With Gritted Teeth – Die Sieben Todsünden by Pina Bausch
The reference to Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weil’s Die Sieben Todsünden [‘The Seven Deadly Sins’] imposes a particular way of thinking to Pina Bausch’s performance of the same title. However, the choreographer – despite seemingly following the authors’ instructions – creates her own vision in the centre of which she places a woman-sacrifier. Such arrangement of social relations is not new to Bausch’s audience, as in her earlier performances she already preferred to present woman’s role in society in such way. It is worth to recall at least Frühlingsopfer or Blaubart since the theme remained the choreographer’s endless source of inspiration for many years – she even returned to it much later, i.e. in Kontakthof. Brecht wrote libretto to Kurt Weil’s music, creating a story of two sisters, Anna I and Anna II who leave their home for seven years with the prospect to earn enough for a house in Louisiana. They travel around the world, through seven great cities, each symbolizing a mortal sin. The sisters send money to their parents to come back to their brand new house one day. The characters can be treated as one person, Anna I is a singer while Anna II – a dancer. Their roles are written in different codes but complement each other. For Bausch, Anna II becomes more important and thus – a main character. The spectator perceives world through from her perspective.
A review by Anna Królica.
Continue Reading Add comment February 10th, 2010
In an attempt to become familiar with the contradictions noticed in the fragments of reality, the program of Body/Mind festival offered a great choice of the most cutting-edge dance productions. One could see that what used to be the most private is in fact public and political, while the established terms have to be constantly undermined, mocked, and negotiated. Hence the section of dance performances dedicated to dance, trying to examine what does contemporary dance mean today, when narrowed down to the personal question about life in dance, not only looking at what is common but also at what seemed the most personal experience and as a result became socially determined.
This year’s edition of the festival was special for a couple of reasons; firstly – that was a fifth anniversary of the event, secondly – it was planned as a festival of premieres. Among others: Harakiri Farmers’s Beat Hotel, Sylwia Hanff’s Dromenon and Simone de Beauvoir by Niezależna Manufaktura Taneczna [Independent Dance Manufacture]. The so-called ‘genuine’ performances, because of their transitory form, retained one-off character and uniqueness. Briefly speaking, the program was satisfying and the organisers often stuck to their previous choices. Artists such as Angelika Fojtuch, Johannes Deimling, Dominika Knapik and Sylwia Hanff have already taken part in Mandala. The organizers have been dealing with performance art and its popularity for many years, presenting its various embodiments. The performance art encompasses different areas, mainly of visual arts, dance and even social sciences.
The text, mixing various discourses reminds of René Pollesch’s theatre. This is not the only similarity. Same as in the shows of German director, in Natalia Draganik’s performance there is something more than just a satire about Polish dance. Criticising dance market, Draganik does it from the inside. The opposition between criticising and the critic is sort of suspended and shows mechanisms determining an artist. Draganik does not express her manifesto in traditional way, does not offer a positive vision that would make the rejection of current status quo possible.
The motto of this year’s edition of the Tanz im August festival in Berlin was ‘Listen!’. Thus the role of hearing was emphasized, not only in the context of perception but also when composing performances. The festival audience had an opportunity to listen to the body in various ways – despite being used to watching it in the first place. For a long time theatre performances have been connected with sight. While the art forms such as radio drama existed on the margins of theatre. Since the emergence of happenings and performance art a strive to activate audience’s sense of touch has been noticeable. Thanks to the possibility of touching the objects of art and the performers, coming into contact with them, the art has become interactive. By examining the surface of objects the spectator – before, merely an observer – turns into an active participant. However, such action has been designed by the artist beforehand. Perceiving art through touch introduces one more novelty into the relation between the object and the receiver – a direct experience of the objects’ physicality, their shape, texture and material.
On one of the first pages of the newly published monograph Pina Bausch’s Dance Theatre. Dreams and Reality (’Teatr Tańca Piny Bausch. Sny i rzeczywistość’) Aleksandra Rembowska, there is a sentence ‘Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater is a secret. Terra incognita’. As the book unfolds, we realise it has been just a sign of the author’s unskillfulness. One can admit that writing about the legend of Bausch is quite a challenge. However, Rembowska has absolutely no idea how to describe the essence of this theatre. 
During the Stary Browar Nowy Taniec [‘Old Brewery New Dance’] project – in most of the cases – the choreographers experiment with pure movement without stage deisgn or props, with the whole attention given to the body and its undiscovered possibilities. The same happened in Maria Stokłosa’s performance The Right Hemisphere, which opened 2009/2010 season. As in the most chorographical projects close to conceptual art, in which the conception is more or equally important as its realization – the title sets the rage of perception to the spectator, leaving freedom of interpretation at the same time. The right hemisphere of human brain – the main heroine of Maria Stokłosa’s show – is the one without which art would not exist at all because it is responsible for creative thinking. Without the right hemisphere there also would be no dance since the brain would not be capable of space orientation and imagistic thinking. Referring to human body anatomy, Stokłosa creates choreography about the main source of art, which lies – as we often forget – in the brain, an organ responsible for logical and rational thinking but also for musical sensitivity and emotions.
This year’s program of Stary Browar Nowy Taniec at Malta Festival [‘Old Brewery New Dance at International Theatre Festival MALTA’] has passed under the auspices of Tanztheater. In the past editions the organizers focued on contemporary avant-guarde – performance art events, conceptual dance performances, body art and other kinds of performing arts. So why have they become interested in such ‘oldie’ – Tanztheater? What can this form – whose death has been provocatively announced in Germany in 1990s – offer us today?
The action of Austrian choreographer Willi Dorner titled Bodies in Urban Spaces which took place in Berlin has a lot in common but at the same time is quite different from the Polish performance : PK : by Kaya Kołodziejczyk from Łódź. They have both choseen the city, public and open space as an environment for their physical activities. A space in which different disciplines such as parkour, dance and sightseeing can coexist. While Bodies in Urban Spaces has something of a traditional street theatre : PK : draws upon theatre performance. Why? Bodies in Urban Spaces is from the very beginning a stroll between ‘stations’ by which the wandering crowd stops and contemplates the living sculptures made of human bodies. Their path reminds of a set itinerary, like in a gallery where the visitors are directed from one object to another, following a pre-designed route. In Dorner’s intervention there is also an element of tourism as during the tour we become familiar with Berlin. We walk down the lanes and dead ends instead of the main avenue. The organizers chose to send us off the beaten track, through gates and housing estates, meadows. People are commenting, laughing, pointing at the hidden dancers, react lively to their ideas and the way they use their bodies in the urban space – just as the title anonounces.
Edyta Kozak is back on stage. Trained ballet dancer, she started her career as one and then joined Warsaw’s independent dance scene and became a founder of NEI company. Unfortunately this phase drowns in gloomy history of Polish contemporary dance – from the beginning of 1990’s, when NEI started to work, we skipped to another era and today, the dispersed documentation makes it even more difficult to research this period. Nevermind the firsts steps Kozak has made after taking off her pointe shoes, she later became known as a producer and curator of Body/Mind Festival and co-organizer of many international dance events in the capital of Poland. She brought Sasha Waltz and Jerome Bel to Warsaw dance scene, she searched for talents as a Polish partner of European programme AEROWAVES. So today, when she returns to her role as a dancer and choreographer she looks back to the times when pointes – apart from her body, of course – were her main working-tool.