Not Quite Dark, Even Colorful at Times
(Near the top of a mountain one can't get lost)
Ch.: Jacek Łuminski
M.: Arturas Brumsteinas, Suicide (band), Kampec Dolores, Diamanda Galas, Gus Gus, and Antonio Vivaldi
Public space, a playground for ideas, thoughts and opinions suits best everyone who seeks hiding one’s distinctive mindsets and approaches from intrusive gaze of curiosity.
“When I pronounce the word Future,
The first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.” (By Wislawa Szymborska)
The piece tends to tap on an articulation of choreographer’s take on issues of identity and otherness widely discussed in Polish society nowadays and elsewhere in the world.
Polish Contemporary Dance
More than ten years ago international dance writers coined the name "Polish Contemporary Dance" in recognition of newly emergent cultural phenomenon of Poland. "Polish Contemporary Dance" is the style and technique of dance that came to life in effect of anthropologically informed research on Jewish and Polish folklore. But as an overall result it is an expression of mentality and psychophysical features of people who lived on the territories of Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania, and later subsequently in partitioned Poland, then the Kingdom of Poland, and in the Second Republic of Poland of 1918-1939. Thus in its essence Polish Contemporary technique and style bear strong historical, political and social implications. They refer to ways of how the individual memory and the common memory of a group of individuals influence transformations within the society, how does it affect preservation of cultural identity and changes sense of belonging, and how this memory transforms symbolism of Poland's traumatic past. All these elements may be found in movements especially in ways they are performed, and how they come together in meaning; it is seen in articulation, and in phrasing but also in coherence of spatial and rhythmic patterns and in ways they contribute to sensed experience and eventually to meaning. They are seen in dynamic movement qualities and in ways the performers move - they implicate creative process and shaping spatial interpretation.
Today's culture of Polish homogenous society shows features of historically implicated cultural heterogeneity because for more than ten centuries it was a subject to multiethnic cultural influences and dealt with issues that contemporary social sciences identify as multiculturalism. As far back as in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Poland operated already on some basic principles of democratic system - the new international historical research of late 1990's coined the name for it - the "partial democracy."
The Not Quite Dark, Even Colorful at Times, Near the top of a mountain one can't get lost piece is one more example of the unique dance style that has evolved through twenty years of research on Polish folklore and folk traditions of Polish Jewry. The work reflects, on certain sense of space, unique to communities of Podhale that is related to their traditional feeling of freedom and independence drawn on the complex rhythmic patterns of their music and the power of open-throat singing; it may show movement performed in tempo rubato, non-symetric music structures, phenomenon of apokope (the cutting off the last sound or syllable of the word, or cutting off the culminations of movement performed in a way that the energy of the body freezes or gets redirected making a complimentary opposite out of it) asymmetric pulse and many other elements typical of regions of Podhale, Lublin, Kurpie. By the same token, an analysis of Jewish songs, legends, superstitions, customs, rituals, and dance forms – the importance of the palm of the hand, pelvis, chest, and spine – have also deeply influenced Polish contemporary dance style and technique. The dancers float in space, connecting internal and external worlds, and going beyond them with the use of technical skills enriched with psychophysical tools and mental power reflecting the Hassidic tradition of dance as a conversation with God.
Technique and Style
Luminski’s performances are based on theories that psycho-physical wave sequences are at the root of our everyday lives. These waves encompass our emotions and our imaginations and how we absorb and act on information from the world – and it is the work of actors and dancers to find physical liberation from clichés, habits, and inexpressiveness.
Luminski has developed a unique dance style that has evolved through his twenty years of research on Polish folklore and folk traditions of Polish Jewry. His work may reflect, for example a certain sense of space, unique to communities of Podhale that is related to their traditional feeling of freedom and independence drawing the complex rhythms of their music and the power of open-throat singing. By the same token, an analysis of Jewish songs, legends, superstitions, customs, rituals, and dance forms – the importance of the palm of the hand, pelvis, chest, and spine – have also deeply influenced Luminski’s style and technique. The dancers float in space, connecting internal and external worlds, and going beyond them with the use of technical skills enriched with psychophysical tools and mental power reflecting the Hassidic tradition of dance as a conversation with God.
Luminski’s unique concept of dance, with its forward-looking innovation rooted in folk traditions, has earned him an international reputation. In 1995 New York Times critic Anna Kisselgoff wrote: “A distinct signature emerges from Mr. Luminski’s approach to both form and content. The dancers tear into space with ferocious power and whiplash speed, qualities that spring from kinetic force in the choreographer’s idiom. His works are intense, obsessive in their picture of abstract emotions.” From Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1996, Adrienne Sichel wrote in “The Star”: “Luminski and his Silesian Dance Theatre are major role models. His demanding technique and sweeping choreographies are distillations of Polish and Jewish folklore elements. A physical breadth of movement is fused with an intrinsically musical fluidity and searing spirituality. On the surface, Luminski’s dances and eight dancers are smoothly sophisticated but, as he unveils the soul, capillaries of distress, of disquiet, sporadically surface.” And Miriam Seidel wrote in “Philadelphia Inquirer” in 2001: “This is a work with sweep and heart that confirms Luminski’s engagement with rich, involving theatrical language.”
For Luminski technique is not limited to bodily movement. It is a concept that reflects nature of thought; activity of human brain; it may go into exploration of voice, mentality, and psychological traits. It is very much like acting - both acting and moving are integral part of technique. The dancers are becoming transmitters of the ideas – it is transparent in their performance. They also transmit “secrets”, which is their personal knowledge, personal experiences, point of views and philosophy. These secrets are like packets of particles or seeds which if well cultivated may flourish; they may become potential nutriment for spiritual lives of a community.
Luminski’s training offer is based on exploration of principles and craft of a variety of virtues that make his concept of bodily movement function in a theatrical idiom. In the process of mastering physical movement in direct association with thinking process Luminski deploys a set of principles embedded in Peripetea (theatrical concept). Peripetea - or vicissitudes of thought - is a starting point for extensive exploration of embodied knowledge. It connects the students with the virtues of negation, opposition, equivalence, thinking the thought, twin logics, omission, dilation, fragmentation and reconstruction, concatenation and simultaneity, etc