Warsaw: 14th Body/Mind Festival begins this Saturday

On Saturday, 26 September, Warsaw will host the 14^th edition of the Body/Mind Festival, which will last until 1 October and shift between two Warsaw theatres ? Teatr Studio and Teatr Powszechny. This year sees the change of the festival?s name, which will no longer include its ?contemporary dance? subtitle. As Edyta Kozak, Director of the Festival, explains, the organizers find dance to be an insufficient label, although it was dance itself that facilitated the festival?s expansion. The notion has become much more voluminous and increasingly fused with other fields of art and science. The slogan for this year?s edition is ?the unseen?: another paradox given that we usually associate dance with a spectacle. Still, this edition is characteristically intimate and interactive, since the audience will be able to decide the form of their interaction with artists. In the case of this weekend?s presentation of David Weber-Krebs?s Tonight, lights out, the performance will last until all lights go out, not only underscoring the experience of darkness but also offering a crash-course in democracy, decision-making, and joint responsibility.

SexyMF is an installation by the Portuguese duo (Ana Borralho and Jo?o Galante) who may be recalled from last year?s edition (they presented a social project/performance Atlas Warszawa). The audience will be able to choose their level of reception: they may both gaze at and be gazed at by the naked performers. The task of those who turned into artists will be to turn what can?t be seen into a visible phenomenon, in which the body and its sexual features will be juxtaposed with a seemingly discordant face (each participant will be wearing make-up, the application of which will last about an hour), referring to the hermaphrodite figure. As noticed by Kozak, even though pornography is no longer a taboo, the body and eroticism still belong in the category. Ana Borralho?s work tries to inspect this issue, noticing that we have still less time to look into our naked bodies, be with them, with ourselves, paradoxically hiding what we all have in common. Thus, forgetting that nakedness is our natural state, we fail to convey the fact in the processes of socialisation and cultural conditioning of our children, likewise failing to commit this task to the oft-conservative educational institutions, although there are many matters more shameful than nakedness. The Portuguese artists recounted the process of working on sexyMF in various countries. Nakedness is usually reached gradually, once the participants become relaxed, but the performance avoids the challenging rite of passage from being dressed to being naked, for the actors are naked from the beginning, hence undergoing a completely different experience. The workshop also functions as an audition, acting therapeutically not only when it comes to nakedness but also acceptance and the lack of it, for the artists do not follow popular canons of beauty, trying instead to demonstrate the diversity of physical features.

TORDRE by French choreographer and documentary director Rachid Ouramdane is based on the personalities, experience, and physicality of two dancers (Annie Hanauer, Lora Juodkaite). A visual and poetic performance, it magnifies two female portraits co-created by the dancers. Interestingly, TORDRE mixes music, movement and fine arts.

The Festival will also include the Warsaw premiere of Collective Jumps, a production by the Poznań-based Art Stations Foundation directed by the Berlin choreographer Isabelle Schad and starring 18 Polish dancers and performers. The issue of intimacy is visible in the process of work, in which the author uses the somatic technique of Body-Mind Centering? based on the internal sensations of dancers received by various senses and processed into shapes. Schad takes on the challenge of blending several dancing personalities and individualities into a coherent group. A project on a rare scale in Polish contemporary dance, the presentation of Schad?s production in Warsaw is supported by the local Goethe-Institut which is currently celebrating its 25 anniversary.

Karol Tymiński, an artist of the aapap network supported by the Body/Mind foundation for many years, will present his premiere work on the exploration of the confines of corporeality titled This is a musical, in which he proposes a different type of a relation between the body and its surrounding, where the body acts as a producer of sounds.

Warsaw-based choreographers Iza Szostak and Ramona Nagabczyńska will present their works in progress. Szostak has been dealing with handicraft professions (among others), in which the body plays an important role. This time, she devotes her project to the interaction between the body and an excavator, which she treats as an extension of the flesh (Balet koparyczny [Excavator ballet]). Nagabczyńska?s performance, produced in collaboration with the students of the Warsaw Dance Department, will be a show created in front of the audience, one based on actions words (verbs).

Independent Hungarian choreographer Csaba Molnar will present a special performance which the Director of the Festival dubbed ?a music and dance feast?. Significantly, Molnar incorporates other fields of art (music, fine arts) in his project, thus enriching its dance aspects.

The Festival will be accompanied by a meeting of Open Latitudes network partners. For several years, the network has explored the current trends in European dance whose forms are becoming increasingly more hybrid and challenging to define.

Watch the TRAILER

The festival’s programme:

PERFORMANCES

Ana Borralho & Jo?o Galante, Portugal: sexyMF

26 September | 7 pm?22.00 | Studio Theatre ? foyer

David Weber-Krebs, Belgium: Tonight, lights out!

26 September | 8 pm | duration: 50 minutes | Studio Theatre ? Malarnia

27 September | 16.00 | duration: 50 minutes | Studio Theatre ? Malarnia

Rachid Ouramdane, France: TORDRE

27 September | 18.00 | duration: 75 minutes | Studio Theatre ? Duża Scena

Karol Tymiński, Poland: This is a musical

30 September & 1 October | 7 pm | duration: 40 minutes | Powszechny Theatre ? Mała Scena