Katarzyna Kozyra, "Rite of Spring, video installation, 1999-2002. Courtesy of the Zachęta National Gallery
Katarzyna Kozyra's Rite of Spring (1999-2002) draws upon the ballet by Vaslav Nijinsky, choreographed in 1913 to the music of Igor Stravinsky. The focus of the video work is the final moments of the dance, when the young woman who is to be sacrificed to the God of Spring performs the Sacred Dance. Visitors can stroll between the dancers on screen at their leisure. The first circle of screens shows soloists performing this very scene. The second circle of four screens shows the corps de ballet acting the roles of the elders witnessing the sacrifice. Yet the dancers here are not the young, nubile bodies one typically associates with the ballet. These dancers are not young women, but men long past their prime, aged between 60 and 90, their bodies ravaged by time. To highlight the primitive, brutal nature of the dance, their genitals are covered by grotesque oversized genitals that sometimes get in the way of the movements.
As the choreography was too complex for the dancers to perform naturally, they were allowed to lay down on the ground to make it easier to execute these startling, jerky, yet nonetheless beautiful movements. The result is a trance-like video tribute to the visceral, pagan roots of our culture. The piece wavers between dance and performance art, challenging the limits of the body, societal taboos, ideals of beauty and of form. In the traditional staging of the ballet the Chosen One dies, but in Kozyra's work she is obliged to stand back up each time she falls.
The installation is set in the gardens of the historic Musée Rodin, the artist's former home, which are to be illuminated on the evening of museum night. The showing of the video installation begins at 7:00 pm on Saturday, the 19th of May 2012.
Katarzyna Kozyra (born 1963) rose to prominence in the 1990s as a leading figure of the "critical art" movement in Poland, creating works that confront social taboos (such as death, disease and nakedness), usually related to issues of the sick, old or marginalised.
Also see the video of Katarzyna Kozyra's Rite of Spring in the digital archives of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Musée Rodin