The art to discover. The essays on polish dance, invites the readers to a time-travel, which lets them learn about the specificity and the modern history of Polish dance, its choreographers, and dancers. This journey starts in the 70s with the tangled roots of contemporary dance growing out of the theatre avant-garde and ballet. We are wandering through the turbulent decade of the 90s – the time when groups such as Silesian Dance Theatre or Polish Dance Theatre originated. The groups are significant and active to this day. Finally we get to know the youngest generation of dancers and choreographers.
Throughout the whole story we encounter the statements of the artists themselves – the participants and creators of this history. Sources and facts almost never published before interweave with reflections that put the Polish contemporary dance in the wider, European context. The art to discover is not only a fascinating story, full of information not available elsewhere but also a great dose of theoretical knowledge, served in the intelligible way.
This book will fulfill an important niche in the book market. It is, among other reasons, due to lack of this kind of literature, why dance often seems to be an art which is hard to discover and understand. These essays are meant to be some kind of a guidebook on the world of dance.
Anna Królica
The chairwoman of the PERFORMA Foundation, co-founder and editor of the nowytaniec.pl website, graduate of Russian studies and theatre studies. She conducts theatre dance classes at the Jagiellonian University. Her fields of interest are dance critique, as well as the theory and history of dance, especially in Poland and Germany. Her works are published in “Didaskalia” and “Teatr” as well as in the websites: www.dwutygodnik.com, www.kulturaenter.pl. She also popularizes theatre – she is the author of numerous texts associated with the DVD collection “Ballet and Dance”, published by Agora. She organized critique workshops, lectures and also – thanks to the support of Ministry of Culture and National Heritage – the first competition for a thesis about dance theatre. Co-founder of the Dance Art Community Open Forum. The chairwoman of the Music and Dance Institute Program Board. She was the artistic coordinator of the 1st Dance Congress and the member of the artistic committee of Polish Dance Platform 2008. She will be a member of the experts’ jury of Polish Dance Platform 2012. Królica currently works on the issue of the memory and the body in Tadeusz Kantor’s Dance Theatre and Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal.