DANCE CONFERENCE, BYTOM POLAND: 29th June - 12th July 2008

XV Annual International Contemporary Dance Conference and Performance Festival

The rollercoaster ride that is Bytom Dance Festival is nearly upon us and CriticalDance will again be running a feedback forum for the event which has:

- 35 performances
- 28 classes
- 80 hours of seminars on the themes of dance history and dance writing
- an arts management conference

and much more. PHEW!

For current information on the festival:

www.conference.stt.art.pl

Watch this space for more information

Bytom 2008: Performance schedule

29.06.2008 Sunday
19:30 Silesian Dance Theater “Kroniki Sąsiedzkie” (Poland) - main stage
21:15 Nora Chipaumire “Manifesto / Dark Swan” (USA) - stage in power plant

30.06.2008 Monday
19:30Henrik Kaalund “On the Verge” (Denmark) - main stage
17:00 Wales Project - power plant
21:00 Trajal Harrel “Showpony” (USA) - stage, Alojzjanów street

01.07.2008 Tuesday
19:30 Eiko&Koma “Mourning” (USA) - main stage
21:15 Karolina Kroczak “Rzęsy” (Poland) - stage in power plant
21:30 Katarzyna Kizior, Szymon Osiński (Poland) “Duet” - stage in power plant
21:45 Physical Theatre Studio “Elektrokosmos” (Poland) - stage in power plant

02.07.2008 Wednesday
19:30 Lee Saar the company “Gesiha ” (USA) - main stage
20:45 Yossi Berg&Oded Graf “Heroes” (Israel) - main stage
17:00 Georg Blaschke “body.buliding.places” (Austria) - stage in power plant

03.07.2008 Thursday
19:30 Compagnie Drift “Amours et Delices” (Switzerland) - main page
21:15 Johannes Wieland Company “new you” (USA) - stage in power plant

04.07.2008 Friday
19:30 Liss Fain Dance “Crossing”, “Line Between Night and Day”, “Looking, Looking” “River at the End of the Land” (USA) - main stage
21:15Silesian Dance Theater Premiere (Poland) - stage in power plant

05.07.2008 Saturday
19:30 Compagnie Drift “machine a sons” (Switzerland) - main stage
16:00 Lisa Hinterrithner “Between screens” (Austria) - stage, Alojzjanów street

06.07.2008 Sunday
19:30 Quorum Ballet “4 pieces by Daniel Cordoso” (Portugal) - main stage
20:45 Okoem Dance Company “Valhalla” (Russia) - main stage

07.07.2008 Monday
19:30 Studio Contemporary Dance Company “The Woman Who Speaks too Much” (Croatia) - main stage
20:30 Chikako Kaido “beyond the death” (Germany) - main stage
21:30 Trajal Harrel “Quartet for the End of time” (USA) - stage in power plant

08.07.2008 Tuesday
19:30 Teatr Novogo Fronta “ZWISCHENMENSCH” (Czech Republic) - main stage
16:00Y-Space “Air and Breath I” (Hong Kong) - market square in Bytom

09.07.2008 Wednesday
19:30Dawid Lorenc Premiere (Poland) - main stage
20:15 Hybryd Autorship Project – Joe Alter “The Merry Chase, or the Recursive Synthesis of an Illusion” (USA) - main stage
21:15 Mobius Strip Theatre (Taiwan)

10.07.2008 Thursday
19:30 Y-Space “Air and Breath II” (Hong Kong) - main stage
21:00 Anna Piotrowska “look_4_faces” (Poland) - stage in power plant
21:45 Physical Theatre Studio (Poland) - stage in power plant

11.07.2008 Friday
19:30 Choreographic Laboratory SDT “Przelotnie” (Poland) - main stage
20:45 Lublin Dance Theatre “48 / 4″ (Poland) - main stage
22:00 Mobius Strip Theatre (Taiwan) - stage in power plant
17:00 Dzień Projektów Społecznych

12.07.2008 Saturday
19:30 Milena Urgen Koulas “Nothing” (Cyprus) - main stage
20:45 Idan Cohen “Joy ride”, “A year in a fish life”, “My sweet little fur” (Israel) - main stage

Legend:
Main Stage, Silesian Dance Theatre Żeromskiego Street 27

Alternative Stages:
Szombierki Power Plant, Kosynierów Street 27, Bytom-Szombierki
Kronika Gallery Rynek 26 Bytom
Ball - Conference Room Alojzjanów Street 27 Bytom
Market square in Bytom

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Bytom Festival is the dance classes, which offer an extraordinarily wide range of style sand levels, including choreography from internationally recognised artists and everything from African dance to Limon technique.

dance workshops 2007

The Technique Programming is organized to expand and develop the various tools and dance vocabulary that individual dancers, choreographers and teachers need in order to express attitudes, thoughts, feelings, etc. in an ideally unique and creative way. The accomplishment of gaining these skills creates a sense of freedom and fluency of expression in the participants movement, motion and complex theatrical techniques which are necessary in the creation and performance of dance.

Teachers:

1. John Utans - Taniec współczesny/Contemporary Dance (Australia/ Hong Kong)
2. Byron van Jones - Lyrical Jazz (USA/Niemcy)
3. Georg Blaschke – Taniec współczesny/Contemporary Dance (Austria)
4. Werner Bechter - Body Mind Centering (Austria)
5. Caro Diallo – Taniec afrykański/African Dance (Senegal/Szwajcaria)
6. Kazuko Yamazaki – Nihon Buyo (USA)
7. Nora Chipaumire – Taniec współczesny z el. afrykańskiego / Contemporary with african dance elements (USA)
8. Louise Frank – Technika Limona/Limon Technique (Holandia/Holland)
9. Pietro Cardillo - Taniec współczesny/Contemporary Dance (W. Brytania/Great Britain)
10. Vicki Fox - Taniec współczesny/Contemporary Dance (W. Brytania/Great Britain)
11. Aisa Lafour – Taniec brzucha /Bellydance (Holandia/Holland)
12. Henrik Kaalund –Warsztaty choreograficzne/ Choreographic workshop (Dania/Denmark)
13. Tomasz Rodowicz – Głos i ruch/Voice & movement (Polska/Poland)
14. Slava Krichmariev - Balet radziecki/Russian Ballet (Rosja/Russia)
15. Joe Alter – Taniec Współczesny, Improwizacja/ Contemporary Dance, improvisation (USA)
16. Harmen Tromp – Balet / Ballet (Austria)
17. Jacek Łumiński – Polska Technika Tańca Współczesnego (Polska/Poland)
18. Janusz Skubaczkowski – Taniec Współczesny/ Contemporary Dance (Polska/Poland)
20. Barbara Sier Janik - Balet / Ballet (Polska/Poland)
21. Anka Majcher – Taniec współczesny/Contemporary Dance (Polska/Poland)
22. Sylwia Hefczyńska – Lewandowska – Taniec współczesny/Contemporary Dance (Polska/Poland)
23. Sebastian Zajkowski - Taniec współczesny/Contemporary Dance (Polska/Poland)
24. Anna Achimowicz – Gyrokinesis (Polska/Poland)
25. Farah Holz – Taniec indyjski (Niemcy/Germany)
26. Matthew Westerby – Release based- contemporary technique(USA)
27. Trajal Harrel – Critical Choreography (USA)
28. Eric Geiger - Taniec Współczesny/ Contemporary Dance (USA)
29. LeeSaar The Company – Taniec Współczesny / Contemporary dance (USA/Israel)
30. Margherita d’Amelio – Tarantella ( Niemcy/Germany)

31. ALEX CHEUNG (Chiny/ China)

list of teachers might be a subject of change

only in first week 30th June – 4th June 2008

1.Werner Bechter– Body – Mind – Centering (Austria)
2. Henrik Kaalund – Choreographic Workshop (Denmark)
3. Eric Geiger – Contemporary Dance (USA)
4. Barbara Sier Janik - Ballet (Poland)
5. Nora Chipaumire – Contemporary with african dance elements (USA)
6. LeeSaar The Company – Contemporary Dance (USA/Israel)

only in second week 7th July – 11th July 2008

1. Georg Blaschke – Contemporary Dance (Austria)
2. Vicki Fox - Contemporary Dance (Great Britain)
3. Aisa Lafour – Bellydance (Holland)
4. Farah Holz – India Dance (Germany)
5. Margherita d’Amelio – Tarantella (Germany)

Market Square, Bytom

From Wikipedia: Bytom is a typical Polish post-industrial city. The majority of its coal mines are now closed, while its steel mills are slowly fading. The city is struggling to transform its economic profile from industry to services. Bytom cooperates with two cities with more or less the same problems: Recklinghausen in Germany, and Butte-Silver Bow, United States. The city has a considerable unemployment rate which is centered in the poorest part of the city, Bobrek.

More from the Bytom page on Wikipedia

When I tell Poles that I travel to Bytom each year, they say: "Why?" First off there is the breathless festival with 500 Polish dance lovers as participants, and more events and activities than any other in Europe, apart from Impulztanz in Vienna. My role is as Associate Editor of the English language version of the festival newspaper and lecturer on the Dance Writing and History course.

But I also enjoy wandering the tourist-free streets of Bytom, with Art Nouveau buildings (they use the Viennese term, Secession, locally), enjoying the good, cheap local restaurants and talking, talking, talking about dance, life, the Universe and everything.

George Jackson's review of the 2008 Bytom Festival with quotes from the Newspaper writers whose articles you can read in this forum:

A Letter in Summer 2008 from Bytom's Festival and Copenhagen's Tivoli

by George Jackson

Most developed of the several male duos at this festival was “Heroes” (Main Stage, July 2) by Oded Graf and Yossi Berg from Israel. Of course, this pair of guys isn’t heroic in any ordinary sense. They are grown men and yet the teasing that goes on between them brings out their little boy traits. Particularly their sexuality is prepubescent – perhaps too safe a choice for an otherwise risky undertaking. Amazingly, Graf and Berg are able to show new facets of the relationship for an entire hour. Magda Kupryjanowicz’s review in the Workshop Newspaper mentions pantomime, improvisation and that “the broken stylistic of modern dance gains the harmony and grace of classical dance”. I wouldn’t go quite so far but the whole genre of male pairing for dance purposes owes a debt to Britain’s classically trained Ballet Boyz.

For more click below:

http://www.danceviewtimes.com/2008/07/a ... n-sum.html

I've posted several of the Polish language versions of the articles that appeared here originally in English.