Akarova, Allegro Barbaro, 1929, Archives d’Architecture Moderne, Bruksela.
The Old Brewery New Dance and the Art Stations Foundations by Grażyna Kulczyk in Poznań are pleased to invite everyone to the premiere performances within the frame of Solo Projekt Plus 2016 (Saturday, 10 December 2016, 7 pm; Old Brewery, ul. Półwiejska 42, Poznań). The premiere night will feature a double bill including Ania Nowak?s duo and Katarzyna Sitarz solo piece. The performances were created in collaboration with the artistic supervisor of the project, Bush Hartshorn.
The Old Brewery New Dance and the Art Stations Foundations by Grażyna Kulczyk in Poznań are pleased to invite everyone to the premiere performances within the frame of Solo Projekt Plus 2016. The premiere night will feature a double bill including Ania Nowak?s duo and Katarzyna Sitarz solo piece. The performances were created in collaboration with the artistic supervisor of the project, Bush Hartshorn.
About the performances:
Ania Nowak
Don?t Go For Second Best, Baby! is a choreography of support and emergence.
Backup dancing is about bodies in movement practicing being in relation to the center, do each other and to choreography understood as a shared, spontaneous plan. This dance is made collectively out of many intersecting monologues. Backup dancers generate movement of support on an empty stage as a clear center they could refer to is missing. What does it mean to take care of somebody else?s dance? Or to be with someone through dance?
This dance approaches improvisation as a strategy of resistance against the politics of command and hierarchies. The bodies moving in the background insist on dance?s ability to create formats of being and thinking which don?t have to stay on the periphery.
concept and choreography: Ania Nowak
dance and artistic collaboration: Julek Kreutzer, Julia Plawgo
dramaturgy consultation: Mateusz Szymanówka, Julia Rodriguez, Siegmar Zacharias
costume design: Melanie Jame Wolf
artistic coaching: Bush Hartshorn
technical realization and lights: Łukasz Kędzierski
production: Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk w ramach / in the frome of Solo Projekt Plus 2016
with support of: Adam Mickiwicz Institute
podziękowania dla / thanks to: HZT Berlin
premiere: 10 December 2016, Studio Słodownia +3, Old Brewery, Poznań
Ania Nowak works choreographing thoughts, language and situations. Her main interests are currently centred around time economies in choreography and love as a practice of improvisation and (not) understanding. She is engaged in developing networks of collaboration with her peers based in and outside of Berlin, rethinking modes of work in today’s performing arts and encouraging queer-feminist practices within the field. Her last work ?Offering What We Don?t Have To Those Who Don?t Want It? premiered at Sophiensaele in Berlin as part of Tanztage Berlin 2016. Nowak has presented her own and collaborative works in theatres, galleries and art centres in Warsaw, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Stockholm a.o. She has been artist-in-residence at Zamek Culture Centre in Poznań, Poland, with the project ?Love As a Strategy For Generating Knowledge And Spending Time?, and ? together with Martin Hansen ? at Dancehouse Melbourne. She has also collaborated in the making of a mass choreography for the opening ceremony of the first European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan. Nowak is a recipient of the danceWEB scholarship at ImPulsTanz Festival 2014 in Vienna.
Katarzyna Sitarz
Per-sona listens attentively to the sound of the voice, to its materiality and intangibility. It creates time and space to hear out the sculptural aspect of the voice, which constantly evades meaning and resonates on the plane of affects and emotions. Per-sona builds a sonic signature of the body and diffuses it only to create a different one, that pervades all the preceding ones. The boundaries between what remains inside and outside blur. The voice is a presence that extends beyond the bodily being, penetrates spaces and opens up opportunities to resound together with other voices. It is a force that unites sensuality and intimacy; dynamics echoing ugliness, pleasures, beauty or sanity, echoing what?s familiar and alien. Per-sona continually pulsates between the voice of the body and the body of the voice, between the (in)visible and the (in)audible.
choreography and performance: Katarzyna Sitarz
dramaturgy: Eleonora Zdebiak
sound consultation: Wojciech Urbański
artistic coaching: Bush Hartshorn
technical realization and lights: Łukasz Kędzierski
production: Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk in the frame of Solo Projekt Plus 2016
with support of: Kooperatywa Łaźnia, Fundacja Witryna Kultury w Szczecinie
premiere: 10 December 2016, Studio Słodownia +3, Old Brewery, Poznań
Podziękowania dla uczestników sesji feedbackowych za cenne uwagi i spostrzeżenia, wspaniałej ekipy Art Stations Foundation oraz tych wszystkich, którzy wspierali i inspirowali mnie w procesie twórczym.
Special thanks to the participants of the feedback sessions for their useful comments and input, wonderful crew of Art Stations Foundation and all those who supported and inspired me along the way.
Katarzyna Sitarz is a freelance dancer, performer, choreographer. Fascinated by the multi-layered (un)consciousness of the body she travels through sensory, polyphonic worlds, seeking for ephemeral vocal phenomena. She deepens the secrets of traditional singing, in particular the Slavic white voice, which she also explores in her performative activities. The essence of presence and collectivism is a subject of her intense preoccupation. Sitarz regularly creates and performs in Europe, also visiting Brazil, Argentina, USA, Canada and Asia. Thanks to the Tanja Liedtke Fellowship she travelled to Australia to conduct her artistic research for ?home project? and collaborate with Lucy Guerin. Nominated for The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative she had the pleasure to work with Trisha Brown. A recipient of an Artistic Scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and Education in The Netherlands and Poland as well as danceWEB 2010 at the ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna, Sitarz received awards at the 11thInternational Solo Dance Theater Festival in Stuttgart and the 8th Solo International Festival in Budapest. She studied Slavic Philology at the University of Wrocław, Poland and Dance and Choreography at Codarts/Rotterdam Dance Academy, Holland. She participated in the first edition of an Intensive Training in Experimental Physical Performance ?SMASH Berlin.
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Solo Project Plus 2016
Solo Project was established in 2006 by the Art Stations Foundation as the first residency program in Poland to support Polish dance makers in their search for individual artistic language. The programme is dedicated to choreographers at the beginning of their careers, whose interests go beyond traditionally understood ?dance theatre?. The main focus of the project is on creative process and artistic experimentation, inviting residents to undertake reflection on, and to raise a discussion around, the art of choreography, in combination with the search for new ways of its expression. The motto of the project comes from the English choreographer Jonathan Burrows: ?One needs two legs, two hands and, most of all, a head to create a dance?. The motto is intedned to encourage young artists to take artistic risks and directing their focus into (self) reflection and constant questioning of their individual creative strategies and stances.
The programmer has supported 25 artists to date through production, promotion and essential artistic support (coaching). In 2014 we suspended the project (due to the intense 10th anniversary season of the Art Stations Foundation) and used this opportunity for an in depth evaluation of, and a discussion on, the modes of its development and continuation in the future. We are aware that 8 years of our continuous promotion of individual (solo) works has played a big part in the recent bloom of solo performances in Poland. At the same time we strongly believe that the choice of the solo form should always be first of all an artistic decision (rather than inspired and forced as the sole available option within the programme). Therefore, upon picking up the project in 2015, we decided to expandthe programme to include applications proposing duo and trio performances, hence contributing to the emergence of Solo Project Plus.
Artistic coach: Bush Hartshorn
My approach to coaching is based on Relational Dynamics, utilizing the principles of NVC (non-violent communication) and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). As a Coach I see the Coachee as being highly resourceful and they will already hold most of the answers. Through a series of questions and reflecting back the answers we aim to reach realistic and ?owned? decisions that facilitate the artist to make their best work. In addition I also offer myself as a sounding board for artistic ideas the artist may want to share. I feel it is important to stress that the artist/coachee leads the discussion into the areas that they want to explore. I am very excited and intrigued to see the results of our conversations this year.?
Bush Hartshorn (UK) graduated from the Dartington College of Arts in 1982 with a degree in Theatre Language. From that time onwards Bush has pursued a career as a community artist, dramaturge, performer, theatre programmer and artistic director in UK, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark. He is currently Head of Artist Development at Dance Base, Edinburgh and also Dance Director for Teatro Sardegna in Cagliari, Sardinia. In 2009 he qualified as a coach in Relational Dynamics which has informed his work in mentoring dance artists. Since January 2015 Bush has been mentoring/coaching artists in Australia, Cyprus, UK, Spain, Czech Republic, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Poland. This has all been underpinned by a lifelong commitment to Liverpool Football Club.
