PRO Dance Theatre
PRO Dance Theatre – a contemporary dance group founded by Katarzyna Matryka and Katarzyna Grambo, for many years PRO’s leaders and choreographers. Since 1998 the group has produced more than 10 performances. All of them featured Magdalena Paszkiewicz, dancer and choreographer who since 2007 has taken over, together with Justyna Sobieraj-Bednarek, leadership of the group. Since 2004 the group has worked under the patronage of the theatre section of Łódź Community Centre. Paszkiewicz and Sobieraj-Bednarek are both graduates of the Qualification Course for Contemporary Dance Teachers in Łódź. The latter, apart from dance, writes music for performances and lectures at the Academy of Music (movement composition, rhythmics).
Since 2007, the group has produced several performances, i.e. BorderLine (2007), Mafia (2008) and Roboczogodziny, czyli Kobiecość Krańcowa (2008) as well as the city space project Pracownia Ruchu Otwartego (2010). PRO Dance Theatre won several awards: BorderLine and Roboczogodziny received awards at Łópta Review of Amateur Theatres in Łódź (2007 and 2008, individual award for Magdalena Paszkiewicz) and at the National Review of Naughty Theatre in Teresin, 2009 (award for Roboczogodziny).
Apart from their own performances, the group produces projects with other theatres, mainly from Łódź and the region, e.g. Art. 51, Dziewięćsił Theatre Group, AteTe Academic Dance Theatre (Meandering River).
The founders of the group state that PRO Dance Theatre is a “ Workshop of Open Movement, in which the mind, open for internal and external stimuli, makes the body move. We use contemporary dance technique, improvisation and contact improvisation as well as non-formal movement and gesture. Focusing on development of body consciousness, as well as building relations between actors /dancers, we look for our own language to communicate with the audience.
Everything can be an inspiration for movement: sound, shape, a group or an individual, inexplicable need. A human – every one of us – is an inspiration for the performance – with emotions, a need to relate or a fear of relating, with a willingness to understand the world and stereotypes, with imperfection in humanity”.
