THE SPIRAL
Concept
Dominik Więcek
Support
Tanzrecherche NRW
The-Spiral project, which I was able to work on thanks to the Tanzrecherche NRW research fellowship, was born out of a hypothetical question that I have asked myself as a person born in Iserlohn, a small town in North Rhine-Westphalia and raised in Poland: What kind of artist could I be if I grew up in Germany? This website is a kind of archive of both my research work and my work on the making of the new solo performance Café Müller.
M E N U
INTRODUCTION / WORK DESCRIPTION
One of the elements of my research work was the analysis of the higher education system in NRW. I recalled my six-month education at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen memories. I met with students currently studying there, incl. Jennie Boultbee, Hakan Sonakalan and Mateusz Bogdanowicz , who, after a one-year stay at Folkwang Universität as part of Erasmus student exchange, returned to Essen to study his master's degree in choreography. I also met students of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln : Philipp Hansen, Hannah Krebs, Hannah Sampé. These were meetings based on conversation, common practice in the room and sharing of their physical experiences. I wanted to see how the bodies and minds of the graduates of these universities look like, get to know their thoughts and reflections on what their school had taught and what they lacked in their education, what the school infrastructure looked like, and the relationship with teachers. Next I can compare their experience with my own.
I also met with Polish artists who were born in Poland and moved to NRW in Germany, incl. with Mateusz Czyczerski, Ania Kosiorowska and Agafia Wieliczko . We talked about the reasons for their migration, dance expectations, rebuilding themselves elsewhere, trying to transfer the Polish reality to Germany, and how their ideas about this country were confronted with the reality. I also did interviews. An interview with Monika Witkowska, a graduate of the Ludiwek Solski State Drama School in Krakow (currently the St. Wyspiański Academy of Theater Arts in Krakow) Dance Theater Department in Bytom, was related to her studies at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen. With Dominika Knapik, a Polish choreographer born in Krakow, who currently lives in Bochum and is a prize winner of the most important German theater award Der Faust 2020 for the performance Der Boxer (2019) staged at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, we talked about the differences in working in Poland and Germany and the reasons why she decided to leave the country. In another conversation with Przemek Kamiński, a Polish dancer and choreographer, a graduate of the Berlin choreographic school HZT [Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz], we talked about how he perceives Polish artists working and living in Germany and what his current relationship with the country looks like. All the interviews were published in the magazine Taniepolska.pl .
An important point of my work was learning German for three months. I was checking how language influences personality, how physical exercises can influence work on language phonetics and how learning a foreign language can become a choreographic tool that generates movement material. I also researched stereotypes related to how we, Poles, think about German language (a gallery of memories was created, in which I recorded sentences, quotes and slogans that my friends remembered the most from the long-term process of German language education at school). The methods of my work, which I developed with the help of dr hab. Joanna Pędzisz who teaches at the Institute of German Studies and Applied Linguistics at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, are presented at language conferences, including a performative lecture Sprache tanzen und Tanz sprechen at the international conference of sciences organized by the University of Silesia.
One of the most important elements of my work was the analysis of Pina Bausch's performances. While at the Theater im Pumpenhaus in Münster, I thoroughly analyzed the movement that appeared in the performances. I was looking for exercises and ways to stimulate the kind of movement creativity that the choreographer operated on. I was interested in the phenomenon of fanfiction - works created unofficially by fans of a beloved art work, using the characters and the world from this piece. With this in mind, I created my own movement phrases that could be placed in Pina Buasch's performances. I also took a three-hour walk around Wuppertal, during which I moved around the city performing the famous choreography of The Nelken Line, and the route of my walk on the map was arranged in the PINA sign. I also met the dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal: Ophelia Young, who has been in the band for almost ten years, and the freshly hired Alexander Lopez Guerra .
The implementation of the scholarship also had a private dimension. Born in Iserlohn, a small town in Nordrhein Westfalen, Germany, and raised in Poland, I have been asking myself for some time: what would happen if my parents had not made the decision to return to Poland? Searching for answers, I let my imagination run wild and created hypothetical scenarios, traveling around Germany, around my hometown, researching the German language and meeting Polish artists who live there. The research work carried out under the Tanzrecherche NRW program was a great opportunity for me, not only to develop a certain thought, check the assumptions of the written application, but also for my own personal and professional development. The results obtained and the conclusions drawn become the basis for the creation of the original solo performance Café Müller, which will premiere on November 11, 2021 during the 25th International Meetings of Dance Theaters in Lublin.
1993/2021 Family house.
Direction: West, Next stop: emigration
I was born in 1992, but a lot of important things happened before that time. Many decisions were already made before.
After 1983, when Poland was deep in crisis, emigration of Poles abroad became the norm, which was simply convenient for the communist authorities at the time: they was getting rid of the uncertain element, citizens who might have been inconvenient. In the last decade of the PRL times in Poland approximately 1.3 million poles left Poland for good. Among the migrants there were asylum seekers, solidarity movements refugees, and work migrants with very different levels of education and qualifications. Unfortunately, often these trips were not legal, rather they could be called an escape. To stay legally, you had to document and prove your relationship with this country, e.g. by origin or relatives living there. The resettlement process itself was also not simple. Often the waiting for documents to be checked took weeks, during which Poles had to wait in special camps, sleeping in tents or in the open air. In 1989, my father decided to go to Germany. This year, it was the most popular country to go, he was able to move there due to his family situation and his aunt who lived in Germany.
The town where my parents lived was Iserlohn, a small city in the west of Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia (current population: 93,537). I was born there. After completing the language course, my dad started working. Everything seemed that that would be our place of residence. The economic conditions and the opportunities offered by this country were much more attractive than what would have been possible in Poland. My mother, however, despite many efforts, was not able to settle in outside of Poland. She couldn't speak German, she couldn't find friends, she missed her family. In 1991 my parents decided to buy an apartment in Chorzów, where they come from. It was supposed to be the place where my mother could stay when she traveled to Poland, and she came back there often, even when being in advanced pregnancy. After my birth, my mother traveled between countries, so that in 1995 she finally made a decision that she wanted to return to Poland permanently. My dad decided to stay and work in Germany and come home as often as possible. Thanks to his earnings in Germany, my mother did not have to work in Poland, and she could devote herself to raising me and my brother.
When we left Poland, I was less than 3 years old. I was too young to remember anything from that time and to have any memories at all.
While working on the scholarship, I visited Iserlohn. I felt how strange this place is to me. Of course, I've heard a lot, but all my memories of that time are not my own, but those told to me or those that I appropriated over time as mine. In Iserlohn I visited, among others the hospital where I was born, the places we lived in, the parks my mother liked and where she went for walks. Everything I know about this time of my life comes from my parents. It was also them, without a shadow of a doubt, that I trusted automatically, that their decision to raise me in Poland was right.
When in Iserlohn I felt a great anxiety of doing something against it. I felt as if I was telling my parents, "check", questioning what they told me about me. Initially, while realizing the scholarship and researching hypothetical scenarios of my life I felt mostly excitement and childish curiosity. In Iserlohn, I mostly felt uneasy, as if I was about to steal something. I saw the house we lived in, which was situated on a beautiful mountain top and there was a beautiful stud farm nearby. It was a beautiful building with a large terrace, much nicer than the apartment on the fourth floor in Chorzów. It terrified me that I might finally come to the conclusion that my parents made a mistake, that we would be better and easier in Germany than in Poland. I felt that I was undermining their authority.
In middle school and high school, I studied German language, but like most of my peers, I resisted Germanization, and the English language seemed sexier. During my studies, I went on a student exchange at the Folkwang Universität der Künste and lived in Essen for half a year. The performance Dominique was awarded at the festival in Stuttgart and Hanover, and performed in Braunschweig. I have already worked several times with the German group Bodytalk working in Munster. My parents met in the late 1980s. Shortly after meeting, my dad left and my parents were in contact by letters. After some time of correspondence, my mother decided to visit him. This story reminds me of my story and of my current partner. We met in Poland, then wrote and called (this is the modern form of letters that my parents used to write). After two months of talks, we decided that I would visit him in Hamburg. The emotions my mother told me about and which accompanied her during her first trip to Germany were identical to those that I had when I visited my partner for the first time. Until now, my dad works outside Poland. Both my relationship and theirs are a long-distance relationship.
I feel a certain pull from the German side. I have a image of a certain parallelism of my and my parents' life. I wonder to what extent my decisions are fully mine, and to what extent they are with a certain destiny.
The hospital in Iserlohn where I was born
My first photo from the hospital.
Pictures with my brother. This bed is still my parents' bed. Throughout our childhood this globe chased away the monsters of darkness.
The street where my house was located in Iserlohn
House in Iserlohn
Hauptfriedhof, spark where my mother used to walk.
1993 vs 2021
The terrace of the house in Iserlohn
Together with my brother on the road at home.
Horse farm next to our house in Iserlohn.
It still exists. I checked myself.
One of our places in Iserlohn was an apartment for rent. Currently, it is a hotel and restaurant. From there, my brother remembers the elevator and the big dog. I remember the spiral staircase, but probably from a photo I once saw.
On the right, a photo of me and my mother from the brochure of this place.
Meetings and collaborations
2013/2021 Essen.
Margarethenhöhe, the district next to the dormitory where I lived while studying at the Folkwang Universität der Künste
Dr hab. Joanna Pędzisz
Joanna became my German phonetics teacher. We spent time together in a dance studio, thinking about how to stimulate the process of learning pronunciation with dance improvisation tasks. In collaboration with Joanna, a choreography was created for one of my scenes in my solo performance. Details of our cooperation can be found by clicking here.
Philipp Hansen
A graduate of Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln (in which perhaps I would also study?). He told me about his processor education, the pros and cons of his university. I learned, among other things, that there was a plan to merge his university with the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen due to financial problems. I also had the pleasure of being part of "The Fairy Academy", a moment and performance practice that he has developed as part of his residency at Tanzfaktur in Cologne.
Hakan Sonakalan
"In order to be a choreographer you first have to be a dancer. That's what they believe in here since generations "
A student of the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, where he graduated in choreography. We talked about his point of view on his education. About the fact that Folkwang builds a certain illusion and educates a dancer, who often does not have the tools required by contemporary artists (partnering skills, contact improvisation, acting). About the fact that Folkwang encourages interdisciplinary actions and cooperation between departments, however, it is not visible in the performances themselves and they are hermetically closed to influences of other fields of art.
Yoshiko Fight
Japanese-born choreographer who currently works and lives in Münster. Thanks to her courtesy, I was able to use the space of the Theater im Pumpenhaus studio. She forms the Bodytalk group, with which I have co-created on the performances of Solidaritot, Shahin Najafi and Guests and Still Leben . We talked about the support system for creators in Germany, the status of an artist and the its privileges.
Alexander Lopez Guerra
"Dancing is a consequence of the opportunities that came up in font of me, not first decision, but I'm following." Alexander comes from Peru and to work as a dancer in other countries and needs a visa, so he must be a dancer in a company that will give him a permanent job. He is a new dancer at Tanztheater Wuppertal, who joined the team during the pandemic. We talked about his audition for the theatre, type-casting, how performances are restaged and how he prepares for them, how he is attracted to Pina's performances by how amazing it is what happens on stage in her performances.
Ophelia Young
A graduate of the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, who collaborated with Tanztheater Wuppertal already at school. She told me that the audition for the company required acting improvisation (she had to create a text about her love for the cup that stood in front of her on an ongoing basis), for which the school did not prepare her at all. She talked about the methods of restaging performances, working with recordings, creating new movement material, but within something that already exists and is often very specific. I asked about recognition of the company as well as Pina in the city of Wuppertal itself.
Ophelia told me about the variety of skills required in working in this theater. One day you dance Le sacre du printemps , which requires grounding and a very strong center, and the next day Kontakthof , where you have to dance on stage for a few hours on high heels
Mateusz Czyczerski
He graduated from the University of Dolnyśląsk in the field of Modern Art Design, with a specialization in Performance. He currently lives in Cologne. He told me about the hardships of finding himself in a new space, both as an artist and as a citizen, especially during the pandemic times. About gaining the competence to re-create yourself in a new place. He pointed out that he feels safe in Germany, that he can walk around the streets safely without causing any sensation or comments. He also told me that he was planning to change his name because it was too difficult for Germans to pronounce. Mateusz tries to associate Polish artists living in NRW in Germany, he even contacts the Polish institute in Düsseldorf.
Agafia Wieliczko
Like me, Agafia studied at the Faculty of Dance Theater in Bytom and moved to Cologne in Germany to live there with her girlfriend. She told me that now she finally feels safe and that she sometimes misses Polish products such as marshmallow, Winiary mayonnaise and pickled cucumbers. She spoke about how much courage is required to migrate, because it in reality means throwing yourself into a foreign culture, moving your home to another place.
Agafia likes German language very much, she learned it practically on her own, from books, newspapers, and the Internet. She likes its sound, melody, words that are actually composed of four words. She told me a joke. A Polish guide, during a trip to Germany, does not explain another person's statements for a very long time. The disturbed crowd asks why he doesn't, to which the translator replies, "I'm waiting for a verb."
Jan HK
Jana is a German lady who was my language teacher. As she has experience in dancing we experimented together on how to work on my speaking skills. Jana talked a lot about the fact that people often exaggerate when learning another language and are incredibly hyper-correct in their pronunciation of sounds and therefor they lose the thought of sentences. Therefore, we performed exercises and relaxing massages so that we could speak a foreign language without tension.
Additionally, Jana is an amateur opera singer and helped me get some sounds with vocal exercises. We sang together songs from The Little Mermaid.
Ania Kosiorowska.
She studied at the Faculty of Dance Theater in Bytom, she was the second year of the university. She and her partner currently live in Essen, where they run Pilates studio. Additionally, she conducts physical classes for corporations. She learned the German language on her own, being with others, from books, and her partner who also helped her.
She told me she dreams of having a car. It would give her the feeling that she could get in it and come to Poland at any time.
Jennie Boultbee
Pina's repertuar comes from what she leared in Folkwang, but It's all about the craftiness of using those techniques inside of works.
Student of Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. We analyzed the silhouette and physicality of the graduates. She considered their strength to be: Presence, Awarness of presentation, the way the body is in the space and the way they place in relation with others, balance, super strong center.
She showed me what exercises and movement codes they use in class. She drew attention to the freedom that gives her the enormity of the technique that she learns at school, thanks to which she feels that she is capable of everything and that she has great freedom in movement.
Performative lecture "Speaking dance and speaking through dance: an interdisciplinary look at the performative actions of the contemporary dance artist"
A big part of my research was learning German for three months. I was checking how language influences personality, how physical exercises can influence work on language phonetics and how learning a foreign language can become a choreographic tool that generates movement material.
As I already knew on the research faze of the project, that I want it to develop into a dance performance I imagined a scene where I would speak German and I sound like a native. I had a German teacher, who was a Polish woman, and during our classes she was more focusing on vocabulary and grammar, not putting enough attention for speaking skills. Therfore I decided that it would be nice to find a teacher, with who my education will focus only on pronunciation.
I met Joanna some time earlier, when I was working in Lublin on Sticky Fingers Club performance, and I reminded myself of her. She teaches at the Institute of German Studies and Applied Linguistics at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. I knew that collaboration would be something interesting for both of us as Joanna is a huge dance fan, who regularly takes classes, and I knew that she will be very open on trying new things, and thinking creatively with me how the meeting between her - German teacher and me - dancer could look like.
The methods of our work and how they became the basis for the creation of movement material for one of the scenes in solo Cafe Muller are described in the lecture presented at the International Scientific Conference organized by the Silesian University.
Gallery of memories from compulsory German classes.
Quotes, sentences, slogans that were the most memorable from many years of German language education.
Interviews
Dominika Knapik
Dancer, actress and choreographer. She regularly collaborates with drama theaters in Poland and abroad, creating choreographies for performances. She currently lives in Bochum. We met during rehearsals for the performance Księgi Jakubowe (directed by Ewelina Marciniak) at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg. We talked about how did it happened that she lives in Bochum now and about her point of view on Germany. Dominika noted that actors in Germany are much more open for experimenting with style and convention, and going beyond the so-called psychological theater. She also added that there is a visible difference in working with men who, in comparisement to Poles, care much more about themselves and their appearance. In Germany, going for manicure and pedicure is not considered to be non-masculine. It is similar in the approach to the body: keeping fit, going to the gym, practicing yoga is very popular among the German men. Therefore, the actors are in better shape and well-groomed, which allows her for more room to maneuver in working with theirs body as a material.
About work and life in Germany
The story is simple. Few years ago, Jan Klata invited me to collaborate on Crime and Punishment at the Schauspielhaus Bochum. There I met my future husband, who is a lighting director. I quickly started working with interesting German directors such as Olaf Kröck or Julia Wissert. Plus a director with whom I have worked many times - Ewelina Marciniak, started working more in Germany. We met when I was fresh out of drama school, and she was studying directing. We worked together creating the performance Der Boxer (2019) at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, for the direction of which she received the prestigious award Der Faust. When she got a proposal to create another performance, she chose Księgi Jakubowe by Olga Tokarczuk (premiere: 2021) as the theme. She invited the same team of producers, including me, and other Polish artists: Julia Kornacka, Jarek Murawski, Mirek Kaczmarek, and Jan Duszyński. It is much easier to work in a team that you know and with which you can communicate freely. Most of us do not speak German, communication between us in Polish makes our work much easier and more efficient. Besides, they are really great creators, invited to cooperate not because of their nationality, but because of their great skills.
It is not easy to transfer a career to another country, it usually demands starting from scratch. I got an incredible gift from fate. Work here just appeared, and right away in the big theaters. I really feel lucky. I am a workaholic, I work constantly, the reality is that I am constantly traveling - sometimes I do not know where my home is ... Currently, I believe that I have two homes: in Bochum, where my family is, and in Krakow, where I come from. All my friends and all my past is set in Poland, so I miss this place and those people. I feel good in Germany, the theater is on a better financial level here. There are also more institutions that support dance. In Poland, the number of possibilities for producing independent performances is small, as is the case with the possibility of touring the piece after creating.
I don't speak fluent German. I speak English with my husband, my son Feliks is brought up bilingually and I speak Polish with him. I still function in a large division between countries. I have just finished rehearsals at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, and in a few days I am leaving for Wrocław, where we will create an original spectacle with Patrycja Kowanska, Karolina Mazur, Bartholomäus Kleppek and Wolfgang Macher at the Pantomime Theater, and then I will return to Germany again for another production. I really want to continue working in Poland. Unfortunately, the pandemic made everything more difficult. I would like to function and work in both countries, but combining it with each other is not so easy anymore, and adding motherhood to it is another level of complexity.
Przemek Kamiński
Polish dancer, performer and choreographer, currently living in Berlin, where in 2016 he graduated from Dance, Context, Choreography at the HZT Inter-University Center for Dance in Berlin.
During our meeting, we talked about the differences in work and creation in the Polish and German realities, highlighting more opportunities that a freelance dancer receives in Germany, even if is not a part of any institution. Przemek also received support from K3 Tanzplan Hamburg to develop his project for eight months.
Working on a the new project.
I am currently working on a new project at the K3 Tanzplan Hamburg choreographic center. I received an eight-month residency, as well as financial, technical and production support. I got selected through a competition. I work with Julia Plawgo, a Polish dancer and choreographer living in Berlin, with whom I have been friends for over twelve years. The project that I am implementing in Hamburg was initially planned as a show, but due to the pandemic situation and the prevailing restrictions, it has changed into a film. I wanted to get away from showing a video recording or streaming from the stage - from the very beginning I had the feeling that the performance was not a good medium for this work. The piece called THEREAFTER, will be a pseudo-documentary film about the journey of two heroes through an imaginary (green) landscape. This project is also a step towards developing my interest in choreography as an extended practice that can manifest itself in a multitude of formats and media. This project gave me the opportunity to work choreographically with a camera operator and treat the entire editing process as choreography.
The eight-month residency in Hamburg, which is taking place in parallel with the development of the pandemic, was a luxury. Not only I was able to use the studio regularly, take care of myself and practice, but also this was the first time I had the time and space to (intentionally) forget what I wrote in the application form, to get lost and start drifting away from the topics. In the last few months, I have thought a lot about pleasure in relation to dance and the construction of the process of work itself. I also regularly practiced Constructive Rest - a resting position derived from the Alexander technique.
Relations with Poland
In projects, that I create abroad, I often surround myself with a group of colleagues who either live in Poland or are of Polish origin. In THEREAFTER, apart from Julia Plawgo, I work with the Polish musician Zosia Hołubowska, who lives in Vienna, Aleksander Prowaniński, a light director of Belarusian origin who settled in Poland years ago, and last but not least Katarzyna Słoboda from the Museum of Art in Łódź wrote the text for publication about the work process.
Since the performance So Emotional (2017, created together with Marta Ziółek and Mateusz Szymanówka), is no longer presented in repertoire of Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, I don't come to Poland often. I have a lot of gratitude for everything that happened to me there: for the opportunities that I received, for the works that I have created, for meeting many wonderful people with whom I am still friends. Sometimes I miss Poland. I believe that the Polish choreographic and dance environment is very interesting, full of many wonderful artists whose activities I try to follow, for example via the Internet. I sincerely hope that in the popandemic reality, I will be able to strengthen my contacts with the Polish choreographic and dance environment again.
Monika Witkowska.
A graduate of the Department of Rhythmics of the Secondary State Secondary Music School in Częstochowa and the Department of Dance Theater in Bytom at the Academy of Theater Arts in Krakow. In 2015, she was a scholarship holder of the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany and the Kibbutzim Collage of Education Department of Dance Theater in Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Co-founder and member of the Vagabond Physical Collective - an independent artistic collective created by students and graduates of the Faculty of Dance Theater in Bytom. Winner of the Best Short Dance Piece prize at the 10th International Competition of Young Dance Performers OPUS 1 in Slovenia, where she performed her solo "Für Roman". Finalist of the 32nd International Competition for Choreographers in Hanover and the Solo Dance Contest at the Gdańsk Dance Festival with the solo "I fought piranhas" choreographed by Maciej Kuźmiński.
We share a similar story with Monika. As students at the Faculty of Dance Theater in Bytom / Poland, we had a six-month exchange in Germany. As part of the Erasmus program, we studied for six months at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen. In our conversation, she told me about her experience of an educational process there.
About studying at the Faculty of Dance Theater in Bytom and the Folkwang Universität der Künste.
After education in a music school, where everything is very well arranged, I studied at the Dance Theater Department of State Drama School in Bytom, which was a very chaotic and unpredictable place. At the beginning that was a big shock for me and sometimes made students frustrated or dissatisfied. In the third year of my studies, I started an Erasmus exchange at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen. There, I found myself again working in a very ordered system, where for egzample lunch was scheduled, and the calendar of classes allowed regeneration before the next day. After my experience at the University in Bytom, it was hard for me to return to such a structure! Such a system turned out to be no not inspiring for me, and when I was given the opportunity to finish my education in Essen - I refused. I am definitely closer to a certain artistic chaos. The number of stimuli coming from a wide range of classes in Bytom can be overwhelming, often at a given moment it is difficult to see their meaning, but in retrospect I know that the possibility of taking from so many fields (we had classes in dance, acting, philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology, history of dance and theater and many others) to shape your identity as an artist is unique and incredibly valuable!
One term in the Folkwang gave me regular and daily classical dance training. Etsuko Akiya, who taught classical dance techniques for contemporary dancers, took of many of my manners and decorations that I did not need for anything, and the classes focused on the proper positioning and preparation of the body. I also really liked the classes with the wonderful Rodolpho Leoni in improvisation, which were very creative, unconventional and, in contrast to the rest of the education, had a lot of elements coming from the spontaneity of the teacher and the group. Besides, it was an interesting experience to deal with the repertoire of Pina Baush and dance fragments of the Rite of Spring. In addition, it was great to practice in the dance technique classes with live music, that does not happened in Dance Theatre Department in Poland, and I enjoyed the possibility of the cooperation between the art departments of the Folkwang Universität der Künste.
On the other hand, I wasn't really interested in everyday modern dance classes. I had a feeling that they were very old-fashioned, they did not allow freedom, and my body was unable to find itself in them. There is also enormous rigor and discipline in the education process. This can be seen, for example, in the requirements of the dress code during classes, which was often commented by the lecturers. Once I was told to change my hair, because the one I had "wouldn't be liked by Pina." I do not consider myself a visually expressive person: I do not have tattoos, I do not paint, I do not paint my nails, I do not wear jewelry, but in Folkwang it turned out that even wearing gray leg warmers, not black, is already avant-garde and not befitting a dancer. Something that always seemed irrelevant to me - there it was raised to the rank of art, or even acting against it. The structure itself is also visible in the exercises and choreographies performed, especially in contrast to Bytom, where there is a much greater possibility of exploring and experimenting during the learning process.
After education in a music school, where everything is very well arranged, I studied at the Dance Theater Department of State Drama School in Bytom, which was a very chaotic and unpredictable place. At the beginning that was a big shock for me and sometimes made students frustrated or dissatisfied. In the third year of my studies, I started an Erasmus exchange at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen. There, I found myself again working in a very ordered system, where for egzample lunch was scheduled, and the calendar of classes allowed regeneration before the next day. After my experience at the University in Bytom, it was hard for me to return to such a structure! Such a system turned out to be no not inspiring for me, and when I was given the opportunity to finish my education in Essen - I refused. I am definitely closer to a certain artistic chaos. The number of stimuli coming from a wide range of classes in Bytom can be overwhelming, often at a given moment it is difficult to see their meaning, but in retrospect I know that the possibility of taking from so many fields (we had classes in dance, acting, philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology, history of dance and theater and many others) to shape your identity as an artist is unique and incredibly valuable!
The Nelken Line
When I was sure that my work and the practice of creating my new performance would be in relation to the entire heritage of Pina Bausch, I felt a certain heaviness of this situation, I was almost intimidated. Until now when I told others about my work research and the idea for a solo it felt strange, and my speakers, when they hear that I am creating a performance entitled: Café Müller, react very differently, from absolute surprise, or meaningful silence and raised eyebrows, up to a certain offense
I knew I wanted to break Pina's curse over me. Do something that will give me courage. I decided that I wanted to follow the route that would form a PINA word on the map, pass the Opernhaus Wuppertal, and that I would follow the famous choreography of The Nelken Line to Luis Armstrong's looped West End Blues song. I did not speed up even at the pedestrian crossing, I only once had to jump over the fence.
Two days later I got a message from Ophella, the Tanztheater Wuppertal dancer. She send me a video from her friend who noticed my walk through the window and decided to capture it. I can not imagine a better documentation of my walk.
From the very beginning, I knew that my research would lead to a performance. Its idea became clear during the work. Unfortunately, my residency applications (I wrote quite a few) were not successful. Luckily, the performance is finally produced by the Lublin Dance Theater and is created as part of the "Spaces of Art" program financed by the Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport, carried out by the Institute of Music and Dance and the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute.
Tanzrecherche NRW research involved testing hypothetical scenarios of what my life might have been if I had been raised in Germany. The activities described in the first part of the page were to bring me closer to finding the answer to this question.
Where does the idea / need for this "what if?" comes from? Firstly, out of curiosity. Secondly, because of the feeling that the German context in my private and professional life appears magically and constantly: I have performed and won awards in Germany, worked there, and now my boyfriend is German. The performance is about facing this feeling as wa as a reflection on who I am now.
Fantasizing about my hypothetical alter ego in a parallel German reality, one of the scenarios was the parallelism of the sequence: Studying dance in a city close to the family home (Chorzów - Bytom, Faculty of Dance Theater) could be reflected by the Iserlohn - Essen, Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. Immediately after finishing my studies in Bytom, I joined the company of the Polish Dance Theater in Poznań. In the German reality - it could be Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal. This is how the idea was born to create a performance about fantasizing about your reality, while creating a fan fiction about the iconic and flagship German performance Café Müller.
Café Müller
Café Müller was originally the title of a four-part evening, whose premiere took place 40 years ago, on the 20th of May 1978. In addition to the choreography by Pina Bausch, which is still regularly performed today, this evening originally comprised work by Gerhard Bohner, Gigi-Gheorghe Caciuléanu and Hans Pop. Together they agreed that each of them will create a performance that will include the following elements: a café, darkness, someone falls, someone lifts, a red woman enters, everything goes silent.
Café Müller by Pina Bausch is a story about loneliness, isolation, unrequited love, grief and despair. The performance is moving, because it tells about topics that are close to everyone, iconic, because it can be used to explain what Tanztheater is, unique because Pina herself performed in it. For me - it’s simply brilliant.
My Café Müller is a fanficiton. Basing on the existing performance, its world and characters, I create images referring to my personal story. Born in Iserlohn, a small town in Nordrhein- Westfalen, Germany, and raised in Poland, I have been asking myself: what would happen if my parents had not made the decision to return to Poland? In search for an answer I let my imagination run wild and created hypothetical scenarios, traveling around Germany, around my hometown, researching the German language and meeting Polish artists who live there. This performance, however, is not a linear story about what could have happened. It's not writing a new script about some alternative reality, but sharing of the emotions that accompanied me when I once again asked myself: what if?
Concept, choreography, performance:
Dominik Więcek
Music:
Przemek Degórski
Light design:
Klaudia Kasperska
Costume:
Project: Nikola Fedak
Realization: System Mody / Serafin Andrzejak
Language consultations:
Joanna Pędzisz
Pictures:
Maciej Nowak
Duration:
40 minutes
Producer:
Lublin Dance Theater
Reserach support:
Tanzrecherche NRW, Theater im Pumpenhaus, Tanzfaktur Köln, Folkwang Universität der Künste, Lublin Dance Theater
Premiere
11.11.2021 / 25. International Meetings of Dance Theaters in Lublin
The performance is created as part of the "Spaces of Art" program financed by the Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport, carried out by the Institute of Music and Dance and the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute. The operator of the project in Lublin is the Cultural Center in Lublin.
Reżyseria / Choreografia Pina Bausch
Scenografia / Kostiumy: Rolf Borzik
Muzyka: Henry Purcell
Reżyseria muzyki: Henrik Schaefer
|With the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal
Soprano Marie Heeschen|
Bass Lukas Jakobski
Czas trwania: 40min
Prowadzenie prób: Dominique Mercy
Asystent: Bénédicte Billiet
Dancers: Pau Aran Gimeno, Michael Carter, Jonathan Fredrickson, Blanca Noguerol Ramírez, Breanna O’Mara, Nazareth Panadero, Héléna Pikon, Azusa Seyama, Michael Strecker, Ophelia Young
Gościnnie: Clémentine Deluy, Scott Jennings, Fernando Suels Mendoza
Śpiew Marie Heeschen (Soprano), Lukas Jakobski (Bass)
Premiera: 20. May 1978 Opera House
Obsada premierowa:: Malou Airaudo, Pina Bausch, Meryl Tankard, Rolf Borzik, Dominique Mercy, Jan Minarik (Jean Mindo)
Café Müller is the title of a four-part evening which premiered on May 20, 1978. In addition to the choreography by Pina Bausch, which is performed regularly to this day, this evening originally consisted of works by Gerhard Bohner, Gigi-Gheorghe Caciuléanu and Hans Pop. The creators together agreed that each of them would create a performance containing the following elements:
Cafe
Darkness
Four people
Someone waits
Someone falls over
Someone is picked up
A red-haired girl enters
Everything goes quiet
Café Müller is a performance in which Pina herself performs after five years of absence on the stage. As Malou Airaudo says in the documentary by Wim Wenders, she did it at the instigation of the dancers. Café Müller is a performance that combines Pina's styles, which she used to create operas, and the search for a new style that later became recognizable as dance theater.
The space of the performance is a room with naked walls filled with chairs and tables. There are doors on the sides of the room and revolving doors in the left back corner. It could be a cafe place, maybe a canteen in a psychiatric institution. The lowered chairs symbolize the people who used to sit on them. The performance Rolf Borzig is performing, Pina's private partner, the author of stage design and costumes. There is a famous quote from Pina, which tells how much difference in performing and feeling in the pefrormance was whether she looked downwards with her eyes closed. The music in the performance is the laments of Henry Purcell from the ballets "The Fairy Queen" (1692) and "Dido and Aeneas" (1689).
Music from the performance
The music in the performance comes from works by Henry Purcell from the ballets "The Fairy Queen" (1692) and "Dido and Aeneas" (1689).
Next winter comes slowly
Next winter comes slowly,
pale, meager and cold,
First trembling with age,
and then, quivering with cold;
benumb'd with hard frosts,
and with snow cover'd o'er,
benumb'd with hard frosts,
and with snow cover'd o'er,
Prays to the sun to restore him,
prays to the sun to restore him
and sings as before.
See, even Night herself is here
See, see‚ see
Even night herself is here
See‚ see‚ see, even night
Even night herself is here
To favour your design
And all her peaceful train is near
That men to sleep incline
Let noise and care, doubt and despair
Envy and spite‚ (the fiendes delight)
Be ever, be ever banished hence
Let soft repose her eyelids close
And mu...urmering
Streams bring pleasing dreams
Let nothing, let nothing stay
To give offence
Let nothing‚ let nothing
Nothing stay to give offence
When I am laid in earth
Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me,
On thy bosom let me rest,
More I would, but Death invades me;
Death is now a welcome guest.
When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
O Let Me Weep, For Ever Weep
O, let me forever weep:
My eyes no more shall welcome sleep
I'll hide me from the sight of day
And sigh my soul away
He's gone, his loss deplore
And I shall never see him more
THE ART WORK IS BORN IN THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR'S MIND, DIES IN THE HANDS OF THE READER, TO BE REBORN UNDER FAN'S FINGERS.
Re-read what was rejected the first time, reread, this time without skipping pages, read from a different angle to check something….
The first time I heard about fanfiction was thanks to my friend from primary school. When we were young we loved playing "The Sims"game (all the versions and additions were familiar to us). We wrote down the stories of our characters in notebooks and shared them with each other. Of course, our stories were much richer and filled with psychological plots, much more than the technology of the game allowed at that time. Over time, we just started writing short stories, and then whole books, and we were our only audience. For me, this stage some time later was over. For my friend it was the beginning of writing her own versions of famous stories. Patrycja was a huuuugeeee fan of the series Game of Thrones, even her stick insect was called Khaleesi. Her fascination with this character was so big that she published her own stories, often very long ones, about the life of the heroine on the Internet.
As a dancer and choreographer, I am fascinated by creativity of Piny Baush. I say this with full responsibility - I believe that there is currently no one as brilliant as she in the world of dance. While studying in Germany, learning fragments of her choreographies, I imagined what it would be like to dance in her performances. It has become my dream. Some time later, as a choreographer, I started to develop a creative practice consisting in answering to a given task not as I, but as a different person (preferably famous choreographer) using her / his choreographic style. Once I found out that Café Müller, is the title of a four-part evening, which premiered on May 20, 1978, and apart from Pina Bausch's choreography, which is regularly performed today, this evening originally consisted of works by Gerhard Bohner, Gigi-Gheorghe Caciuléanu and Hans Pop - I got intrigued Especially since back then the creators agreed that each of them would create a performance containing the following elements: cafe, darkness, someone falls down, is being picked up, a red woman enters, everything goes silent. I began to wonder what it would be like to create my own Café Müller. Wanting to create a performance that is a fantasy about my own life, creating a fanfiction about the cult spectacle seemed like a good metaphor.
Below are my notes on Fanfiction. It was created on the basis of the book Fan Fiction. New forms of stories by Lidia Gąsowska, and - as fits publications on the Internet - what I learned from the Internet.
Definition:
Fan Fiction - netart, a new form of pop culture, made available through mass media technology, representing mainly works written on the basis of books, movies, series, comics, cartoons where sans are the creators. Narratives and fictional stories are set in the world of a recognizable, popular prototype. The authors do not receive payments for their work. The texts are published online thanks to self-publishing techniques. Lawrcence Lessig describes fanfic as a mastery of theft and plagiarism, but the creators believe it fits the liberating ideology of Do It Yourself. The originality of the works steps way from efficient imitation. FF is not about going in a well-known direction, it is about creating works in which the viewer has to confront his own vision with a vision of the creator. Fanfiction is classified as popular literature, it will never fit into the literary canon, and the reflection on Internet fiction is almost absent from academic discourse. It is an act of amateur production. To fully understand FF you need to know the source. Most of the creators assume that their audience is other fans, and thus they assume that they know the code, vocabulary or situation for sure. It is the production of new meanings on the basis of traces taken from the texts of pop culture. Plots transform, they mutate. New themes and new heroes are added to the prototypes, genres are mixed, the author tries to show a new sense, which until now has been carefully hidden in the work. By transforming another work, Fanfik becomes an independent work, and located in the Internet can also be read in isolation from the context of its creation. However FF flirts with the reader of the original. It is a regret for a lost story, a finished plot, for a character that the author sincerely wants to know. The world presented fits in the world of the original, and the authors assume that readers have a full knowledge of the world and often divine underworld created by the original writer. For centuries, mankind has adapted the texts of the canon to their own needs, it is literature known as apocryphal literature, i.e. texts deceptively similar to the original. The difference is that fan fiction is created with the use of a computer and immediately appears in the www.
Possible strategies for creating fanficiton:
Continuation (sequels, prequels).
Expanding background stories (They let you see the whole story in a new light.)
Restructuring (attempting an additional explanation)
Expanding the time frame (placing the characters in unusual situations)
Moral equality (portraying bad characters as good)
Change of genre
Connection - crossover fiction (Connection of e.g. Harry Potter threads with Lord of the Rings)
Personalization (placing yourself as a participant in the situation)
Hurt Comfort Stories
Mpreg (male pregnancy)
Eroticization
Who are the creators of FF:
Ficers define themselves by nicknames, often without gender. Fanfic is born from a feeling of unsatisfaction after reading the original, a plot could have ended too early, the character would not fully reveal their potential in the background, sometimes the story is not spicy enough. His writing satisfies the need for participation in culture - today it is also the right of ordinary people. The fan confuses, lies, and fails, but this is what creates, by a whim, something new. “I decided to write my own version of the sixth Harry Potter book. I admit that I did not quite like this volume in the original " . Writing a fanfiction is a quasi-authorship. Authorship inspired. Fans create for their own pleasure, satisfaction, or are guided by creative passions. They consume, exploit the work, feed on the prototype, use their own desires in their works and satisfy themselves through writing. They want access to another life. Thanks to their new medium, fans can unite into institutions of pressure and force the creators for new solutions. The value is the joy of writing / creating, creativity, finding new connections between parts of our culture, the cult of freedom and uniqueness. E-writing frees the individual, giving the possibility of individualisation.
Law :
At present, fan-fiction authors, by publishing their works on the Internet, run the risk of violating personal rights of the authors and above all, the right to a fair use of the work. In the event of a dispute, the author of the inspired work will have to prove that his work does not infringe the personal rights of the original author. It is important that copyright protection is often not the subject matter, but its individualisation (characters, their fate, specific situations). The authors can also protect themselves against the aspirations of lovers by, for example, patenting the character pattern (as, for example, Disney did in the case of Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh)
Who is the redheaded woman?
“The woman falls into the space like a volcano through the revolving door, runs jittery and nervous, observes anxiously others, tries to make contact with them, but they are so absorbed with themselves that she has no access to them. Defeated and resigned, she gives the coat and wig to the character danced by Pina Bausch. "
The Redhead woman in Café Müller, which I use in my performance, was originally Meryl Tankard (who later took over as director of the Australian Dance Theater in 1993-1998), followed by Nazareth Panadero, after Meryl leaved the company.
This figure is the only one who does not fall into the chairs arranged in space, but finds her own way inbetween them. In a world of self-centeredness, she is focused on others. She is a counterpoint to the rest. Only her movement language is based on everyday movements. It has a pace completely different from the rest and moves much faster.
She is an independent character, who does not need help with the surrounding space, she is aware of it. Its first entry is like a preview of what she will be: a mass of information, a bundle of nerves. She moves as if she did not know what to do with herself, with the existing situation. Her constant entrances and exits from the stage show how awkward she is in this situation.
She wants something very badly. She tries to help others, but doesn't know how, she has no tools for that. She is lost. The red-haired woman also does not want to disturb others, she moves out of their way, avoids them. She is panicky, fearful, timid, chasing and running away at the same time. As the performance progresses, her inner tension grows, she hides more often and takes her hands out of her pockets, adjusts her coat. She does not know if it should be there or not, enter or leave. It comes to the kiss between her and Dominique Mercy. The man leaves her all alone. In this character there is an empathy for other characters.
The red-haired figure interested me because physically it seems to be a natural physical close element to me. Her movement code inspired. Most importantly, her nervousness and confusion reflect state, which I would like to have my performance.
Running practice
The character with red hair's run is one of her most characteristic features. With small steps in low-heeled shoes, he travels the space dynamically. This quality has become an important part of my work on the character. This is also a feature that resonates very much with the mood I want to get in my Café Müller.
What's in this run?
Nervousness, jittery, ignorance, helplessness, stress, getting lost. It's a huge attempt to be with someone else, to do something.
What does this run say about the character?
That she is nervous.
That she wants something, but doesn't know how to achieve it.
That she doesn't know what to do with herself.
That she cannot do something, that she does not know how.
That she is lost, confused.
That she is very empathetic.
That she is lost.
What could this run be?
Restless observation, a bundle of nerves, helplessness, moving away, will to be invisible (quite paradoxically).
Running intention:
Trying to make contact, wanting to help others, relieving internal tension, moving away, leaving, wanting to disappear.
Note from the rehearsal on August 17, 2021
This run builds an atmosphere of anxiety, darkness creates concentration. I feel that it is creating my relationship with the space.
T H E C O S T U M E
The costume for the performance was designed by Nikola Fedak. I met Nikola a few years ago while working as a photographer and stylist, I used her designs in one of my first photoshots. Since then, I have been watching her development. In the meantime, I borrowed her other projects for the photoshots, in one of them I even had the pleasure to pose! Once, when I was picking up the projects in person, we met live and her energy spoke to me right away - I knew that one day I would want to work with her. I really wanted to invite her to create costumes for the Sticky Fingers Club performance , unfortunately financial possibilities did not allow for it there.
Nikola in 2020 graduated from the Warsaw Department of Fashion at the Academy of Fine Arts. Her diploma collection, Over the rainbow, fascinated me with its colors, textures and a modern approach to uniqueness. The collection was awarded by the Polish Vogue. I could try to write an original description of her collection, but Marcin Rózyc in his article did it absolutely on point, so I will use the following quote:
Nikola has created a collection that blurs the lines between women's and men's fashion, at the same time telling about modern masculinity. The style is immersed in the past - it resembles the art of Art Nouveau, Young Poland, the Pre-Raphaelites, the work of artists fascinated by nature, drawing on deep and extreme emotions, fantasies and memories. Nikola Fedak's projects bring to mind the literature of Virginia Woolf, especially the novel "Orlando", the title character, who travels the centuries in both male and female bodies, in female and male clothes. Sometimes she is a knight, other times an aristocrat, a lady and a lover. Orlando travels through the ages and genders.
Nikola Fedak, a seeker of joyful childhood emotions, took us to this land. As she herself says: - Childlike happiness and utopian carelessness that evaporates from a person over the years. Nikola wants children's joy and optimism to stay with us forever. She uses the rainbow metaphor, which in the poem by Bolesław Leśmian she quotes becomes a gate that blooms after the May rain.
The poem and song helped the designer survive the fear-filled time of isolation, the first wave of the pandemic. - In moments of fear, I played on the piano "Over the Rainbow". I closed my eyes and I could be anywhere, whoever, whatever I wanted - reports Nikola, for whom working on the collection was a kind of therapy, a relief for fears.
By inviting Nikola to cooperate, I kicked it off her with a certain package of information and a tasks. The performance, which is a fantasy about a red-haired character from Café Müller, required the costume created by Rolf Borzik to be reinterpreted in the contemporary context. I asked Nikola to see the Café Müller performance and the movie Pina (dir. Wim Wenders), so that not only the show itself, but the entire work of the choreographer, would inspire her to create a costume. I also asked her to smuggle current trends and her style into the costumes. During our first conversation, I presented her works by Pina Baush and talked about the performances: Café Müller, Palermo Palermo, Kontakthof and Le Sacre du Printemps . We talked about the gender division of characters: men wearing elegant suits and women in evening dresses with heels. Very quickly, Nikola suggested that the costume should be a jumpsuit of the same color as in Café Müller . I fell in love with this idea. The costume was supposed to be unisex, to balance between male and female energy, and to refer to the choreographer's work with its cut and details. The costume was made by Serafin Andrzejak in the Fashion System in Warsaw . It is thanks to him that a vision drawn on paper with a design talent has become feasible.
The fabric found by Nikola is shimmering viscose from Turkey that Nikola found on an internet forum. These are the leftovers of another designer who owns an online store. The cut of the project is a mix of many costumes from various Pina's performances. From the costume of the red-haired character from Café Müller, Nikola was inspired by the double fold of the dress. She decided to add extra volume coming out of the crotch of the costume. There are ruffles in the dress at the waist, which in my costumes are rendered in excess of material tightened with a string, which recreates and stops this effect. The suit is symmetrical. The deep neckline is a reference to Pina Baush's costume Café Müller. The structure of the back is reminiscent of the Julie Shanahan costume: lowered back line, the costume hung on thin straps revealing a lot of the body, the center descending into the gentle V. The shoulder straps on the back are connected with a thin stripe reminiscent of the harness from the The Rite of Spring. Originally, the costume also included a jacket, which we finally gave up on. The costume is also my private coat, which I bought in a second hand store in Vienna, and low-heeled shoes, which not only refer to the Café Müller performance, but also reminded me of the ones that my mother owned and wore. These two elements are carried over from the original costume in the performance.
When I put on the costume, I could see that it gave me the feeling I was expecting - so I knew Nikola did a fantastic job! My silhouette was more vertical, I automatically thought about focusing on the work of the shoulder blades, opening the shoulders and looking for a movement material based on the long line of the arms and the slimness of the figure.
