PREMIERE
Creators: Teatr CHOREA / CHOREA Theatre
Artistic supervision: Tomasz Rodowicz
Direction interventions: Łukasz Kos
Music supervision: Grzegorz Wierus
Music: Tomasz Krzyżanowski, Maciej Rychły, traditional music
Choreography: Dorota Porowska, Sara Kozłowska, CHOREA Theatre
Light: Kamil Urbanowicz
Sound: Marcin Dobiś Dobijański
Visuals: Kamil Wallace
Cast: Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, Maja Caban, Joanna Chmielecka, Joanna Filarska, Julia Jakubowska, Sara Kozłowska, Małgorzata Lipczyńska, Maciej Maciaszek, Anna Maszewska, Ewa Otomańska, Magdalena Paszkiewicz, Dorota Porowska, Tomasz Rodowicz, Ola Shaya, Elina Toneva + The Old Guard and Invited Guests
Producer: Ola Shaya
Premiere: 24.08.2024, International Theatre Festival Retroperspektywy, Art Factory in Lodz
Date: 23.08.2024 / Friday
Time: 7 pm
Place: Stage, Art Factory in Lodz, 3 Tymienieckiego Street
Tickets: 40 PLN (reduced) / 50 PLN (regular)
Tickets purchase: from July 29, 2024 / via kicket.com portal (online payment) / at the festival office (payment in cash or contactless card payment)
Duration: unpredictable (approximately 120 minutes)
Viewers' age: 12+
Performance in Polish
After the event we invite the viewers for wine and a meeting and discussion with the artists
The discussion will be led by Małgorzata Jabłońska
DESCRIPTION OF THE PERFORMANCE
"What's Demeter"...
This evening will be exclusively dedicated to the CHOREA group. This event will be composed of quotes and excerpts from the most significant performances, concerts, and projects that make up our 20-year history. The centrepiece, or rather the thread, that we will use to weave these events, is ancient Greece, the starting point of our journey and our initial focus - its music, chants, dance, and drama. We will begin here, and this theme will gradually serve as a counterpoint and complement to the new renditions of fragments from CHOREA's performances and concerts. These fragments have been selected by each CHOREA actor, as important and personally significant on our shared journey.
The evening will open with the Homeric "Hymn to Demeter" who is the "Muse" of this year's RPS festival edition. This mythical figure embodies the story of loss and recovery, illustrating the inseparable connection between life and death, departure and return, the cycles of dying and rebirth, and losing and rediscovering the meaning of life. This is also our story.
However, we are not creating a new performance, a new compilation, or a jigsaw puzzle of past CHOREA stories. It is about working with the individual and collective memory of past and current creations, processes, and experiences of each artist, that is, each member of the group that forms CHOREA.
The essence of this evening will be songs, images, sounds, words, fragments, gestures of ephemeral characters, formed as if from papier-mâché, undergoing constant, strange transformations - like in Schulz, questioning themselves, incomplete, ambiguous, but full of enthusiasm and hope. With no chronology, logic or consistency.
In just two hours, it is impossible to tell the story of our 20 years, but it is possible to show the people and their passions, and to see what has been most important to them over the past two decades.
INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTISTS
CHOREA Theatre - a thriving, uncountable and unpredictable group of artists, performers, musicians, dancers, actors, practitioners, theatre and drama theorists. We create interdisciplinary artistic, educational and social projects: concerts, workshops and performances. We employ innovative, original work methods, going beyond the cultural mainstream. We direct our work, projects, actions and activities to: adults, youth and children, those who are regular theatre-goers, those with limited access to art, and those looking for alternative cultural initiatives. We put emphasis on team-building, joint cooperation, partnership, group dynamics, interrelations, the awareness of body, voice and musicality in our work.
CHOREA Theatre was founded in 2004 in Lublin, as a result of collaboration between two groups of performers. First group, “The Ancient Orchestra '', was developing musical and rhythmical work. Second group, “Dances of the Labyrinth '', was experimenting on movement and dance. Since 2004, before they found their residence in Lodz in 2007, they have been working in several locations. The company was first based in Naleczow, Srebrna Gora and Warsaw, they cooperated with Earthfall Dance Theatre in Cardiff (Wales). Since 2007 they established a permanent base in the city of Lodz, co-founding with Lodz Art Centre a cultural institution named Fabryka Sztuki (Art Factory) and they own an amazing industrial theatre spaces (for rehearsals, performances and workshops) situated in the 19th Century factories, named Art_Inkubator in Fabryka Sztuki in Lodz.
During 19 years of activity CHOREA Theatre fully developed its educational and artistic work. CHOREA artists organised many international workshop sessions, transnational artistic projects, their own International Theatre Festival Retroperspektywy and nationwide Theatre Festival Perspektywy, and created more than 60 theatre productions, performances, and concerts. In 2015 CHOREA artists recorded a musical album “Lullabies” and published actors training handbook “Actors physical training. From individual to group actions''. In 2020 we recorded our second musical album "Gilgamesh" - a concert for a choir, jazz trio and string quartet. The CHOREA group collaborates with artists from all over the world: USA, Great Britain, Israel, Spain, India, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, Syria, Japan, Russia, Belarus, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Croatia, Sweden, Norway, etc. During last years CHOREA Theatre presented their performances, concerts and intensive workshop sessions all over the world.
The group has developed its own training technique, which involves working with the body, voice, and rhythm, as well as working with a partner and in a group. A key aspect of CHOREA’s method is teamwork - the ability to collaborate in a laboratory-like setting - while ensuring that the group's interest does not overshadow an individual's uniqueness. The aim of the method is to explore the substance of movement, sound, and word, combined into an integral whole, by breaking away from traditional ways of illustrating their mutual relationships. Awakening the entire body and intense training create a stage presence that reconnects all these elements.
CHOREA collaborates with many groups and artists from Poland and around the world. The theatre has produced dozens of performances and concerts. CHOREA works with many individual, experienced and renowned artists, as well as with amateurs, students, volunteers, people full of curiosity about the world, seekers, and active individuals. Under the theatre's umbrella operate the CHOREA Theatre Choir, the Intergenerational Theatre Group led by Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, and Children's Theatre Groups led by Joanna Filarska. The group regularly conducts a series of theatre and music workshops in Poland and around the world. Since 2010, CHOREA has been organising the International Retroperspektywy Theatre Festival, and in 2015 and 2017 they also held two nationwide editions of the Perspektywy Festival. In 2015, the theatre released the album “Lulabajki” with music for both children and adults. In 2016, in collaboration with the Leon Schiller Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź and the National Institute of Music and Dance in Warsaw, CHOREA created the handbook “Actors physical training. From individual to group actions”. In 2020, CHOREA Theatre held the online premiere of the album “Gilgamesz”, featuring music by Tomasz Krzyżanowski. In 2023, CHOREA recorded the album “Livet”, a contemporary suite for the Earth, composed and arranged by Piotr Klimek, inspired by traditional songs from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland, and Norway.
