the Culture Council set up by the Gdańsk city hall. She has participated in the European project CORNERS 2011-2012 (Intercult, Stockholm), which embraced a range of performative actions across the public spaces of Georgia, Russia, Azerbaijan, and Sweden. She delivers guest lectures and workshops at the University of Gdańsk, the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (Urban Interior Design Workshop run by Professor Jacek Dominiczak), and elsewhere in Poland and abroad. She has performed in all group productions of the Amareya Theatre from 2003 to 2013 and in collaborations with foreign artists, such as The Power of Nature with Greenland’s storyteller Louise Fontain (2013, Norway), Dream Regime with Gekidan Kaitaisha from Tokyo, presented in Poland and Japan (2007?2011), Caravan Project with Ang Gey Pin (2008), Anatomical Theatre ?The Mystery of Life and Death with Joan Laage (2006?2007), Ten ku Youran with Daisuke Yoshimoto (2006), Mandala of Life and Death directed by Atsush Takenouchi (2005). In February 2011, together with Amareya she performed at the Morishita Studio in Tokyo as part of the Dream Regime Project run by Gekidan Kaitaisha. She also directs theatrical performances featuring disabled and blind people. She has run workshops in Poland, Norway, Russia, Japan. In 2012 she co-created Ofelia (Ophelia) which premiered at the 16th Shakespeare Festival and the interdisciplinary project Nomadic Woman with Amareya dancers, Louise Fontain, and Dorota Androsz, actress of the Wybrzeże Theatre. In September 2013, together with Gdańsk-based Offelia_Collectif, she presented Ofelia_3 at the Redplexus Festival ? Préavis de Désordre Urbain (Marsylia). From October to December 2013, Pastuszak was involved in the production of two new pieces celebrating ten years of the Amareya Theatre: 2 with live music played by Joanna Duda and fetish.wtf directed by Dorota Androsz, and also set to Duda’s music. In 2014 Pastuszak contributed to the following performances and performative actions: VHS nr 33 ?WCZASY 1983 (Katarzyna Pastuszak, Joanna Duda; premiered at Streetwaves 2014); Mushi no Hok? (K. Pastuszak, J. Duda, A. Śliwińska; premiered at the MADE IN AZJA festival, 12th Baltic Festival of Science, University of Gdańsk); Fragile (K. Pastuszak, D. Androsz, J. Duda, A. Kamińska, A. Śliwińska; premiered at the International Festival Sound Around Kaliningrad, BBNCCA ? Baltic Branch of National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Kaliningrad, Russia), Ocalony (premiered at the 11th International Dance and Theatre Festival, Theatre X, Tokyo). In 2014 Nomadic Woman which Pastuszak directed was presented at the 11th International Dance and Theatre Festival at Theatre X in Tokyo, and at the Taseralik ? Sisimiut Cultural Centre, Greenland.
