From the 2nd of August, Ramona Nagabczyńska and three fellow dancers, Magdalena Jędra, Kondrad Szymański and Izabela Chlewińska present 15 performances of their staggering piece New (Dis)Order. Choreographed and directed by the Polish-Canadian dancer Nagabczyńska with, as is underscored in the event’s programme, a generous input from the dancers, the piece stages a dynamically changing array of bodily reactions. The dancers are bodies, bodies prone to the beat and din of music (a flowing undercurrent in the piece) as they are susceptible to each other, and then - to their own organic reactions of breathing, sweating, giving off heat. They go on and on, as if without end, as the beat grows and fades, and a very special thing happens with the light… The dancers find the beat, it finds them. They search for and then abandon each other.
In a programme note, the artists quote Cynthia M. Novak from Movement as Culture:
Rock dance tended to be exuberant and anarchically complex, while theatre dance was often pedestrian and minimal. The familiar joke summarized the situation: in the early 1960s people would go to a dance concert to watch people stand around, and afterwards everyone would go to a party and dance.
Drawing from Novak’s thought, the artists reiterate:
This dance piece is about alternative culture. This dance piece is about individuality. This dance piece is about collectively. This dance piece is about body politics. This dance piece is about aesthetics. This dance piece is about resistance. This dance piece is about conformity. This dance piece is about ecstasy. This dance piece is about eroticism. This dance piece is about history. This dance piece is about rhythm. This dance piece is about ritual. This dance piece is about new order. This dance piece is about new chaos. This dance piece is about dance.
The lighting design for New (Dis)Order was created by Jan Cybis. Music employed is from NEU!, Nisennenmondai, Ścianka, Chinawoman and David Bowie. New (Disorder) is performed daily from the 2nd through to the 17th of August at the Dance Base venue in Edinburgh.
Ramona Nagabczyńska is a graduate of the Ballet School in Warsaw and studied contemporary dance at the Hochschule fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt, as well as The Place in London. She worked as a dancer for the Polski Teatr Tańca (Polish Dance Theatre), the Zawirowania Dance Theatre, and collaborated with Marysia Stokłosa, Good Girl Killer, Darkin Ensemble, Tom Dale Company, Lucy Guerin and Carrie Cracknell. She currently cooperates with the U.K.-based Clod Ensemble, the French choreographer David Wampach and Kaya Kołodziejczyk. Nagabczyńska is a member of the U/LOI collective which brings together Polish dancers and choreographers that work abroad.
Running simultaneously to the dance piece is an international co-production of the Teatr Malabar Hotel and the Figurentheater Wilde&Vogel. Based on the writings of Jonathan Safron Foer, and motifs from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Tempest, Louder! is a performance about growing up. It is a play about worlds that vanished, about losing loved ones, and about learning to live with the memory of what no longer exists. While intertwining puppetery with live acting, video projections and a daunting musical score created especially for the piece by Charlotte Wilde, Louder! tells the story of a boy who lost his father in the tragedy of the World Trade Center. As he is searching for him, he faces a difficult and mysterious family history. Directed by Michale Vogel, the piece is perfomed by Marcin Bartnikowski and Marcin Bikowski with puppets designed by Bikowski. An enthusiastic review in Gazeta Współczesna stated that
Bikowski and Bartnikowski make the spectator enter into the world they create with no avail. […] It’s a pity that the show is so short, leaving the viewer with a lack and a sharpened appetite for good theatre.
The showings of Louder! take place from the 2nd through to the 17th of August at the Summerhall venue in Edinburgh.
The third piece shown in Edinburgh is Ball at Hawking’s, and it takes on the persona of the famous scientist Stephen Hawking as a pretext for broader discussion on the cultural and social status of people with disabilities.
The Ball at Stephen Hawking's is a very unusual ball. There are no rotating pairs, no decorations and no orchestra. But then the sexuality of people with disabilities is still a taboo subject. Renata Jasińska, the director of the piece and the head of Teatr Arka has decided to tackle the basic questions; Is the fully functional body healthy, and the on with defects and disabilities – not healthy? What about the spirit? What makes for this categorisation – social stigma or medical diagnosis? Do people with disabilities have a right to their corporeality, including love and fulfillment in relationships between men and women?
Hawking's scientific achievements inspire reflection on the place of humans in the universe. The piece is an invitation to try and tame mental disability, as well as a protest against conformity and social stigma. A review from the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper states:
Wroclaw’s Ark Theatre’s mission is to integrate people with disabilities through art … finely etched, great costumes, a loose, flowing design, and without ever simplifying disability issues
The performance is shown from the 2nd through to the 12th of August, at the New Town Theatre in Edinburgh.
The showings of New (Dis)order and Louder! take place as part of the Polska Arts in Edinburgh programme, and are financed by the Adam Mickiewicz Insitute.
Author: Paulina Schlosser,
source: Gazeta Współczesna, e-teatr. pl, teatrstudio.pl, press release, 17.07.2013
Thumbnail credits: a scene from New (Dis)Order, photo: Paweł Grześ, taniecpolska.pl