Begun in 2008, the Beijing Fringe Festival started operating on an international scale just two years later. The initial premise was the promotion and development of independent theatre, and today it stands as one of the most popular festivals for performance art in China. Aimed mainly at a young audience of artists and aficionados, the Beijing Fringe Festival has had great success in harnessing their attention. The program is based on collaboration with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as well as the Avignon Theatre Festival.
This year audiences will see three shows involving Polish dance artists. Rite of Spring, directed by Janusz Orlik, will be performed by three dancers, the choreography confining them to a small space filled with intense traffic. The performance is a collaboration that invited two exceptional dancers, Darren Anderson from Australia and Nicholas Keegan from the U.K., to dance to Stravinsky's famous score. Of the piece, Witold Mrozek writes at Dwutygodnik.com:
Orlik’s show is primarily a combination of the precise habits of virtuosos with erotic dancing and when these things align correctly, they are meant to inspire vitality and charm.
5-7-5 Haiku is a solo project by Marzena Krzemińska. It was created around emotional expression and the kinesthetic experience. Through it, the choreographer asks how form and structure affects the audeinces’ engagement and excitement in witnessing the spectacle. Krzemińska’s piece focuses on narrative, the repetitions and dynamics of the shapes a body can make, and the use of silence and suspense. The music was created by Patryk Lichota and the costumes designed by Łukasz Czajkowski.
A scene from Haiku directed and performed by Marzena Krzemińska, photo: press material
Le Sacre, performed by the Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre, is a fragment of a never-staged version of the Stravinsky ballet that inspired Orlik's piece. It was discovered by Jeff Peretz, a professor at Bard College in Massachusetts, and he released it to the Dada von Bzdülöw. Jazzman Mikolaj Trzaska will perform his original compositions based on material from Stravinsky, and costumes were created by Sławek Blaszewski.
Schedule of performances
September 12-13
Janusz Orlik: Rite of Spring
Marzena Krzemińska: 5-7-5 Haiku
September 26-27
Dada von Bzdulow: Le Sacre
Festival organisers have also invited Polish artists to participate in the Shakespeare edition in 2014, which will include the productions King Lear by the Song of the Goat Theatre and the Travel Agency Theatres’ performance of Macbeth.
Sources: press materials, own materials. Author: SW, 19/08/2013
Translation: SMG, 20/08/2013