Paweł Sakowicz

He works in Poland and abroad creating solo and group projects as well as choreographies for theatre. In 2016, he was nominated for the prestigious Paszporty Polityki award for 'scenic charisma full of irony and wit'.

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Paweł Sakowicz

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Paweł Sakowicz, photo: Filip Preis

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Paweł Sakowicz is a dancer, choreographer and political scientist with diplomas from the University of Warsaw and London Contemporary Dance School. In an interview for Polityka, Sakowicz admits that his job as a choreographer often starts on a paper, in a book or on the Internet. The artist emphasizes:

I work analytically, creating endless maps of thoughts and connections between them (…) Theatre and choreography have a lot in common.

His debutant solo performance Bernhard was inspired by Thomas Bernhard's rhythmic and musical language used in literature. Sakowicz explained in an interview with Mike Urbaniak:

My attitude to Thomas Bernhard is such that I cannot stop reading his works. I take an awkward pleasure from reading them all over again, like mantra. While transforming his work into motion and infecting my body with his literature, I worked a lot with repetition. A formal and improvised performance was an outcome of the work.

In 2014, the choreography qualified for the Polish Platform of Dance in Lublin. The performance TOTAL, created in Art Station Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk, is a variation about the dancing virtuosity.

He collaborated with Iza Szostak and Cricoteka at Excavator Ballet (2015), an original dance of two excavators operated by two artists. Sakowicz stated in an interview with Witold Mrożek:

Surprisingly quick our work with the machines became an intuitive mechanical extension of anatomic motion of limbs.

The choreography of machines was a try at facing Oskar Schlemmer's (a Bauhaus professor, painter, esthetician and dance reformer) works who was fascinated with the automatism of ballet dancers' moves.

Excavator Ballet trailer from Iza Szostak on Vimeo.

Paweł Sakowicz has collaborated with such artists as Mikołaj Mikołajczyk, Ramona Nagabczyńska, Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Rebecca Lazier, Isabelle Schad, Aleksandra Jakubczak, Peter Pleyer, Joanna Leśnierowska and Marta Ziółek. It is the role at the latter's Make Yourself (Zrób siebie) in Komuna Warszawa that brought the young artist fame and audience recognition. According to the theatre critic Paweł Soczyński, Sakowicz is a colourful scenic personality and the most magnetic of contemporary dance choreographers.

The young artist is also an author of choreographies to the musical play Schubert, a Romantic Composition for Twelve Performers and String Quartet directed by Magda Szpecht (Jerzy Szaniawski Dramatyczny Theatre in Wałbrzych) and rewarded at the 22^nd National Competition for staging Polish Contemporary Art. He was nominated for the Passports for 'interesting search as a soloist and choreographer, whose work is not merely an equivalent element, but a constitutive framework of theatrical project.

The artist also authored the choreography of the play Schubert, a Romantic Composition for Twelve Performers and String Quartet directed by Magda Szpecht (Jerzy Szaniawski Dramatyczny Theatre in Wałbrzych). For his work he was nominated for the 22^nd National Competition for Polish Contemporary Art. He was also nominated for a Polityka award for his ‘innovative search as a soloist and choreographer whose work constitutes the most crucial framework of theatrical projects’.

In 2017 Sakowicz started working on Jumpcore, a play inspired by the story of the legendary New York dance artist Fred Herko, and his tragic death in particular. It was performed at the Boska Komedia Festival in 2018 and later became part of the permanent collection of Zachęta National Gallery of Art. The artist worked on Jumpcore during his artistic residency at the 9^th Maat Festival in Lublin. During an interview with Izabela Szymańska, he said:

I bring up Herko in the first scene, as a means of touching on my way of thinking about acceleration, fantasies, and dance in general.

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Jumpcore, Paweł Sakowicz, photo: Maciej Rukasz

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Sakowicz authored the choreography of the critically acclaimed play LOKIS by Łukasz Twarkowski. The performance was produced by Lithuanian National Drama Theatre and is considered the most striking theatrical event of 2017.

In the same year he worked twice with theatre director Agnieszka Jakimiak. He collaborated with her on Weronika Szczawińska’s performance Komuna Paryska (Commune of Paris) in Polski Theatre in Bydgoszcz, where Jakimiak was responsible for dramaturgical consultation. He also starred together with Klara Bielawka in a play directed by Jakimiak in the Mikro Teatr cycle organised by Komuna Warszawa.

In October 2018 Thriller had its premiere in Nowy Teatr in Warsaw. Sakowicz not only performed in the play but he also co-authored it with Anna Smolar. The performance was dedicated to teenagers over the age of 13 and revolved around questions related to how we perceive and understand the world through our bodies. The play was the second collaboration between Sakowicz and Smolar. They’d previously worked together on the play Kopciuszek (Cinderella), in the National Stary Theatre in Kraków.

In 2019, Masakra (Massacre) premiered in Nowy Teatr. It was performed by Karolina Kraczkowska, Agnieszka Kryst, Ramona Nagabczyńska, and Iza Szostak. It was a critical take on the colonial roots of Latin dance. Both Anka Herbut and Lubomir Grzelak worked on Masakra. The play was quite personal for Sakowicz, as it referenced the beginning of his dance career. The artist explained:

As a teenager, for over a decade, I was a ballroom dancer. I was getting better and better, I trained every day, and on the weekends I participated in competitions. This experience stayed with me, it is ingrained in my body. When I started Masakra rehearsals the experience of body memory came back to me for me, I was shocked.

In the fall of 2020, he created a new work – "Drama" – commissioned by the Ciało/Umysł Festival in Warsaw. Inspired by the first romantic ballet "La Sylphide", Sakowicz – in a duet with Karolina Kraczkowska – explored what was real and unreal, own and appropriated, physical and ephemeral. In 2021, in cooperation with Anka Herbut and Justyna Stasiowska, he worked on the "Vortex" project: a quadraphonic sound installation with a non-linear approach to the history of dance. The proposed concept of vortex allowed the creators to look at how different choreographic styles and forms circulate, attract and interpenetrate each other. The installation was presented at the Theater Institute in Warsaw and the Arsenał Gallery in Białystok. In 2022, the National Museum in Warsaw commissioned a new dance performance by Sakowicz: the solo work "Amando" premiered in April. It accompanied the "State of Affairs" exhibition and was presented nine times in the museum's monumental hall. "Amando" mixes the choreographer's interest in pantomime and reaches into the tradition of postmodern dance and its everyday movement as dance. The performance was also shown in Opole, Nitra, Prague and Vilnius.

Poster for "Fatamorgana" performance directed by Pawel Sakowicz, photo: organizers

In 2023, he worked on three projects: "Imperial", "Fatamorgana" and "Boa". "Imperial" is a trio work produced by Komuna Warszawa, which main theme is the waltz. After "Masakra" – in which Sakowicz and Herbut examined the politics of representation of Latin American dances – this time they focused on dance functioning at the intersection of standard, utility, peasant, and ballroom forms. "Fatamorgana", a six-person performance created at Studio Hrdinu in Prague, was Sakowicz's first major production abroad. The subject of the work was the romantic landscape that the performers look at and through. The music – created by Lithuanian composer Agni Matuleviciute – was released as an album and is available on streaming platforms. "Fatamorgana" became part of the regular repertoire of the Prague theater and was qualified for the finals of the Czech Dance Platform 2024 as one of the eight best works in the Czech Republic. "Fatamorgana" was co-financed by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, as an extension of previous cooperation with the choreographer as part of the Romantic New Stage! residency program.

"Boa" was a unique event for the national stage – it is the first choreographic performance in the history of the National Stary Theater in Krakow. Its main topic and area of movement exploration is desire, the types of its manifestation, embodiment, and performance. "Boa" - performed regularly on the main stage - opened the 2023/24 season of the Stary Theater. As we read in the performance description:

Sakowicz draws from cinematic tools that build relationships, organize images, and internalize the outside gaze, though there are no cameras on stage. The bodies here bear traces of stolen choreographies and scraps of fiery soap-opera plots. The actors practice culturally stereotyped dances of the South, and they seduce a non-existent camera, the existing audience, and one another.

Sakowicz has presented his works in such places and festivals as (among others): Santarcangelo Festival, Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Tramway Glasgow, NYU Skirball in New York, CAC in New Orleans, HAU Berlin, Culturscapes in Basel, La Biennale de danse du Val-de-Marne, Susch Museum, Sirenos Festival in Vilnius, OFF Europa in Leipzig, Divadelna Nitra, Divine Comedy in Krakow, Czech Dance Platform, three as part of three editions of the Polish Dance Platform.

He regularly collaborates with playwright Anka Herbut, sound designer Justyna Stasiowska and lighting director Jacqueline Sobiszewski. In drama theater, he cooperates primarily with Anna Smolar and Łukasz Twarkowski. With Smolar he co-created such performances as "Kopciuszek", "Halka" and "Joga" (National Stary Theater in Krakow), "Thriller" (New Theater in Warsaw) and "Hungry Ghosts" (Münchner Kammerspiele). He worked with Twarkowski, among others: on the performances: "Lokis" and "Respublika" (National Lithuanian Drama Theater in Vilnius), "WoW" (Münchner Kammerspiele) and "Rohtko" (Dailes Teatris in Riga).

Source: Polityka, taniecpolska.pl, pawelsakowicz.com, dwutygodnik.com, Gazeta Wyborcza, Cricoteka, Mike Urbaniaka's blog Pan od Kultury, combined by AL

Author: Anna Legierska, December 2016, translated by AW, January 2017. Update April 2019; update March 2024.

paweł sakowicz

dancer

choreographer

polityka passports 2016