Pictured: Gallery Dance Theatre, Monday morning. Photo: Organizers' archieve.
On 4-6 October 2013 Lublin will be hosting the Belarusian Physical Theatre Platform “PlaStforma”. Organised by the Lublin Dance Theatre, the event will be one of the highlights of the Eastern Partnership Culture Congress, featuring four leading Belarusian dance and physical theatres: Slava Inozemcev’s InZhest (Minsk), Alexander Tebenkov’s Gallery Dance Theatre (Grodno), Inna Aslamova’s Quadro Dance Theatre (Homel) and Olga Skvorcova’s Dance Company SKVO’s (Minsk). As well as presenting their works, the artists will run dance workshops.
Read Anna Królica’s opening notes on the event:
The Travelling Wagons of PlaStforma
While producing physical theatre, dance theatre and contemporary theatre, Belarusian choreographers are constantly searching for a new form of expression, never losing sight of their roots: mime, meticulous technical movement, flexibility of the body and, finally, visual theatre. The fusion of all these art forms produces interesting effects.
The first PlaStforma took place in Minsk involving huge effort on the part of choreographers and generating a matching portion of praise and discussion about the pieces presented on the part of the audience. What is PlaStforma? It is an initiative seeking to become a multilayer forum for dance, choreography and theatre, embracing performance showcases, workshops, debates and meetings.
Up until now the discussions generated by PlaStforma involved mainly Belarusian artists and audiences. Despite their guest appearances abroad, Belarusian choreographers lack confrontation with European dance circles and could benefit from a systematic dialogue with their representatives. That is how the idea of holding PlaStforma in another country came to life.
The Eastern Partnership Culture Congress is a perfect opportunity to launch discussions and more intense artistic exchange on a cross-border scope. Planting PlaStforma in subsequent countries on a similar basis could only help the project develop fully.
During PlaStforma’s Lublin edition, choreographers from Grodno, Homel and Minsk will present different dance genres.
InZhestis one of the oldest physical theatres in Belarus. Its charismatic founder Slava Inozemcev, who visited Poland on many occasions before, is also the initiator and organiser of PlaStforma’s Minsk edition. InZhest’s productions fuse physical theatre and mime, exposing nudity (which could be a reminiscence of a fascination with butoh dance), and sometimes gravitating towards street theatre displaying an abundance of gags, clowning and an extravaganza of colours.
Quadro Dance Theatreis run by choreographer Inna Aslamova whose pieces have an open formula, often involving improvisation.
Dance Company SKVO’sandGallery Dance Theatre (a frequent guest at the International Dance Theatre Meetings in Lublin) both fit in the tradition of dance theatre, that is of placing stories pursued through body dramaturgy in a theatre setting, often with a social or existential overtones, and constantly remaining under the influence of Pina Bausch or Mats Ek.”
