Creators: CHOREA Theatre
Direction: Dorota Porowska, Elżbieta Rojek
Music: Tomasz Rodowicz
Choreography: CHOREA Theatre
Light: Anna Sujka, Sławomir Bergański, Tomasz Krukowski
Stage set: Andrzej Ćwiek
Costumes: Agata Rojek
Cast: Anna Bogdanowicz, Wioletta Gwóźdź, Małgorzata Jabłońska, Dominika Krzyżanowska Gorzkiewicz, Małgorzata Lipczyńska, Dorota Porowska, Elżbieta Rojek, Ewa Sawicka, Izabela Śliwa, Ewa Sawicka, Katarzyna Tadeusz, Elina Toneva, Iga Załęczna, Adam Biedrzycki, Hubert Domański, Paweł Korbus, Tomasz Krzyżanowski, Maciej Maciaszek, Grzegorz Marcinek, Tomasz Rodowicz
Premiere: 01.10.2004, Nałęczów
The first performance of the CHOREA Theatre Association has been created as a result of close cooperation between the Tańce Labiryntu (Labyrinth Dances) group and Orkiestra Antyczna (Ancient Orchestra). Mikołaj Szymański, PhD, provided philological aid, and his melorecited ancient texts have become a great pillar of support for our chorea way of understanding the theatre. Tezeusz w labiryncie (Theseus in the Labyrinth) is a performance combining choreography, music and words: a group of dancers-singers and actors-musicians presents the myth of Theseus by means of choreography created on the basis of the ancient iconography (vases, reliefs, mosaics, artefacts found on Crete) and music inspired by music relics, ancient literature (Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos, Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Bacchylides’ dithyrambs) and the living tradition of the modern Balkan folk culture.
Modern people are split in their creative activity, as well as in their own specialised actions. They separated the language from the body, and their expressions are not accompanied by singing anymore. Our work based on ancient concept of a triad – choreia (which was the basis of the Ancient Theatre but also were a model of harmonious life) is meant to result in reconnection of these separated motifs. The choice of stories we want to tell is not accidental. Roaming a labyrinth means going inside, to the very core, where the monster awaits and we have to struggle with it to keep our lives and regain freedom. Depicting adventures, risks and fights, the myth of Theseus, a youngster who came to Crete to go through initiation rites in the cradle of European culture, shows the process of reaching one’s own interior, struggling with the dark side of ‘me’ and the integration of a person-microworld. Theseus’ final goal is to find his own identity. Thus, the subject of the performance is the process of individuation and integrating an individual in all its aspects, both physical and mental. It is, in a way, a story about us, theatre creators, as it was a labyrinth test, or a rite of initiation we had to go through in order to find our individual language and artistic identity.
