The conference introduces the topic of the widely understood “right to/of dance.” Contemporary dance by its nature crosses the aesthetic boundaries, but this does not mean that it is free from the construction of hierarchies and exclusions ? our aim is to identify and describe them. We also draw attention to the fact that despite over a century of development, this art still cannot function fully autonomously at an institutional level. We want to look at the selected areas of the dance-power-structure relationship, power understood broadly, not only as a political regime, but also the spectator’s right to judge, power relations in the artistic community, disposition of one’s own body, the right to be on stage, etc.
The program, which combines academic and artistic communities, includes both academic papers and lecture-performance forms, as well as a panel discussion.
Assistant Professor at the Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, curator at the Susch Museum. She is interested in experimental artistic practices at the intersection of disciplines, as well as the exhaustion of the modernist paradigm in the art of the 1960s and 1970s. She was a curator at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle from 2008 to 2020. She has curated and co-curated, among others, the following exhibitions: “Other Dances” (CCA Ujazdowski Castle, 2019), Ula Sickle’s “Free Gestures” (CCA Ujazdowski Castle, 2018), Laura Lima’s “Room and a Half” (CCA Ujazdowski Castle, 2018), “Let’s Dance” (Art Stations Foundation, 2015) and performance projects. An editor of “Other Dances. The performative turn in 21st century Polish art”, “Ula Sickle. Free Gestures”. An author of the books “The Art of Disappearance. Theatricality in Postmodern Times” and “Performans of Resistance”.
Born 1978 in Minsk, Bielarus. Dance and ballet critic, researcher in the field of contemporary dance, curator, lecturer at the Belarusian State Academy of Music, Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts and at the European College of Liberal Arts in Belarus, founder and curator of the educational project in the sphere of performing practices Theatre + Body. She?s been publishing in Belarusian and foreign periodicals, among others in Mastactva and Parter magazines, Kultura and Litaratura newspapers (Belarus), Dance in Ukraine and in the World (Ukraine), M?zikas Saules (Latvia), Petersburg Theater Magazine, Ballet (Russia) and online: Kultprosvet.by, Zernie-performa.net, Culture.pl, Kulturaenter.pl, eepap.culture.pl. She is one of the authors of ?Contemporary dance of Post-Soviet space? (Moscow, 2013), ?Dance labyrinth. The history of the International Festival of Modern Choreography in Vitebsk? (Minsk, 2013) and ?Body and Belarus? (Minsk, 2021). She is the author-compiler and editor of many collections of articles, booklets and magazines about ballet and dance, including ?Belarusian ballet in the world cultural space?, almanac about contemporary dance ?Open Look?, etc. Svetlana was co-organizer and curator of Polish-Belarusian projects in Minsk, including: a scientific symposium within the framework of the project Territory of Choreography ? Eastern Partnership (2016), a program of Polish performances within the framework of the project Territory of Choreography ? New Paths of Avant-garde (2018), Polish Vector: the best performances of the Polish Dance Platform within the Forum of Experimental Plastic Theaters PlaStforma (2016), etc.
Prof. DSc, researcher at the Jagiellonian University. According to the university’s website: Sociologist by training, closer to cultural studies by passion. Author of the books Postmodern Eroticism, Visionaries of the Body. Panorama of Contemporary Dance Theatre and The Mobilisation Virus. Dance and the Formation of Modernity (1455-1795), volumes 1-2. Together with Agata Świerzowska, he edited the anthology Music and Genocide. He received his doctorate on the basis of his work Anthropology of Contemporary Dance Theatre. Dynamics of artistic practice defended with honours. Outside the university, he is the initiator of the Flying Academy of Dance Languages and a vocalist in the bands Lucky Boy and Black Black Rooster, as well as author of lyrics for such projects as Andrzej Grabowski & Cedury, Starszy Pan and Jutuber .
Theatre director and visual artist based in Warsaw. He works across art forms, exploring the diversity of performance arts. Ziemilski extends the idea of documentary performance, combining tools of devised theatre with Real-Time Composition, as well as references from the world of visual arts and various media. He is currently studying for a PhD at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, with a thesis on the relation of memory and theatricality. In addition to participation in the Conference, at the 21st. C/U he is hosting an after talk with Diana Niepce.
Dancer and choreographer working in Poland and internationally. She trained at the Ballet School in Warsaw, the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt and The Place in London. Her works include New (Dis)Order (2012), selected for the Aerowaves network, Re//accumulation (2012), gallery performances The Way Things Dinge (2014) and Networking (2018), solo pURe (2015) and Body Parts (2019). She is one of the founders of Centre in Motion. She has performed several times at C/U.
Born 1976. Choreography curator, visual dramaturge and initiator of many international projects. A graduate in theatre studies at the Jagiellonian University, she was one of the first to write professionally about contemporary dance and choreography (publications in “Didaskalia”, “Teatr” and many texts on Polish dance in international magazines). She has also given guest lectures at universities in Poznań and Kraków. In the years 2004-2020, as part of the Art Stations Foundation, she created and led Poland’s first choreography development programme known as Stary Browar Nowy Taniec (www.artstationsfoundation.pl). She curated the author’s programme “widening the field” (in collaboration with Nowy Teatr in Warsaw) and co-curated the Performative Mediation programme at the National Museum in Warsaw. From 2019, she also runs the Acziun choreographic reflection programme at the Susch Museum in Switzerland. Since 2003, parallel to her curatorial work for the Art Stations Foundation, she has been developing an independent practice as a choreographer and visual dramaturg/light director in both her own and other artists’ projects. She has been working as an independent curator since 2022. She lives in Poznan, Poland. Find out more at www.lesnierowska.com
PhD student in the Department of Anthropology of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Jagiellonian University, member of the International Association of Theatre Critics. In 2015-2019 she was editor-in-chief of the online magazine “Teatralia”; she has published in “Akcent”, “Didaskalia”, “Theatre”, “Blis”, “Czas Kultury”, “Teksty Drugie” and on the portal taniecPOLSKA.pl, among others. In 2014, she was the winner of the 1st edition of the Andrzej Żurowski National Competition for Theatre Reviews for the Young Critic, and in 2015 she won the main prize in the Theatre Institute’s competition for the best master’s thesis on the knowledge of theatre, performance and spectacle defended in the academic year 2014/2015. In 2017, the Jagiellonian University Publishing House published her book Sobątańczenie. Between choreography and narrative. She has collaborated with the Off Camera Foundation, the Performat Foundation and the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor “Cricoteka”. She performed at C/U in 2021.
Assistant professor at the Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, dance researcher and cultural manager. She defended her PhD thesis at the Université Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle and the University of Łódź. She holds a master’s degree in theatre studies and psychology from the University of Łódź and Université Lyon II. Deputy director of the Institute of Music and Dance from 2010 to 2017, ballet manager of the Wrocław Opera from 2018 to 2020, artistic coordinator of the Ciało/Umysł Festival from 2007 to 2010 and again from 2021. She collaborates with the Theatre Academy in Warsaw and the University of Łódź. Author of the book Aesthetics of Contemporary European Dance after 1990 (Księgarnia Akademicka, 2013); editor of European Dance since 1989. Communitas and the Other (Routledge/IMiT 2014) and Polish Women Artists of the Dance Avant-Garde (IMiT/IAM 2017). She curated this conference and coordinated the entire 21st C/U. She hosted numerous after talks with artist at the C/U Festival.
