The photograph was taken in spring 1959 at a shelter in Kalatówki, in the Tatra mountains, where a range of artistic bohemians, mainly musicians and actors, had gathered for the Jazz Camping event. Apart from the aforementioned duo, there were also names such as Krzysztof Komeda, Jerzy Duduś Matuszkiewicz, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Andrzej Trzaskowski, Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski, and Gustaw Holoubek. All in all, there were around seventy people letting their hair down in the mountains.
The ten-day long party included dancing to jazz music, joint performances with a Roma band, and a pyjama party, at which this picture of Roman Polanski dancing barefoot on a table was taken. The legendary director was celebrating his name day. After dancing to improvised music until dawn, everyone marched out into the snow in front of the shelter to engage in chair racing, sledging in bowls, and snowball fighting using toilet lids as shields. The manager did not complain, as the shelter was due to be renovated straight after Jazz Camping.
Those ten crazy days were also documented by director Bogusław Rybczyński in his short documentary Jazz Camping. The narrator tells the story, explaining in a calm voice:
Jazz… It has its irreconcilable enemies and zealous supporters. It knows no bounds and couldn’t care less what people think. It simply manifests life itself. Joy and anger. Dizzying tempos and hidden lyricism. The relentless passion of human activity.