Performances 03.07

Silesian Dance Theatre
"Glamour of mundane. Dream from a saint"

Community outreach programs:
Silesian Dance Theatre
and Piekarskie Klachule
"Generations"

Festival Diary, Day 7: Bridget Critique of the Festival Newspaper team

Time: 7.00 a.m.
Stress units: 30
Tiredness units: 50
Cigerettes: 0

It seems I’m sleeping, but it’s not true. I can hear people coming in and out from the room. I know, it’s my fault, sleeping under the table is not a good strategy. Well, there’s no free space anywhere else. The whole floor is divided into several sleeping bags. I can hear because I have lost an ear plug from my left ear. Probably it has stuck to my hair and I will have to pull it out. But I’ll do it later. Why do I use earplugs? Parties in Fantom [The bar at the Silesian Dance Theatre]last till 4.00 a.m. Our flatmates get up at 7.00 a.m. Seven minus four leaves three hours sleep

Time: 7.15 a.m.
Stress units: 40
Tiredness units: 40
Cigerettes: still 0!

I need to pee. I have to get up. I’m groggy, but I manage to stagger out of bed and I’m on my way. And soon I am coming back – the toilet is occupied by those leaving at 7.30. I will have to go outside. In pyjamas? I put on my clothes.

Time: 7.30 a.m.
Finally the silence I’ve been dreaming about. I return to my sleeping bag. A drop of sleep in a whole sea of needs. I want to drink it right now.

Time: 10.00 a.m.
Stress units: 50
Tiredness units: 30
Cigarettes: 1

Cleaning teeth, fast make up, coffee made of three teaspoons per cup, first cigarette – this one kills fastest. To settle my shaking hands. There’s no electricity in the flat, same as every morning. With wet hair I am running for my theory classes. Luckily the others don’t look better than I do. Where did they sleep? While passing us, people stare in a strange way. Knowing that we look like zombies we turn our identity badges upside down, not to let them read our names.

Time: 11.30 a.m.
Stress units: 80
Tiredness units: 60
Cigarettes: 20

With my head crazy with pain I am checking my e-mails in the office. Maybe somebody decided to write a review of yesterday’s performance. The computer has broken down. Black screen has devoured everything that was done last day and night. Who will help me? The Chief Editor is neurotic, so don’t go close. A guy with a minimum of computer knowledge is trying to repair it. Swearing, he is taking something from one place and putting it to another. I am smoking the next portion of cigarettes. I feel sick. Eating? There’s no time.

Time: midday

Deadline for texts for the today’s issue of the newspaper. We won’t be ready with the translations. Stuart has fallen asleep in a chair. To wake him up, to motivate. A lovely man. I didn’t know that they play hymn in Bytom too. I am moving my toe in its rhythm– well I am at dance conference, aren’t I?

Time: 14.00 p.m.
Stress units: 100
Tiredness units: 95
Cigarettes: 43

The Internet isn’t working. We cannot send our texts for layout. Shattered nerves. To relax I am building on a desk an installation made of plastic mugs, yesterday’s issue of the newspaper and the wrap of the chief editor. The last cigarette. A glass of water. My mind is elsewhere. I rest in the sunlight streaming through the window.

Time: 15.00 p.m.
Stress units: 20 above permissible standard
Tiredness units: 10 above norm
Cigarettes: 50

I’ve had enough. I’m going to eat. Ingredients of our meals still the same. I have a mouth like a hog and my hands are shaking. There are no napkins. At the moment a disappointed reader is scolding me for a negative review. With my dirty nose I look like a cross between a zombie and a clown – a real authority. My appetite is gone. The crisis is coming. A remark: people take words too personally, they become offended like children. Our discussion is not a dialogue. The critic doesn’t play a constructive function. What are we here for?

Time: 16.00 p.m.
Stress units: 10 above norm
Tiredness units: it stays at the same level
Cigarettes: 52

To catch someone and give him a questionnaire. He may not agree to fill it out. The target recognized, mission completed, the only question that remains is whether he will give it back completed or not? An interview with 0ne of the Korean dancers. It’s crazy. I am making notes, but my handwriting is unreadable. A dictaphone is out of the question – it records only Polish words. How does it happen? Ghosts from the office are specialists of rummaging for technical equipment. But not only that – they have half eaten the editor’s pen.

Time: 17.00 p.m.

I am running for yoga. I don’t know where studio C is. I'm guessing. Then I am standing on a mat surrounded by athletic dancers’ bodies. My own, flaccid from sitting at desk is recalcitrant. I am falling asleep during the meditation. I am thinking and stress is coming back. Fast back to the office. The computers are alive again, so let’s get back to work. I feel sticky, so I refresh myself with coffee.

Time: 18.30 p.m.
Stress units: 25 above norm
Tiredness units: 30 above norm
Cigarettes: 62

We are making copies of our newspaper. For a while, the Xerox machine is out of order. I have stopped reacting to such things. Coffee before the performance. Maybe I won’t fall asleep in the middle. Watch and remember, think and interpret. There is no pleasure from watching a performance if you are to be its critic. L

Time: 21.00 p.m.

After the performance. We are collecting opinions from the audience. The proportion between those who are polite to me and those who are not is 1:1. Sometimes you may be invited for coffee instead of getting an opinion.
Most of the reactions: very nice, super, I liked it much. Are we afraid of negative opinions? Asking questions is fascinating me more and more as a social phenomenon.

Time: 22.00 p.m.
Stress units: around 100
Tiredness units: 150, which mean half too much
Cigarettes: after summing up 70

To the computer, divide up the work, schedule tasks. Who will give me a massage? No hands in the air, they are all touching keyboard. Hand-fetishists are typing, typing, typing. As Nosowska was singing: “coffee, cigarettes, coffee and me”. Temptation to get drunk, inspiration is not coming. Stormy discussions about what we saw. Those who don’t have a duty to write, are deserting in the direction of sleeping bags or a dancing parquet..

Time: midnight
Stress units: 0
Tiredness units: faaaaar too much
Cigarettes: as above

The highest point of creative passion and of computers’ destruction – it takes 35 min. to open the Onet website. I can hear the voice of somebody writing in a different room. At this hour we are all talking to ourselves. Dilemmas, banal during the day are growing bigger and bigger. Narcotic need of sweets!

Time: 2.00 a.m.

Night marathon across Bytom in search of a night shop with a wide range of chocolates. On the way “scary” views. Coffee, coffee, coffecoffecoffee... Pudding instead of brain. Night creatures are flying in the office. We are running away.

Time: 4.00 a.m.
Stress units: minus 20
Tiredness units: very close to the limit of what you can stand
Cigarettes: third pack

The computer screen has become black – the mouse has covered it up with a black curtain. When you touch it, the mouse articulates strange sounds. God, what is going on there? The mouse “is dancing” with a hard disc.
A small attack of panic, uncontrolled laughter. We manage to wake up a colleague, who is trying to calm the mouse.

Time: 6.00 a.m.

It’s bright. Bodies scarcely alive make their way to their coffins. They are carrying mysterious suitcases hiding laptops. Glassy eyes don’t see the door, which result in bruises. Sleepy stuffiness in the flat. Hairs in the sink. A stranger is lying in my place with my clothes under her head. I wonder if she has used my toothbrush. A cigarette, my only friend, is with me all the time. I manage not to kill the stranger. I am sleeping in the hall .


Your Bridget Critique

translation: Magdalena Pietras

Congratulations to "Bridget Critique" for the funniest ever submission to CriticalDance. Conversations with the newspaper team confirm the conditions in the nightmarish flat. Only thing is, last year was worse.....

Community Project „Generations”, by Piekarskie Klachule (Folk Group “Piekary Gossip”) and Młodzi Gniewni (“Young and Angry” Group)

author: Anna Koczorowska
translation: Magdalena Pietraś

This is not a review. We cannot judge a community project using the same terms, which are used for professional art. In this type of performance the most important aspect is the aim and, if it is achieved, we can talk about success.

In the project prepared by the “Young and Angry” Group (hip hop group of youngsters from marginalized society) and by “Piekary Gossip” (regional group singing traditional Silesian folk songs), the aim was to bring closer two societies representing different generations (it is where the title comes from). Each of these groups performed their usual material – the children brought the easy movement of American street dance, the folk singers added Silesian songs unchanged for centuries. Everything was linked by a plot: an accidental meeting of two groups on the street, mutual sympathy, and participation in a traditional wedding ceremony... We could also listen to the Silesian dialect, which is not an unimportant thing when we take into account the fact that the whole sense of the project is in linking local tradition with what is popular worldwide, in joining “the small homeland” with the world.

A dance lover, who seldom has contact with a mixture of different types of music and dance, will be interested by those moments of the performance when folk songs rediscover their rhythmical structures and it turns out that you can dance hip hop to this kind of music. Being one such dance lover, I noticed and appreciated it. Everyone who decides to see the performance will be attracted especially by one thing: at first sight we readily see how important it is for the performers to take part in the project. Their feelings, the intensity of their emotions, their absolute engagement to the work, made the spectators unable to stay unmoved. Me included.

IF A FEW WORDS ARE NOT ENOUGH – VOICES FROM OUR READERS

DANCE MAGIC – ABOUT “Glamour of mundane. Dream from a saint”

author: Anna Morkis from Wojeteth Theatre Studio in Chorzów
translation: Magdalena Pietraś

“Glamour of mundane. Dream from a saint" is the latest performance of Silesian Dance Theatre with choreography and, unfortunately, scenography by Jacek Łumiński. I write “unfortunately” because for some time in his performances there is habitually a transparent wall through which we can see the fuzzy figures of the dancers. It probably has artistic meaning, but, for goodness sake, not in all the performances. A change of scenographer is needed.
The content is also similar to the other performances of this company, because it is about emotions, searching, being lost, questions and answers. But the form is totally different. We can easily notice the change of technique – the dance is energetic, sometimes chaotic, but all the time lively. Dancers are not somewhere else, they don’t experience their dream and realityalone, but they integrate with the spectators , literally bringing them into the game. They force them to think and to return to memories both from dreams and from real life. Leszek Stanek’s (a dancer of Silesian Dance Theatre) words concerning performance are very accurate: “...”

WE SINK INSIDE OURSELVES
Silesian Dance Theatre: "Glamour of mundane. Dream from a saint"
author: Marta Maniecka
translation: Magdalena Pietraś


Jacek Łumiński’s "Glamour of mundane. Dream from a saint" is not only perfectly planned, energetic movement, but also a story about travellingand searching. It consists of heterogeneous scenes and episodes, which makes catching the story’s message quite difficult. Like in a dream there is an interlacing of views, which seemingly don’t compose the whole. Each of the views brings some new impressions and arouses elusive emotions.

Everything starts when a young man, coming down from a high post, crosses the invisible border and enters a new, unfamiliar world. It is the beginning of a journey, which brings new experiences. Every meeting, every event is a kind of education about life, about people and relations between them. It is also the quest for the truth. The dances change all the time, from the solo etudes to collective dances, showing both the good and the bad in life. The relations between dancers are sometimes tender and sometimes aggressive. Every meeting in this strange space, somewhere between heaven and hell, can become a mutual experiencing of joy or mutual harming. Each character still changes his face, trying to find the right one.

One of the most interesting but also the most controversial scenes is the infantile game show, ending with audience participation. Such a short break in the performance, colorful and funny. But after a while the young man’s shout: “Let’s smile, let’s have fun!” changes from crying for fun into an exclamation of regret and disappointment. It turns out that there is nothing behind the play – it is just an easy joke for which most of us fall. Cheap gestures may be beautiful, but worth nothing.

The journey of the young man can be compared to a series of trials – each new situation and each new character he meets is a test for him and allows him to discover the principles ruling this world and his own identity. It is a kind of initiation – the character has to find and accept the other side of himself. The innocent and joyful boy becomes a man who knows that he is able to give both love and sorrow. The symbolic moment of the character’s death, when his head is covered with sand, points out the fact of completing his initiation. Crossing the step of recognition is at the same time a kind of self-annihilation and the entrance to the zone of rebirth. Old opinions, habits and the fog of ideas about himself are destroyed and replaced by self-consciousness. And “the one, who has seen himself the way he is, is greater than the one who resurrects the dead ”.

The performance is universal. “Glamour of mundane. Dream from a saint” is what we experience everyday. By meeting people we build different relations with them and we find out the truth about ourselves and about the world. Everything that happens to us has an influence on what we are like and lets us establish our own limits. Oscillating between the truth and the illusion, we keep on searching for what is the most important. It doesn’t matter whether we are among people or alongside them, we always venture inside ourselves.