In the mid 60-ties in the Polish music and theatre avant-garde a new phenomenon came into life: the “instrumental theatre”, followed by the “instrumental actor”. It was introduced by an outstanding, Polish, music theoretician Bogusław Schaeffer – the author of many scientific works, a composer and playwright as well. This versatile artist, closely connected with the theatre, came to the conclusion that it is possible to create a stage composition built according to the autonomously musical laws even when actors will be the performers.
Since 1964 (before - premiere show of the first performance of the instrumental theatre Tis – MW – 2) Schaefer has placed new special duties in front of the actor. I am convinced that the actor has always been an instrument, out of which the theatre has taken out some voices or other, tones, behaviors and sounds. The problem comes to the point of the attire of this instrument – the nobler it is, the higher quality of the actor’s expression. This time Schaeffer has put the actor, their body and mind, into the musical context. And it turned out that in this context the actors’ techniques acquire specific meaning and clarity.

In the profession of the actor everything is the technique.
The actor constantly investigates the functioning and effectiveness of such problems and phenomena as: rhythm, pace, pause, time, space, acoustics, sounding, construction and deconstructing in the musical context, precisely: the instrumental one.
The actor should not only be aware of the existence of these problems, but above all have the ability to manage them.
The actor – being able to manage their own “instruments”, in the world of the Theatre is able to summon physical and original existence.

I am aware of the fact that a single, short workshop only touches the core of the problem. However, the experience coming from numerous meetings in the subject, proved that making the actor aware of the problem is essential and important. During one hour, together with the participants, I will try to present and physically realize the score of a Schaeffer’s work from 1964.

Jan Peszek

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 spacial 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 spacial 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 lecture/demonstration aims at presentation of the basic elements of the unique dance style that has evolved through twenty years of research on Polish folklore and folk traditions of Polish Jewry. The work may reflect, 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; it may show movement performed in tempo rubato, non-symetric music structures, phenomenon of apokope, 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.