WOLNOŚĆ
DANCE DOUBLE BILL

Ritual solo by Ukrainian dancer Daria Koval. This suggestive testimony of a woman affected by war won the Audience Award in the international section of the Solo Dance Contest at the Gdańsk Dance Festival 2023.
Both physically and mentally demanding performance by the brilliant French dancer Agathe Tarillon in the Slovak choreographer’s acclaimed production, explicitly communicating the festival’s motto.
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Maciej Kuźmiński & Daria Koval RESISTANCE MOVEMENT

…it is impossible for me to dance about anything but the war that is still going on…

“I cannot put into words all the longing I have in my soul, I can only dance it. And also, to be naked on stage is for me one of the attributes of sincerity, openness and strength to resist the destructive war.” (Daria Koval)

What is so stunning about the Resistance Movement is the expressive depiction of the suffering of a young woman who […] tells us how she was caught off guard by the Russian attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022, how she flees and falls into inactivity in Tenerife, where she goes to the sea every day and cries and dances her despair out of her soul.
Marcus Hladek, Frankfurter Rundschau

Based on conversations between choreographer Maciej Kuźmiński and Ukrainian dancer Daria Koval and their joint movement research, this intense dance solo begins as an honest revelation of the dancer’s personal story. However, it gradually evolves into a ritual where the dancer, half-naked but wearing an embroidered skirt and a traditional Ukrainian necklace, uncovers the strength behind her sensitivity and the power in emancipating her cultural roots. A riveting personal account of the destructiveness of war and the incredible resilience and will of human beings to resist it.
The production Рух Oпору / Ruch Oporu / Resistance Movement won the Audience Award at the Solo Dance Contest 2023 within the Gdańsk Dance Festival and another Audience Award at the 6th Solocoreografico Festival held in 2023 in Frankfurt am Main, where Daria Koval also received the Jury Award for her dance performance.

choreography, music remix, dramaturgy, video, lighting design Maciej Kuźmiński
music Max Richter
video, photography, graphics Aleksander Joachimiak
performance, costume design and collaboration on choreography Daria Koval 

premiere 21 March 2023

For Polish choreographer Maciej Kuźmiński (1985), the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine is one of the most influential events of his life. Since its outbreak in February 2022, he has created five productions that relate to this tragic event in different ways. In Every Minute Motherland (on the programme on SAT 11 May), he perceives war as a powerful force that constantly sets the world in physical and existential motion, challenging our values, identities and ideas of safety and home. Besides the solo Pух Опору / Ruch Oporu / Resistance Movement, he has created three other productions with students from the international dance conservatories in Arnhem, Linz and Rotterdam.
Maciej Kuźmiński, a graduate of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, teaches at the Faculty of Dance Theatre in Bytom (a branch of the AST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków) and at Belgrade Dance Institute. As a choreographer, he draws on his own movement method called Dynamic Phrasing, which is dedicated to training dancers' versatility and “soft power.” In addition to the work with his own company, he has created pieces for Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, Regensburg Theater, Staatstheater Kassel and the Lithuanian Šeiko Dance Company.

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Dynamic Phrasing method
https://vimeo.com/260510995
https://www.youtube.com/watch… 

Discussion with Maciej Kuźmińsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch… 

Portrait of choreographer Maciej Kuźmińsky
https://culture.pl/…ej-kuzminski

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Eva Urbanová ANOMALIE

The dance solo Anomalie is about the desire to stand firm while being crushed and the hope for harmony in the midst of crisis. It is a quest for destruction, limits and extremes, as well as an opportunity to let new and old shapes and forms penetrate the skin, muscles, bones and soul. From the observation of a body that is tormented by negative experiences, a body marked by trauma, a body in convulsion, we follow its transformation towards rebirth, purification and shedding of the deposits of unwanted experiences. A journey of the body towards its free breathing again. However, Anomalie is also a brilliant, physically and mentally very demanding performance by the only performer in the production, who shatters the comfort zone of all participants.

concept and choreography Eva Urbanová 

collaboration on choreography Joana Simões
music Stroon 
lighting design Tasya Nafigina 
text Sammy Metcalfe, Eva Urbanová, Tasya Nafigina 
voice N I V V A 
costumes Miriama Kardošová 
scenography production Josef Malík 
lighting technician Miriam Čandíkova
production Eva Urbanová, Nhung Company
special thanks Svetlana Kozlova, Michal Klodner, Aleš Němec, Ondra Mikula 

performance Agathe Tarillon

premiere 23 October 2022 

Eva Urbanová is a Slovak dancer, choreographer and teacher. As a child, she succeeded in top-level modern gymnastics, which eventually led her to dance, and as she claims, she found much more freedom in it than in sports. In her choreographies she aims to study and criticize the mechanisms of the social system, focusing on empowering women and demonstrating the concept of dualism. Eva Urbanová is a choreographer and dancer of the new generation. She has worked with dance companies of different nationalities, sizes, levels of professionalism and cultural contexts. She concentrates on developing her own distinctive dance style and movement language, taking particular inspiration from the contemporary Israeli dance scene and the field of physical theatre. She studied choreography at Prague’s HAMU and at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London. With her solo The Essence (2021) – which was also presented at the Flora Theatre Festival 2022 – she won first place in the Solo Dance Contest held as part of the Gdańsk Dance Festival 2022, and the Audience Award and second place in the choreographic competition at the Solo Tanz Theater Stuttgart International Competition 2021.
The dance work Anomalie is the inaugural production of Eva Urbanová’s newly founded group body2022, which was selected for the Czech Dance Platform 2023 for its successes to date. The group body2022 explores the body in the contemporary world, its changeability and its interaction with the environments it inhabits. It outlines novel perspectives of the human body and offers new interpretations that go beyond the possibilities of physical existence – all through movement that is radical, sensual, surreal, and vibrating with a wild new life.

photo Aleksander Joachimiak / Eva Urbanová