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“Oratorium Dance Project”

How to talk with children about the death?

We invite children, their parents and grandparents to a special meeting.

Please, bring photos and mementos of your loved ones, who passed away.

Together we will tell the stories about our ancestors.

We will also draw our family trees, so recall the names of those who were here before you.

Director: Tomasz Rodowicz

Music: Tomasz Krzyżanowski

Choreography: CHOREA

Stage design: Paweł Korbus, Tomasz Rodowicz

Light: Tomasz Krukowski

Cast: Joanna Chmielecka, Julia Jakubowska, Małgorzata Lipczyńska, Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, Piotr Grabowski, Paweł Korbus, Tomasz Rodowicz

Premiere date: Friday, 13.08.2010 (Festival Opening); Friday, 20.08.2010, Factory of Art

It doesn’t matter that it’s Grotowski. I doesn’t matter that it’s THIS Grotowski, about whom academic papers are written, to whom institutes and dozens of discussions during the jubilee Year of Grotowski 2009 are devoted. It’s important that he made the same mistakes, had moments of weakness and used to overcome crisis in order to fall into another one. Six young actors from Chorea theatre met someone they could talk to. Just because he never was a mysterious legend. He tormented himself and other people. Used to discover something and quickly give it up, open something and shut it down with disappointment or nonchalance. “Grotowski – the attempt to retreat” is a personal play for Chorea which celebrates its fifth anniversary. It contains many confessions verging on exhibitionism. A lot of physical extremism, fighting with the body, the desperate search for communication through movement. The young artists struggle with one another, use quotes from Grotowski’s works to talk about their own maladjustment. The most intimate interlude is constituted by the recollections of Tomasz Rodowicz, a several decades older director, who talks about a night once spent with Grotowski in a hospital in Chicago. It was a crucial moment, a moment of questioning the certainties, throwing off the balance. A moment which, if it happens, never ceases to exist. Grotowski lived in such a moment of a constant questioning. Rodowicz tried to reject this destabilizing experience for years. What will 20-year-old actors do with their turning points? (Joanna Derkaczew, ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’)

Creole Performance Cycle > Poland / Step 4
Balletto Civile with the support of POS, AHE, made with dancers from CHOREA Theatre.

Direction and Choreography Alessandro Berti, Michela Lucenti, Emanuela Serra, Maurizio Camilli
Artists/Interpretation Iga Załęczna, Julia Jakubowska, Łucja Herszkowicz, Łukasz Michalak, Maurizio Camilli
Video and photo Daniela Neri

“It’s not true that man is an animal. Even if he rolls around the sand, he doesn’t do that like an animal, he always watches out to see if someone is observing him. Maybe man is an animal that went mad.”

PLAYING IDENTITIES

The project “Playing Identities. Migration, Creolisation, Creation, funded with the support from EU Culture Programme 2007-2013, aims to interpret migration phenomena as instances of creolisation.

Coordinated by the Santa Chiara Graduate School of Siena University and involving a wide international partnership, the original aspect of this project stands in the intuition of borrowing Glissant’s poetical vision of creolisation and to apply it to two distinct processes of creation.

On one side we choose Performing Arts, namely theatre, in order to produce a play in which artists from diverse theatrical backgrounds are forced to the negotiation of expressive codes, practices and meanings.

On the other side, we choose to engage with an interdisciplinary research in the Social Sciences and Humanities in order to develop new conceptual tools and an integrated framework for the analysis of migration phenomena, by seeking a deep exchange among disciplines and researchers with diverse theoretical and methodological backgrounds.

Creole Performance Cycle

One of the original aspect of the project is the choice to give attention not to the artistic object as such, to its intrinsic qualities as they appear during its performance, but rather to investigate and to analyse the process of its creation and its development. What, for us, is more fascinating and interesting, thus, is the movement through which the original project, “L’Ala” (“The Wing”), winner of the Creole Performance Prize, becomes something else in the very moment when it encounters the different backgrounds and needs of the various theatrical companies which Balletto Civile meets at every different step.

The importance of every step, therefore, doesn’t lie in the quality of a performance understood as a final product of a work, but rather is found in the occasion given to us of having access to the laboratory where it is produced, to the encounter/conflict between different instances and cultural backgrounds. For this reason, the Creole Performance Diary (unfortunately available only in Italian), where words and images concur in  telling the process of creation of each performance, is a fundamental tool in order to achieve the artistic and theoretical objectives of the project.

Elina Toneva was born in Sofia (Bulgaria). Graduated from Graphic Design Faculty in the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz. Instructor of Sport and Recreation in Academy of Physical Education in Poznan. Instructor of stage movement and singing in Film School in Lodz. Instructor of Krav Maga – Israel self-defense and combat system. Training expert of marshal arts, combat and self-defense systems. One of the founders of “Ancient Orchestra” – musical project in Center of Theatre Practices ‘Gardzienice’. Member of CHOREA Theatre since 2004. One of the leaders in CHOREA’s educational and workshop programme. Instructor of traditional Balkan vocal and dance techniques. Experianced in leading fisical, vocal, and dance workshops for actors, musicians, dancers and theatre instructors all over the world. Theatre workshop leader, physical theatre training specialist, vocalist, actress.

Conducted extensive research in the field of traditional music, folklore and rituals in Bulgaria and searched for the oldest surviving examples of epic songs in the living tradition. Specialist in the traditional Bulgarian folk music, knows folk songs from different regions of Bulgaria with a particular penchant for the songs from Rhodope Mountains.

The workshop offers:

Fisical training, voice and rhythmic exercises. Working with halftones, traditional ornaments, rhythms and harmonies. Learning monophonic and polyphonic songs from different regions of Bulgaria. Learning traditional, ritual bulgarian dances.

Director: Tomasz Rodowicz

Music: Tomasz Krzyżanowski

Choreography: CHOREA

Stage design: Paweł Korbus, Tomasz Rodowicz

Light: Tomasz Krukowski

Cast: Joanna Chmielecka, Julia Jakubowska, Małgorzata Lipczyńska, Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, Piotr Grabowski, Paweł Korbus, Tomasz Rodowicz

Premiere date: Friday, 13.08.2010 (Festival Opening); Friday, 20.08.2010, Factory of Art

This project is both exciting and risky: ‘Jerzy Grotowski – the greatest revolutionary of the 20^th century theatre’. I am coming back to Grotowski after so many years partly as a result of my protest against what has been done to this person and partly because I feel I owe him something – as a human being, but most of all as an artist. Having seen his Apocalypsis cum figuris in 1974, I decided I have to do theatre – with no possibility of retreat. Today I feel I need to confront his practical achievements, his thoughts related to the theatre, man and religion. I do not want to achieve it through more recollections, conferences or seminars but through the practical experience of people who want to deal with theatre and need to know if they are somehow related to him or not. Is this a closed door or maybe there is a scratch, a mark, anxiety, taint and heritage to be confronted in order to see if you are worth it or if you should stand up to it and reject it?

‘Touch the Theatre’ Project in Chorea Theatre

‘International Theatre Day’ celebrations in Łodz called - ‘Touch the Theatre ‘ – are the only theater feast in Poland which (for the second time) integrates such a broad creative environment of Lodz’s cultural institutions, associated not only with the theater, but with wider social and cultural life of the city. ‘Touch the Theatre’ is a pioneer initiative across the country.

We must pay attention to the uniqueness of the project, based on community character and on dynamic growth potential. ‘Touch the Theatre’ is organized with a clear need to manifest the diversity of artistic activities created in Lodz, and the desire to integrate the artistic community of Lodz. Organizers break stereotypes in the perception of the theater, by showing associations with various domains of the theater with social life (psychology, medicine, politics, street-art, pop-culture, television, education) and its strong impact on daily life. ‘Touch the Theatre’ has created a new cultural tradition of Lodz.

Cultural Policy in Europe creates changes in the Polish culture, in its organizations and structures. It seems that community actions are a very distinctive features of these changes. Strong local creative environment automatically creates new opportunities for cooperation and to take initiatives on a national and international scale, and to create a coherent local (recognizable in the country) cultural policy, and becomes a real field fof inspiration and exchange of experiences, rather than a competition.
‘Touch the Theatre’ SCHEDULE:

friday 25.03

10:00-11:30 – „Morning Actors Training”, Factory of Art, CHOREA Theatre, lead by: CHOREA
18:00 – “Grotowski- an attempt to retreat”, dir. Tomasz Rodowicz, Teatr Nowy
20:15 – “Grotowski- an attempt to retreat”, dir. Tomasz Rodowicz, Teatr Nowy

saturday 26.03

10:00-11:30 – „Morning Actors Training”, Factory of Art, CHOREA Theatre, lead by: CHOREA
11:00 – happening on a.Lipowa Street, “Herbert on Lipowa Street”, lead by: CHOREA
12:30-14:30 – „Do-It-Yourself – Theatre Workshop”, Factory of Art, CHOREA Theatre, lead by: Paweł Korbus (CHOREA)
17:00-19:00 – „Storry Telling Workshop”, lead by: Pola Amber (CHOREA)
20:00 – “Plaing Mr. Cogito”, dir. Tomasz Rodowicz, Factory of Art, CHOREA Theatre
The performance will be broadcasted live on the Internet.

Links: www.chorea.com.pl i www.nettheatre.pl

sunday 27.03

10:00-11:30 – „Morning Actors Training”, Factory of Art, CHOREA Theatre, lead by: CHOREA
12:30-14:30 – „Do-It-Yourself – Theatre Workshop”, Factory of Art, CHOREA Theatre, lead by: Paweł Korbus (CHOREA)
15:30-19:00 – „Storry Telling Workshop”, Factory of Art, CHOREA Theatre, lead by: Michał Malinowski
19:00 – “Cosmic Boys” concert, Factory of Art, CHOREA Theatre

FREE ENTRANCE at all events!

director: Mateusz Przyłęcki
stage design: Matylda Kotlińska
costumes: Wanda Kowalska
music: Piotr Klimek
stage movement: Iga Załęczna
lights: BARY
cast: Żaneta Małkowska, Anna Sztuder- Mieszek, Aleksandra Wojtysiak, Ewa Wróblewska, Łukasz Bzura, Piotr Szejn, Krzysztof Ciesielski, Mariusz Olbiński,Włodzimierz Twardowski

The performance was created with participation of CHOREA actors: Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, Julia Jakubowska, Mateusz Łapka, Dominika Jarosz

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

17-21.11.2009

DNA (Development of New Art) Residency in Łódź

Between 17th and 21st of November 2009 took place an international theatre residency in Łódź (Poland), co-organised by the Chorea Theatre Association and was based on Chorea’s working methods.

Twenty participants from Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia came for five days to Łódź to create one group and to learn how to build up the musicality, dynamism and energy of this group. The hard and demanding training was concentrated on the basics of working with a partner and the space, mutual attention, assurance, body consciousness, group consciousness and interaction with a partner. Actors, dancers, directors, students had a chance to know and examine the principle of the Chorea theatre, which is simultaneous work with the body, voice and rhythm.

Apart from the training the program of the residency included:

• an open for public meeting and discussion about the DNA project as an example of international cooperation in the field of theatre,
• a special presentation of the Chorea’s work on ancient material,
• presentation of Gry (w) Pana Cogito, Chorea’s newest performance.

The final phase of the residency was an open presentation of the participants’ work. It consisted on the movement structures elaborated by participants combined with ancient Greek songs and choreography, as well as with rhythmic work on the contemporary poems of Zbigniew Herbert.

More about the project at: www.dna-project.eu