Chorea in Los Angeles – Rosanna Gamson/World Wide’s Tov

For three weeks in January and March, 2010, Chorea was working and developing creative cooperation with Rosanna Gamson/World Wide’s, that started after International Theater Workshop – Body, Voice, Rhythm conducted by Chorea in Łódź 2009. The performance – Tov (meaning “good”) – was choreographed and directed by Los Angeles-based artist Rosanna Gamson, Tov features a vocal score created by Chorea and sets and lights designed by Christopher Kuhl. Developed in the US and Poland with artists from both countries, Tov premiere was with a bi-national cast at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater Thursday, March 18, 2010 through Saturday, March 27, 2010.

Deftly weaving together intense physical movement, spoken word, vocal music, and the “theater laboratory” ensemble techniques originated by Jerzy Grotowski, Rosanna Gamson stages a profusely evocative dance drama around the story of the tarpan – an extinct species of Eurasian wild horse that was genetically “reassembled” in the 1930s through back-breeding of domestic horses. The Los Angeles choreographer braids this allegory of regeneration with reflections on the history of her own Polish-Jewish ancestors, horse traders from Szczecin, and the fate of Polish Jewry. Tov takes its title from “Gamzu l’tovah” (“This too is for the good”), a favorite saying of one of Gamson’s forebears, Talmudic scholar Nachum ish Gamzu, who found God’s hand even in tragedy. The full-evening work features a cast of fourteen American and three Polish performers, with text spoken and sung in Hebrew, Polish, English, Yiddish, Bulgarian and German.

Beyond its ambitious globalism, Tov was recognizably made in Los Angeles. It carried the local mellowness of spirit and pacing. It offered solace in L.A.-style multiculturalism. Astonishingly, for a piece evoking the Holocaust, it was kind-spirited. Indeed, Tov was good. So, mazel tov!

Debra Levine, Los Angeles Times

RETRO/PER/SPEKTYWY

CHOREA. Theatre Festival. Łódź 2010

august 13 – 21

RETRO/PER/SPEKTYWY: CHOREA – Theatre Festival Łódź 2010 is designed as a space for confrontation of the innovative theater research, a platform for the workshop meetings and a point of discussions concerning the changes in the 21st century’s theater.

August 13-21, 2010, in postindustrial spaces of Lodz, the spectators will be allowed to see the review of the most important Chorea’s performances and the newest creations/achievements of the invited groups.

5 years of the Theater Chorea existence is a perfect moment for the first RETRO/PER/SPECTIVE of its artistic, research and educational activity and the presentation of two premiers: GROTOWSKI- próba odwrotu directed by Tomasz Rodowicz and Antyk/Trans/Formation in modern ethno-jazz interpretation.

The first edition of the Festival will be held within the framework of the two theatrical tryptich showing the tension that is created on the clash of the tradition and contemporarlity

1. Sophocles – Euripides – Aristophanes (Antigone, dir. Dorota Porowska,  The Songs of Euripides, dir. Tomasz Rodowicz,  After the birds, dir. Jim Ennis, Jessica Cohen, Tomasz Rodowicz)
2. Herbert – Grotowski – Wyspiański (Playing Mr Cogito, dir. Tomasz Rodowicz, GROTOWSKI – próba odwrotu dir .Tomasz Rodowicz, premiere Odpoczywanie, dir. Paweł Passini)

In the frames of the Festival there will be also shown the performances of cooperating and fellow theaters. Our guests will be: neTTheater, Studium Teatralne form Warsaw, KANA Theater form Szczecin and Trupa Czango.

Creating RETRO/PER/SPECTIVES we are establishing new, periodical, cultural event, which next editions, expanded by the presence of eminent, international theatre groups. It will break, every second year, the anachronistic division between the theater of word, movement and music, thus regaining its undividable triple unity – CHOREA – the vital foundation of the theater.

In the perspective of our Festival CHOREA is not a specific name, but a description of the idea opening new spaces for the contemporary theater and determining new challenges for the actor – a storyteller, dancer, singer, as well as for the director, who should be a dramatist, choreographer and composer at the same moment.

We aim for RETRO/PER/SPEKTYWY: CHOREA Festiwal Teatralny Łódź 2010 to become a permanent point of reference on the theatrical map of Poland and to contribute as an important element of Lodz’s application for the title of European Capital of Culture 2016.

Tomasz Rodowicz
The Artistic Director