“Rollercoaster” is a programme of modern dance presentations which, for the past seven years, has been organised by Cricoteka and Krakow Dance Theatre. The spectacles, chosen by the curators Paweł Łyskawa and Eryk Makohon, are presented from spring to winter. The theme of the 2024 programme is “Space”, one of the four motion factors, as named by Rudolf von Laban.
There have been many artists with unconventional approaches to space. Theatrical and dance spectacles have been held all around the world. But what if we go back to the starting point and consider how the presence of performers and their motion create space?
We’ll try to find an answer while watching this year’s programme. The post-show talks with the creators, enhanced by reflections on space and how to incorporate it into choreography, will be hosted by Alicja Müller.
The lectures of Dr Joanna Szymajda and Izabela Zawadzka on site-specific projects and performative walks will broaden the context.
Space as a motto of this year’s “Rollercoaster” alludes to Tadeusz Kantor’s art. He used space to shape his works and tried to subdue it. He called space UR-MATERIA, an area that is independent from the creator. He understood it as an expanding matter that can move, stretch, or even spin. Significantly, Kantor was educated as a stage designer. He added a third dimension to his painting by attaching objects to the canvas. As a creator of happenings, he used the streets or spaces on the beach. In theatre, he constructed space completely differently, setting the limits by the worlds of illusion and disillusion.
In the forthcoming edition of “Rollercoaster”, we will look at how space influences choreography and, reciprocally, what form space gives to movement.
In Dominik Więcek’s performance “Glory Game”, space becomes a three-dimensional record of choreography. The scenography directly influences the dancers’ movement and space is deformed by their motion. The spectators become witnesses; they can see how history is recorded on the sand filling the playing field. Paweł Grala chooses another approach in his performance “Thaw”, as it is intimate and inquisitive. The choreographer subordinates the performer to the plasticity of stage compositions and unites her with the costume, contextualising the movement. In Grala’s performance, space becomes a fundamental dramaturgical tool. By contrast, in Krakow Dance Theatre’s “Shakespearean”, space builds illusion. The fragmentation of bodies represents the psychological disintegration of the Shakespearean heroines. The objects used in the performance, together with the visuals and the performers’ bodies, build the architecture of the space, both scenic and imagined. One of the inspirations for the performance was the choreographic work of Aneta Grzeszykowska, an award-winning Polish visual artist. In collaboration with her dancers, she created a surreal image in which the limits of the body disappear. The exhibition of Grzeszykowska’s video works (‘Headache’, ‘Black’, ‘Bolimorfia’), in which the essence is fragmentation, boundary, deformation, and decomposition, will become the context for Makohon’s performance and an opportunity for both artists to meet the audience. The theme of space continues in subsequent Rollercoaster performances. In Ferenc Feher’s choreography “Elevator”, three dancers are trapped in a lift, the smallest space, forced to be close to each other, but with no contact. In ‘Some Things Touch’, set outside the traditional theatre space, the Slovenian choreographer and dancer Lii Ujčič builds an extremely intimate dialogue between the dancers. Space becomes a source of poetics. Inspired by a sense of space limitation, confinement and exclusion comes the performance “Superfluous” by the Slovenian group EN-KNAP.
The Rollercoaster’s space is open, so we invite the artist to participate in two open calls; for a performance presented as part of the programme, and for a residency, which includes production support for the performance. We will publish the details soon.
As part of the programme, there will be a photography and painting exhibition, shown at city bus stops, realised by Kraków-based artist Grzesiek Marta, inscribing the movement of dancing people into the space of a quarry in Józefów, lubelskie Voivodeship.
PROGRAMME:
23 June 2024, 18:30
Lia Ujčič and András Engelmann (Slovenia/Hungary)
Some Things Touch
Lii Ujčič and András Engelmann build an extremely intimate dialogue of the movement in which space becomes the source of poetics.
“Some Things Touch” is an invitation to caress, hold hands, and hug each other, a guide to touching and smiling at other people.
The piece explores the sense of touch and its importance. What’s unique about touch, when set against the other senses, is its mutuality. While we can look without being looked back at, we can’t touch without being touched in return.
Through touch we enter new spaces, often very intimate ones. Touch helps us to overcome boundaries. It connects us to the rest of the world.
By embedding the performance in an outdoor space, which is the theme of the performance, intimacy is juxtaposed with openness, the private with the casual spectator sharing the open public space.
Creation, movement & performance: Lia Ujčič and András Engelmann
Original concept: Lia Ujčič i Vincent Wodrich
Lighting design: Virág Rovó
Music: Rhoda, dné, Elandro
30 June 2024, 18:30
Dominik Więcek
Glory Game
Post-show conversation translated into Polish Sign Language
In Dominik Więcek’s performance “Glory Game”, the space becomes a three-dimensional notation of the choreography. The scenography directly influences the way the dancers move. The performers deform the space with their actions. On the other hand, the spectators become witnesses to the recording of the history of the performance – which is being written on the sand that fills the playing field.
The first modern Olympic Games coincide with the invention of the cinematograph, which completely transformed the way sports are participated in and received. The storytelling in the media starts
to influence how sport competitions are set up. Rules and regulations of the Olympic fields are changed under the gaze of the camera and the tele-participation of the spectator. Movements are edited: slowed down and sped up, replayed in close-ups or expanded by multiple viewpoints. For the spectator, this distorted perception of the games becomes an immersive experience with elements of melodrama.
At the centre of it all is the body, from which the rules of the game constantly demand more and more. Modern sports impose extreme loads on athletes that exceed the biological capacity of the body. Citus – altius – fortius (faster – higher – stronger).
“You say you want to win in Olympia. However, think through what this entails. You must be obedient, follow your diet, deny yourself desserts, exercise at set times, whether it’s hot or cold. You are not allowed to drink cold water or wine when you want. You should put yourself in the hands of a trainer as if you were entrusting yourself to a doctor. And later, during the competition, it’s your opponent who will try to blind you, and it’s you who will dislocate your arm, and it’s you who will twist your ankle, and it’s you who will ingest sand and be flogged. And after all this, it may happen that you lose.” (Epictetus. Discourses III.15.2-4)
Concept and choreography: Dominik Więcek
Creation and performance: STICKY FINGERS CLUB [consisting of]: Daniela Komędera, Dominika Wiak, Dominik Więcek, Monika Witkowska as well as Natalia Dinges, Piotr Stanek
Dramaturgy: Konrad Kurowski
Set design: Mateusz Mioduszewski
Costume design: Weronika Wood
Music: Przemek Degórski
Light design: Piotr Pieczyński
Special thanks to people whose work was an inspiration for us: Paweł Wysocki, Johnny Blade, Biesiad Strong. And we are very grateful for the support of Lublin Dance Theater and the Cultural Center in Lublin
The performance is recommended for audiences aged 16 and over. The performance includes nudity.
Video installation by Aneta Grzeszykowska
meeting with the artist 22nd September 2024
Aneta Grzeszykowska, an acclaimed Polish visual artist, has collaborated with dancers to create a surreal image in which the boundaries of the body disappear. An exhibition of Grzeszykowska’s video works (‘Headache’, ‘Black’, ‘Bolimorfia’), the essence of which is fragmentation, limitation, deformation, and decomposition, will be the context for Eryk Makohon’s performance and an opportunity for the two artists to meet the audience.
Aneta Grzeszykowska, Headache
The film Headache is an attempt to put life in order again, a sophisticated, existential choreography, which at each moment strikes a different stylistic tone: grotesque animation, surrealistic phantasmagoria, corporal play reminding us of experiments in body art.
In time with music – which is a variation of chosen fragments of Krzysztof Penderecki’s pieces from the 60s – the dance pantomime is taking place and tells us the story of self-destructive impulses of the body, the story that reaches its conclusion with a deceptive happy end. In its formal aspect, Headache represents the idea of a female figure confronting the black abyss. It is not, however, a usual black background, it is rather a magnetic inside of a black hole, the perfect space of non-existence. This blackness, playing an important function in Aneta Grzeszykowska’s films concentrates the viewer’s attention on the body, and highlights it as a central problem, as a theoretical object.
Headache begins with a take where we stand face to face with the artist holding a stick of dynamite in her mouth and igniting the fuse. After the explosion, her body returns as a disjointed set of fragments — legs, arms, torso, head — which begin a life of their own; a life autonomous to the extent that at some point they “rebel” against the head. They attack it violently, hitting and kicking, and finally compose a new Aneta, with legs in the place of arms and arms in the place of legs — quasi goddess, quasi monster.
Music: Krzysztof Penderecki: Anaklasis (1959), Fonogrammi (1973), Polymorphia (1961), String quartet No.1 (1960), Symphony I: Dynamis I – Arche I (1973)
Dancers: Aleksandra Lemm, Weronika Pelczynska, Marzena Roguska, Anita Wach
Cooperation: Jan Smaga
Text from: https://artmuseum.pl/en/filmoteka/praca/grzeszykowska-aneta-bol-glowy?age18=true
Aneta Grzeszykowska, Black
Black takes place in absolute darkness, a radically abstract suspension of all sensual data, except for the artist’s body. This blackness plays an active role — not only does it provide a background, but also marks the unfathomable, uncanny space of a dream, but also that of the unconscious; a space where body limits dissolve. Anyway, the film opens with a sequence where the artist covers subsequent parts of her body with black gloves, tights, a sweater – dissolving in that limitless blackness. Then the film introduces and develops classic surrealist motives: the passing through uncanny, narrow passages into subsequent imagined spaces, the motive of blinding (in this case by a long, snake-like rope), that of a shrinking, claustrophobic space and, finally, the close up on a wide open mouth until the scene of a mechanical ballet against the backdrop of a star-studded sky.
Description on the basis of a text by Krzysztof Pijarski.
Text from: https://artmuseum.pl/en/filmoteka/praca/grzeszykowska-aneta-black
Aneta Grzeszykowska, Bolimorfia
In Bolimorfia – to the rhythm of the Bolero, onto which the artist has superimposed the composition Polimorfia by Krzysztof Penderecki, perfectly disrupting and deconstructing the drive towards culmination of the classic Maurice Ravel piece – we witness a constant multiplication of Anetas, which in turn create decorative choreographic arrangements, one after the other. In this video, with every minute, the artist’s body becomes more and more mechanical, an element of a perfectly working clock mechanism, it becomes an ornament; to the extent that at some point a new “organism” emerges, with the many Anetas playing the role of head, hands, torso, legs.
Music: Krzysztof Penderecki, Polymorphia (1961); Maurice Ravel, Bolero.
Description on the basis of a text by Krzysztof Pijarski.
Text from: https://artmuseum.pl/en/filmoteka/praca/grzeszykowska-aneta-bolimorfia
Artistic residency, 13-22 September 2024
TBA
22 September 2024, 18:30
Krakow Dance Theatre
Shakespearean
Post-show conversation translated into Polish Sign Language
In Shakespearean by the Krakow Dance Theatre space creates illusion. The fragmentation of bodies represents the mental disintegration of Shakespeare’s heroines, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, and Juliet. The objects used in the performance, together with the visualisations and the bodies of the performers, build the architecture of the space, both scenic and imaginary.
Shakespearean female characters are often attributed with madness and instability. The popularity of female madness extends far beyond Shakespeare’s work and becomes an experience eagerly analysed by subsequent authors. Through this performance, we try to imagine the context of the experience of the ‘mad’ female characters. Madness becomes a fascinating image, in which we also often seek emancipatory strategies. These protagonists often act alone. What if we made some displacements and, through that movement, they could meet in one space?
Shakespearean is a dance collage of alternative ideas about the female protagonists in Shakespeare’s tragedies and their coexistence. Dancers from Krakow Dance Theatre create movement-based interpretations of the disorganised thoughts of Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, and Juliet, exploring unknown areas of the literary characters and ourselves.
The starting point in the creation of the performance consisted of objects which, together with visuals and the bodies of the performers, build the architecture of the space: the stage space and the imaginary space. When thinking about Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, and Juliet, are we able to identify the architecture of their rooms? What if we actually visited Juliet in Verona? What if the protagonists really wanted to visit Lady Macbeth? In what interiors would she host them? On what furniture?
In addition to the architecture of places, we are interested in body architecture. Can psychological disintegration be presented in the form of decomposition of body fragments? Would Juliet’s hand have saved Lady Macbeth from madness? Can defragmentation of the bodies of these three protagonists take place on stage as an emancipatory project?
Concept and set design: Eryk Makohon
Choreography: Eryk Makohon, Agnieszka Bednarz-Tyran, Yelyzaveta Tereshonok
Dramaturgy: Daria Kubisiak
Music: Piotr Peszat
Video: Grzesiek Mart
Performance: Agnieszka Bednarz-Tyran, Yelyzaveta Tereshonok
Light design: Michał Wawrzyniak
Set cooperation: Piotr Karp
Graphic design: Weronika Wawryk
Coordination and production: Paweł Łyskawa, Izabela Zawadzka
Urban photo exhibition by Grzesiek Mart
As part of the programme, a photo-painting exhibition by Kraków-based artist Grzesiek Mart will be held at bus stops in Kraków. Citylights in Kraków will display photographs depicting the movement of dancers in a quarry in Józefów, Lubelskie Voivodeship. The photographs have been artistically manipulated and painted by the author. In a form that combines photography and painting, the artefacts will be exhibited in the urban space of Krakow.
13 October 2024, 17:00
Izabela Zawadzka
lecture: What’s going on?
Walking performances in urban spaces engage participants in a unique way, creating a special network of relationships between performers, spectators, creators, and the site itself. They awaken the potential to re-read familiar spaces and explore them in unusual ways. During the meeting, selected creative techniques for constructing these specific forms will be discussed, using the examples of artist-research performances mapping space, multi-sensory art walks, and walking audio-performances.
13 October 2024, 18:30
Spectacle from open call
Accompanying events
Summer Academy – contemporary dance workshops for professional dancers
Critics Residency
Danca Communication Lab
Past events:
7 April 2024, 18:30
M Studio (Romania)
Elevator
In the performance ‘Elevator’, three dancers are trapped in a lift, a place where one is very close to others but without physical contact. The confined and stuffy space of the lift determines the choreography created by Ferenc Feher.
Performers: Deák Zoltán, Szekrényes László, Veres Nagy Attila
Choreographer: Ferenc Fehér
Music: Ferenc Fehér
Light Technician: Szabó Huba
Sound Engineer: György Chirițescu
Costume Designer: Melinda
Service: Enikő Bartók
28 April 2024, 17:00
Joanna Szymajda
Lecture: Space as a choreographic experience
“To dance is to make space visible” – Dominique Dupuy
Open space or urban space appears a priori as a choreographic experience. Dancers place their bodies in the middle of an anonymous human mass. Choreographers shift their gaze from the frames of the theatre hall to the space seen as the ‘social body’ and its various configurations.
The body in an urban space is not a recent discovery, it recalls the 1950s in California (Anna Halprin and her street actions, in parks, in museums) or the 1960s and 1970s in New York, when Trisha Brown’s dancers occupied park benches and lawns, ran on the roofs of lofts and walked on the walls of skyscrapers.
Today, it is not only just urban and post-industrial spaces, beaches and parks, but also private places that become objects for artists to explore and measure from an anthropocentric perspective. Hotel rooms, office buildings, clubs, dance halls, and finally private homes – any of these spaces can become a site of action for contemporary choreographers. Site-specific projects primarily take into account the specificity of a given place, adapting a scheme of actions to it. They turn space into a place, giving urban agglomerations the dimension of a complete sociological experience. On the other hand, it is also possible for choreographers to incorporate movement ideas developed in urban spaces, such as hip-hop or parkour, and incorporate them into theatrical performances.
The lecture will present different strategies for making space visible as part of choreographic strategies.
28 April 2024, 18:30
Paweł Grala
Thaw
Post-show conversation translated into Polish Sign Language
In his performance ‘Thaw’, Paweł Grala creates an intimate and internal space into which he introduces the audience. He proposes a journey into the interior of the human being and a turn towards the subconscious.
The choreographer subordinates the performer to the plasticity of the stage composition, fusing her with the costume.
Like the characters created by Haruki Murakami, the dancer descends into a well where, with each step, she plunges into the infinite abyss of herself. “Thaw” creates a space for the audience to share in this journey.
“The unbearable heat melts the substance from the form, giving it the illusion of freedom. A series of dissolutions, meltdowns, follow. The body deforms in a desperate search for contact with itself. A journey into the depths, full of returns, the past riddled with the traps of repetition, the present seems to sink into an abyss of blackness. The ice cracks with a scream, creating cracks for strong winds…. I hear you faintly. You fade into the background, but I feel you calling me. He has a message, thank you. It’s a quarter past eight. I thought I wouldn’t get up, but I did, turned on the light to look into the darkness. It’s only when you expose her that she stops being herself. She wasn’t herself. She made her sleeves comfortable and I checked that the zip worked perfectly. It works both ways.”
Concept & Choreography: Paweł Grala
Creation & Performance: Joanna Jaworska-Maciaszek
Music: Zofia Tomczyk & Józef Buchnajzer
Set Design: Jakub Urbański
Costume Design: Ania Adamiak
Light: Kamil Urbanowicz
12 May 2024, 18:30
EN-KNAP (Slovenia)
Superfluous
The pandemic, a time of isolation and seclusion, is an important context for the performance ‘Superfluous’ by the Slovenian group EN-KNAP. In the spring of 2020, the dancers worked in the isolated and confined space of their own apartments, conducting individual research and collecting material for the performance, which they published online. Once the isolation was over, the dancers met in the studio and together developed the individual sequences of the performance.
The performance includes both a fixed structure and improvised elements. The dancers are accompanied on stage by a musician who provides additional scenic challenges.
The starting point for the performance was the essay “Superfluous Man”, a reflection by the writer Ilija Trojanow on the destructive force of capitalism. When the pandemic and restrictions are included in the reflection, the questions he poses in the essay become even more relevant: Who is superfluous and for whom? Do we even exist if we do not produce or consume? How thin is the line between necessary and unnecessary, useful and not useful?
EN-Knap Group
Performed and created by: Mattia Cason, Tamás Tuza, Carolina Alessandra Valentini, Tina Habun, Davide Lafabiana, Nuria Capella Florensa
Live music:: Tomaž Grom
Light design: Leon Curk
Set design: Iztok Kovač, Jaka Šimenc
Costume design: Katarina Škaper (Atelje d.o.o.)
Props: EN-KNAP Group
Concept: Iztok Kovač
Based on the book: Ilija Trojanow, “Superfluous Man”
Photo and video: Andrej Lamut
Special thanks to: Andrej Rauch Podrzavnik
Rehearsal Director: Ana Štefanec Knez
Executive Producers: Karmen Keržar, Goran Pakozdi
Public Relations: Valerija Intihar
Production: Zavod EN-KNAP
Support: City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia
Kuratorzy programu / Curators: Paweł Łyskawa, Eryk Makohon
Organizatorzy / Organizers: Cricoteka, Krakowski Teatr Tańca
Zespół realizujący projekt / Project Team: Mariusz Gąsior Małgorzata Kmita – Fugiel, Józef Legierski, Magdalena Link-Lenczowska, Zofia Mikołajska, Aldona Mikulska, Andrea Nikolov, Agnieszka Oprządek, Anna Rejowska, Aleksandra Treder, Michał Warmusz, Weronika Wawryk, Natalia Zarzecka, Izabela Zawadzka
Identyfikacja graficzna / Graphic design: Wojciech Kołek
Patroni medialni / Media Patrons: Didaskalia Gazeta Teatralna, Gazeta Wyborcza Radio Kraków Radio Kraków Kultura
Wsparcie medialne / Media Support: taniecPOLSKA.pl
Projekt współfinansowany ze środków Miasta Krakowa.
Project co-financed by the City of Krakow.
Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego pochodzących z Funduszu Promocji Kultury – państwowego funduszu celowego.
Financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Cultural Promotion Fund – a state purpose fund.
Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego pochodzących z Funduszu Promocji Kultury w ramach programu “Taniec”, realizowanego przez Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca.
Financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Cultural Promotion Fund within the framework of the “Dance” programme implemented by the National Institute of Music and Dance
Projekt realizowany w ramach programu Beyond Fronta: Bridging Periphery finansowanego ze środków Kreatywna Europa (2023-2026) tworzonego przez partnerów: Krakowski Teatr Tańca, Közép-Európa Táncszínház / Central Europe Dance Theatre, Bunker, Croatian Institute for Movement and Dance – Hrvatski institut za pokret i ples – HIPP, M STUDIO, Moira Cultural and Youth Association oraz Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts
The project is organized within the framework of the Beyond Front@: Bridging Periphery programme financed by the Creative Europe program (2023-2026) and organized by Krakow Dance Theatre – Krakowski Teatr Tańca, Közép-Európa Táncszínház – Central Europe Dance Theatre, Bunker, Croatian Institute for Movement and Dance – Hrvatski institut za pokret i ples – HIPP, M Studio and Moira Cultural and Youth Association, Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts.
Sfinansowane ze środków UE. Wyrażone poglądy i opinie są jedynie opiniami autora lub autorów i niekoniecznie odzwierciedlają poglądy i opinie Unii Europejskiej lub Europejskiej Agencji
Wykonawczej ds. Edukacji i Kultury (EACEA). Unia Europejska ani EACEA nie ponoszą za nie odpowiedzialności.
Funded by EU funds. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Executive Agency for Education and Culture (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA is responsible for them.
