Courtesy of CRICOTEKA. Photo: Studio FILMLOVE.
On Thursday, 11 November (6:30 pm), Iza Szostak will present her Excavatory Ballet at the monumental Trojhalí Karolina (K Trojhalí 3361/5, Moravska Ostrava, Czech Republic), as part of the second edition of the Norma Festival. The festival will feature international dance and motion theatres, with a special emphasis on visual arts. The individual performance days of the festival should be viewed as wholes; ideally, the viewers will see the complete programme, not just selected projects.
The festival will open with the presentation of the Polish show.
The driving force behind Excavatory Ballet is the work of Oskar Schlemmer: Bauhaus professor, German painter, theorist of art and reformer of dance. Schlemmer was fascinated by the mechanicality of ballet dancers? movement. He treated their bodies as geometricised shapes and forms, paying particular attention to costumes, compositions and dynamics of lines and colours, as well as movement trajectories. In her latest project, Iza Szostak takes up Schlemmer?s Triadic Ballet, translating it into the language of construction equipment. Making some references to specific parts of the original 1923 choreography, she constructs an interdisciplinary activity divided between two bodies and two machines, connecting dance with visual arts and sound performance.
The key element of preparing the project was for Iza Szostak and Paweł Sakowicz to complete a training course for excavation equipment operators. The process of learning the machine?s motor control as well as gaining new skills (how to activate, control, and manoeuvre the machine) clearly brought to light the interdependence between man and object.
The subject of study and inspiration in this ballet are dancers? bodies wearing specific costumes ? excavation machines: three-dimensional and rescaled, standing out of the body, with their own quality, motility and sounds. When put on, the costumes enforce on dancers a specific behaviour and movement, but also modify their shape depending on the performers? activities. In a reality designed in such a way, human movement undergoes the process of revision as in contact with the machines, human being becomes a hybrid. The division into the body and the object thus disappears.
Concept, choreography, performance: Iza Szostak
collaboration, performance: Paweł Sakowicz
dramaturgy: Anka Herbut
stage design: Łukasz Kwietniewski
music: Kuba Słomkowski
lighting: Michał Głaszczka
curator: Anna Królica
production coordinator: Dominik Skrzypkowski
production: Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor CRICOTEKA, Cracow
coproduced by: Body/Mind Foundation, Burdąg Foundation
partner: Bergerat Monnoyeur
work in progress presentation: 1 October 2015 as part of the 14th International Body/Mind Festival; Powszechny Theatre, Warsaw
premiere: 8 November 2015, Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor CRICOTEKA, Cracow
Produced as part of Anna Królica?s curator project Choreographic Machine.
Festival website: http://festivalnorma.cz/
