Mourning Songs

Dance is a vehicle for experiencing the world and its beauty. It allows you to carefully follow the entanglements between the body and nature, celebrate the presence in the network of cosmic interdependencies, stop and listen to the pulsating life of a dying river.

In this choreographic site-specific work, Monika Błaszczak conducts a dialogue with the natural heritage of the Cybina River surrounding the historic center of Poznań. The choreographer uses their own Soliloquy movement practice - combining somatics, hauntology and working through mourning materializing in the body. They create a reflection on the passing of time based on individual, collective and intergenerational memory, as well as the memory of the body, places, forests, earth, plants, water and landscape.

Dancing with the Cybina River, which dries up year after year due to climate change, the choreographer spins a story about the relationship of modern man with the Earth. The artist turns to the senses, looks at how the past, the future and the present live in our bodies. It gives an impulse to transform our way of moving around in a world close to ecological extinction, but also shows that mourning a loss can become a life-affirming process.

The musical fabric of the performance are traditional mourning songs performed by the Poznań choir Pogłosy under the direction of Joanna Sykulska — laureate of the Polish Radio Festival of Folk Music New Tradition. Composer Karol Nepelski and dramaturg Patrycja Kowańska refer to historical source material, looking for motifs related to nature, passing and folk rituals. H. M. Górecki's Third Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is an important point of reference here. Nepelski, like Górecki, combines tradition with modernity, and juxtaposes the human voice with electronic sounds. He creates a minimalist piece with a tonal character rooted in medieval modality, with the form-forming role of melodies with broad sound structures.

Dancers:
Momoko Den
Paulina Jaksim
Filip Kijowski
Ramat S. Musa
Daria Nowak
Krystyna „Lama” Szydłowska

Pogłosy Choir:

Sopranoes:

Aleksandra Anioła

Malwina Bleja

Justyna Grzesik

Anna Demidowicz

Maria Ratajczak

Enia Kopytko

Maria Trzeciak

Julia Wiergowska

Hanna Górnicka

Rozalia Żak

Ewa Tracz

Altoes:

Sandra Talent

Patrycja Paszak

Kamila Kaczmarek

Klaudia Lech

Zuzia Bajew

Katarzyna Kamińska

Marcelina Truszkowska

Klementyna Lewińska

Tenors:

Jędrzej Michalski

Konrad Kowalski

Piotr Więckowski

Basses:

Łukasz Burzyński

Marcin Kowalczyk

Adam Rakowski

Jakub Wierzchowski

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