Photo: A. Perc.
On 24 September 2016 at 7 pm, Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute in Warsaw (1 Jazdów Street) invites to an intuitive performance inspired by Zbigniew Beksiński?s paintings. Performers: Sylwia Hanff (Limen Butoh) and Robert Jędrzejewski (live and electronic music, videoscore).
I demand from image the same as from music: to put me in a state of ecstasy by using neither what was painted nor how it was painted, but rather by using something intangible, something that I am trying to find in my heart or under my eyelids, something I am not able to name myself.
Zdzisław Beksiński
From the artists:
Zdzisław Beksiński?s paintings are most often perceived as filled with dark visions and the air of horror. Some other aspects of his art remain unnoticed. What we would like to do is to overcome the stereotypical view of Beksiński?s art and discover the unappreciated mystical elements of his works, the spiritual journey, noticeable especially in the second half of his career. Similarly to butoh artists, Beksiński has chosen a completely individual creativity path, going against evem the avant-garde movements and trends in modern art.
What is extremely interesting for us, butoh dancers, is the presence of transgression and transformation of the body in his art, in particular, the relationship between body and space. The relation between Beksiński?s paintings and music will be yet another subject of our artistic discovery: the tangent points in the architectonic of a musical piece and a painting. ?The already painted is of little significance to me. What I find important is how it functions in the sense of sound, form and the sound of colour in no other than that particular place. So I use shape for, let?s call it, music purposes.? And that was the inspiration for our idea to choose the language of modern music and videoscores created by Robert Jędrzejewski.
Costumes: Sylwia Hanff, Joan Laage, Małgorzata Chrust
Installation: Joanna Pielat-Rusinkiewicz
Butoh ? a countercultural form of modern dance that originated in Japan in the end of of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. It rejects all traditional art, not only the Japanese one. It was inspired by expressionism, Antonin Artaud?s Theatre of Cruelty, Fredrich Nietzsche?s philosophy, as well as George Bataille?s and Jean Genet?s works. It invokes the folk ugliness aesthetics. It is a ritual, enabling to release inner energy and exploring the dark corners of subconsciousness. Butoh deliberately demonstrates the areas of life which have been forbidden until now. It is a dance whose heart is in a developed perception of a body freed from automatic daily activities. Butoh seeks authenticity in body, its mysterious beauty. Butoh wants the body to be open to its ego and become a unity with the universe in its eternal cycle of life and death. Butoh is finally a state of unity between the mind and the body enabling for a subtle feeling of the inner and the outside world; it is a pure experience of the changing states of existence. A butoh dancer exists on the verges of time and opens the space where the invisible is revealed.
Sylwia Hanff is a butoh pioneer in Poland and one of the most widely recognized Polish butoh dancers. She studied under the greatest masters (Ko Murobushi, Daisuke Yashimoto, Carlotta Ikeda, Yoshito Ohno oraz Atsushi Takenouchi, Tadashi Endo, Ken Mai, Kan Katsura and others). Sylwia is a physical theatre performer, an instructor of dance improvisation and body symbolism, yoga and meditation. She learnt modern and oriental dance during many international festivals and workshops in Poland, Germany and the UK. She has taken part in a number of dancing projects. Sylwia was an actress in the Warsaw Mime Theatre, and worked with the National Theatre and National Opera. She cooperated with physical and experimental theatres. A holder of an M.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Warsaw, Sylwia is also a culture a manager ? she has been organising butoh events for many years and for more than ten years she has been organising workshops on body and meditation in movement. The founder of Limen Butoh Theatre in 2002, she has created more than a dozen original solo and group performances, as well as a number of etudes and improvisations. She is featured in The Body Revolving Stage. New Dance in New Poland, by Jadwiga Majewska (2012) and in Present with the Body. The Technique of Polish Butoh Dancers by Magdalena Zamorska (2014). Sylwia also received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
FB https://www.facebook.com/limenbutoh
Robert Jędrzejewski is a cello player, composer, intuitive musician, and creative improviser.He studied cello under Prof. Zdzisław Łapiński at the Cracow Music Academy, and composition under Prof. Bogusław Schaeffer. He took courses in contemporary music performance and composition in Cracow, Stuttgart, Avignon (IRCAM), and Gdańsk (under the supervision of professor A. Kaczyński). Robert received a scholarship from the Płock Foundation. He cooperates with the Performer Theatre, organises the Festival of Intuitive Arts and he co-founded SALULUEKIP, a duet of improvising composers (which he creates with Anna Jędrzejewska). He acts on the border of intuitive, computer, electronic music and audio-art with concerts accompanied by performances or video-art. He draws from contemporary music, building his own structures resulting in a peculiar musical language. Teetering between artistic concept and intuition is the essence of his performances. Currently, he is involved in the Video Partytura (Videoscore) project ? an intuitive inspiration for the composer and a new point of view for the audience. Since 2014, he has been a PhD student at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music.
Tickets:
PLN 20 (adults), PLN 15 (concession)
or on ewejsciowki.pl.
Tickets also available in PROSPERO bookstore.
Beksiński_Butoh project is co-financed by the City of Warsaw.
