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’)

We invite everyone, regardless of the level of advancement or age, to join the acroyoga community. By this workshop we want to create a safe place to explore trust in contact with a partner and simply have fun.

Almuth Kramer (Germany, Berlin) – a teacher of acroyoga (BYV), a masseuse and a clown, studied theater studies in Berlin and Buenos Aires.

Marta Jurkowska (Poland) – began her  first practice of acroyoga in Goa, became an acroyoga teacher in January 2010, practices in Berlin with various yoga and acroyoga teachers and acrobats.

Directors: Jessica Cohen, Jim Ennis, Tomasz Rodowicz

Music: Maciej Rychły

Choreography: Jessica Cohen, Jim Ennis, Suzanne Firth, Cai Tomos, CHOREA

Light: Gerard Tyler, Tomasz Krukowski

Cast: Dominika Krzyżanowska/Joanna Chmielecka, Malgorzata Lipczyńska, Dorota Porowska, Izabela Śliwa, Elina Toneva, Iga Załęczna, Adam Biedrzycki, Hubert Domański, Pawel Korbus, Tomasz Krzyżanowski/Kuba Pałys, Maciej Maciaszek, Sean Palmer, Tomasz Rodowicz

Premiere location: Współczesny Theatre (Wrocław), Nowy Praga Theatre (Warsaw)

Premiere date: 09-14. 12. 2005

After the Birds is the second part of the triptych created by CHOREA and Earthfall. It is a result of another international theatrical project which originated in Cardiff (Wales) in December 2005. Using two absolutely different aesthetics and working methods, the two groups jointly created a brand new language on the border of genres and styles. CHOREA and Earthfall confront ancient Greek choral songs with modern music, urban space choreography and fears of the modern world.

We have attempted to answer the question: what is left after Aristophanes’ The Birds, ancient Greeks and their culture, and what do we have in common with them? We must remember that Athens in Aristophanes’ times went through devastating wars with Sparta, collapsing democracy, political crises, plots and power struggles among different political factions. Social and religious values started to crumble. In such circumstances, there always appear some guides to a brave new world which may be created on the ruins of the old one thanks to utopian ideas, populist slogans, manipulations and operating exactly between the ones who succeeded and the ones who lost. Both these groups cannot exist without one another, so, in the areas where their paths cross, the power belonging to the first group and the dreams belonging to the second one must be taken away. Everything must be surrounded by a wall, guards must be employed and strangers must be driven away, as it happened in Cloud Cuckoo Land – the Aristophanes’ ideal new state. But from behind the tall walls, gods look like corrupted idiots, and people look like dwarfs deprived of dreams. Can a paradise on Earth be built only behind barbed-wire fences; do all world healing visions become equally bitter and dangerous when we start putting them into practice? During the play performed in a post-communist state, in the global terrorism era, we pose these questions not only to Aristophanes…

Performances will be presented in terms of Polish Presidency in UE 2011.

In October 2011 we begin to work on the Oratorium Dance Project – Chorea Lodz 2011.

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?

I started working on this project with people who, because of their age, had no contact with Grotowski, his para-theatrical and theatrical practice, the ‘art as a vehicle’ period, his actors or anyone who worked with him. What they knew about him is just as much as an average young person does – almost nothing. In most cases, they kept their distance. It was more of a moderate interest than fascination. For them, this man, who turned the world theatre upside down, was a strange, historical and archived cultural figure. It was a perfect starting point. Those people were ready, without any ideology or bias, to start checking who or what he was for them. Each actor/performer tried finding an answer to a question which was important to them, e.g. how does Grotowski’s image of an actor relate to the pro-egocentric education provided by modern theatre schools? Can you ‘refer’ to Grotowski while looking for your own personal identity? To what extent are his rules valid in a mental asylum? Can you create theatre/performance without wanting to be an actor? Most probably, any other group of people would ask different questions.

Through this project, I would like to find out if there is anything in his heritage which is meaningful for these young people. If that is the case, it must be confronted with their thinking about themselves, life, theatre and art, and they will face it themselves. My role is only to walk among them and tell them if I believe or not. Sometimes, I will add something, but I will not exaggerate, I promise.

Tomasz Rodowicz

John Moran – an American composer, author and choreographer. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1965, a protégé of composer Philip Glass. He began his career with the debut of his first opera in 1989. His works as a composer and theater artist are unusual. These works are known for specific interaction between sound and movement. Over the last 2 decades, his work has featured performers such as Uma Thurman, Allen Ginsberg, Julia Stiles, and Iggy Pop, at venues like Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, American Repertory Theater, New York Shakespeare Festival / Public Theater and many more internationally. The New York Times frequently referred to Moran as “one of the leading vanguards of American music-theater.”

Between 18 – 22 of September in Minsk (Belarus) CHOREA will lead theater workshops ‘Voice, body and movement in space’, in terms of International Theatre Zone: Poland – Belarus, project organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.

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’)