Ballet, which originated at the royal courts of Europe in the Renaissance, is structured by the philosophical ethos of its period. As identified by Michel Foucault and Sylvia Wynter, Renaissance is the era of the invention of Man – white, cisheteronormative, and able-bodied, who overrepresents himself as if he were the human itself.

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As a disciplinary practice, ballet controls and organizes bodies into hierarchies. Excellence can be achieved through unwavering obedience and submission to the often painful training, and extreme forms of devotion to the practice are praised. Additionally, ballet can only be pursued professionally if it is undertaken by an adolescent body.

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Błaszczak, as an alumna of the State Ballet School in Poznań, Poland, takes a close look at the traces that ballet education left on her body, to reflect on the haunting that persists through it. For this iteration of the performance, Błaszczak collaborates with the current students of the State Ballet School in Warsaw, inviting them to share their experiences of studying ballet in Poland today, and to co-create a dance piece they most dream about performing. Together, they will ask: what kind of becomings are still possible and can be experimented with through ballet? Can a ballerina draw a line of flight imagined by and for herself? What kind of adolescent dreaming can be freed up to sketch out a different kind of dancing?

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Dancers: Zuzanna Czyż, Julia Dopierała, Hanna Kovrigo, Klaudia Sarna, Piotr Promiński, Pola Stefańska

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Ballerina's Diaries were created as part of Dancing Together, Again! Creative Residencies Programme in Warsaw, Poland, organized by the National Institute of Music and Dance in Poland and funded by the European Union under Creative Europe, Component Culture program.

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Ballerina's Diaries were supported by the National Institute of Music and Dance in Warsaw, Poland; Arts Research Institute of Georgia in Tbilisi, Georgia; Movement Theatre in Tbilisi, Georgia; Movimento Danza in Naples, Italy; TRAFIK Dance/Theatre Company in Rijeka, Croatia.