Marzena Krzemińska is the author of several original plays and has co-operated with artists such as Deborah Hay, Benoit Lachambre and Rob List. She has also worked as an assistant choreographer with Maria Hassabi in New York and Jeanine Durning in Amsterdam. In 2012, she received a scholarship from the Solo Project programme, which was conducted under the curatorial direction of Joanna Leśnierowska in Poznań’s centre for talents: the Art Stations Foundation / Old Brewery New Dance, and as part of which Krzemińska completed her work 5-7-5 HAIKU. The performance was shown in the Chinese National Opera House at one of the most important theatre festivals in Asia and at the prestigious Berlin Tanztage, among others.
5-7-5 Haiku trailer from Marzena Krzeminska on Vimeo.
5-7-5 HAIKU, as the artist explains, is a show created around the idea of emotional expression and kinaesthetic experience. The choreographer is interested in how the form and structure of a performance affect the engagement and emotions of the audience. She focuses on the narrative, on the repetition of body configurations, on dynamic changes, and the use of silence and suspense. The music was composed by Patryk Lichota and the costumes were designed by Łukasz Tchaikovsky. Tension and explosions of energy are important tools which Krzemińska employs to deconstruct images and stereotypes.
As Magdalena Zamorska has observed on the taniecpolska.pl portal, the artist imbues her choreography with sound and breathe combined with body movements and air. According to her, the minimalist set design, the aria which opens the performance, the mourning dress, as well as the confession aimed directly at the viewer (‘I saw a car, people, a man with a child, a crying girl ...’) all remind of the tradition of lamentation. This is what Krzemińska, in turn, says of her education, her work on the form and the search for her own language of movement:
The School for New Dance Development (SNDO) encouraged the creation of personal art identity, of a ‘who I am’ manifesto. I am looking for a different method of communication. I make references to certain forms, such as Greek tragedy, or opera, in order to create a situation in which we experience strong emotions, but nevertheless remember that we are in the theatre and that we have agreed to this situation. I treat the emergence of emotions as an encounter with something higher than the self. My character on stage is a representative of the public, for which I perform a ritual. I present something, and not myself; in front of them, and not to them. Viewers are invited – they can connect, or watch from a distance.
Sources: taniecpolska, Culture.pl, ed. AL, transl. Bozhana Nikolova, February 2015