Mathilde Monnier „Gustavia”. Fot. Materiały C/U – 2012.
16 September 2016
From 6 to 15 October 2016, the 21st edition of Theatre Confrontations will take place in Lublin. According to its curators Marta Keil and Grzegorz Reske ?one of the festival?s goals is to constantly seek and name new, non-obvious ways of understanding the theatrical language and develop critical discourse. The festival should create a space for an independent sharing of thoughts and experiences, offering the artists and the audience conditions for a free and real debate.?
Therefore, in the 21st edition of the festival there will be performances of creators who propose new, fascinating theatrical languages. For years, they have been consistently defining their own ways of understanding the theatre and making many others follow their footsteps. Among their followers there is a fabulous (still not known to wider audiences in Poland) Catalan group Se?or Serrano, who freely and creatively use new technologies; winners of the Silver Lion award on Venice Biennale in 2015 for ?creating a new theatrical language?. Another guest at the festival will be Toshiki Okada, one of the most important personae in the world of theatre. He will show a new performance of his group Chelfitsch. For the first time, Confrontations will also be hosting a star of the independent stage, Ivo Dimchev, a total performer.
Moreover, Gob Squad will come back with their Polish premiere of War and Peace, an outstanding show co-produced by Confrontations. Another esteemed guest at the festival will be Penny Arcade, already well known to Lublin audience. She will show her latest performance Longing Lasts Longer. Bojana Kunst, a remarkable explorer of performative arts, will conduct a seminar and present her book Artist at work.
The performance of Agata Siniarska and Madalina Dan Mothers of Steel, co-produced by Theatre Confrontations, deserves a special mention. The performance during the festival is the first time this show will be staged after its premiere. The programme also offers presentations of interdisciplinary projects using movement, such as the famous and valued Dolphin who loved me by Kolektyw a1 and Usland. Following Leonard Z.?s footsteps (Mateusz Atman, Agnieszka Jakimiak, Daniel Malone, Agata Siniarska) ? the only staging in Poland.
Below we are presenting some chosen events:
Ivo Dimchev: Songs from my shows
An artist who refuses to be easily characterised. He has been working for years now on the verge of dance, music, video and performance. In his shows, he describes in a radical manner human relations and the relativity of the relationships between sex and gender. Since the very beginning of his artistic life, an important part of Dimchev?s works have been live performances of songs and opera arias. For the Lublin Festival, the artist has compiled all of his most important pieces to date.
Penny Arcade: Longing Lasts Longer
Lublin audience remembers her very well. Her spectacular show B.!D.!F.!W.! was a veritable sensation during the last year?s Confrontations. Penny Arcade, a legendary performer of New York?s independent scene, one of Andy Worhol?s stars, is coming back with her latest show Longing Lasts Longer, which received a very warm welcome in London, New York and Sydney.
Atman / Jakimiak / Malone / Siniarska: Usland
In Usland, we follow the footsteps of Leonard Z., an artist with a Polish origin, who came to live in Iceland. Seeking Leonard?s traces, we also have to be careful about our own footsteps, which can sometimes wipe off some other tracks. Conversations with Icelandic creators and politicians, expectations and personal experiences from the journey across the ?land of ice and fire? clash with a project of alternative economy and a tempting image of a remote island. What would our lives be like in Iceland, one of the happiest countries in the world? Do we want to imagine life in a different world from the one we know?
And do we actually imagine a better, or maybe a worse world?
Co-production of Goethe-Institute and the Centre for Culture in Lublin (Konfrontacje Teatralne) on the occasion of ?Tauschen und Teilen? Culture Symposium in Weimar, 2016. The project has been developed within the framework of the ?Sąsiedzi? (?Neighbours?) residential programme, run by the Theatre Confrontations Festival.
Madalina Dan/Agata Siniarska: Mothers of Steel
The show has been prepared by two excellent chorographers of the young generation: Agata Siniarska, usually working in Berlin, and Madalina Dan, sharing her time between Bucharest and Berlin. The project is a continuation of Identity.Move! programme carried out by EEPAP in Lublin in 2013 and 2014. It has been co-produced with Stary Browar Nowy Taniec (Old Brewery New Dance) programme in Poznań run by Joanna Leśnierowska. Lublin premiere.
Kolektyw 1a: Dolphin that loved me
The wonder of the last theatre season. Dolphin_who_loved_me is based on John C. Lilly?s experiment financed by NASA from the 1960s, which was aimed at teaching dolphins English. It tells a story of Peter the dolphin?s love for Margaret Howe Lovatt, which awakened during the experiment. The soundtrack for this project contains original recordings of dolphin sounds made under water and fragments of lessons taught by Margaret. The production won a jury award at 100° Berlin Festival 2015. It was created within the framework of Sopot Non Fiction 2014 residencies.
Files to download:
Website: www.konfrontacje.pl
