Rooms by the sea. Exercises in listening

Concept, choreography, visual dramaturgy: Joanna Leśnierowska
Soundscape and voice coaching: Katarzyna Sitarz
Movement and performance: Karol Miękina, Piotr Skalski, Monika Szpunar, Monika Węgrzynowicz, Dominika Wiak
Movement coaching: Janusz Orlik
Costumes: Monika Węgrzynowicz (yellow jacket designed by Michiel Keuper / performance ‘blur’)
Sound mastering and vocal recordings: Brave Records
Graphic design: Michał Andrzej Łuczak, Anna Zielińska photoholicstudio.pl
Production coordination: Agnieszka Barańska-Kozik, Aleksandra Honza
Production: Krakowskie Centrum Choreograficzne – Nowohuckie Centrum Kultury, Joanna Leśnierowska SFX

The end of everything we know

And our alignment with it,

with all that cacophonic jazz and

with the siren whisps

dictates our path and rhythym.

Oh World

That constantly falls into pieces –

you against and

you to meet

– here we set off!

 What’s ahead

appears barely an afterimage

or

the tip of an iceberg

stubbornly drifting in the distance.

What’s behind

freezes out of breath

just about to lose its form

exposed to the inexorable influence   

of time, gravity and distance.

Balancing

in The In-Between

we indulge in the successive tides

celebrating

each step on the way

that leads us through a landscape woven 

of images and sounds

rippling.

Listening to the breath of the night 

 we keep calling each other

throwing ourselves into storm

and facing boldly the waves

aware that

we’ve already passed the point,

at which we can turn back.

Oh World

that endlessly baits us with your mirages,

loosen your embrace,

let us go as we also let!

Oh World

that keeps passing under the eyelids –

let us bow to each other, and

Let us continue  

– there!

Where we never arrive,

Where we never cease heading.

The five characters embark on a journey, persistently crossing landscapes rich in micro-gestures and sounds. The outer and inner worlds collide, offering audience insight into the ambiguous, yet familiar states of loss, suspension, alienation, and distance (including from each other), as well as a longing for the indefinable, which often escapes comprehension.

In choreography, Lesnierowska reactivates the choreographic language she has been developing for more than a decade. This language seeks both physical and visual representation of the idea of a polyphonic body: a body that contains many voices coexisting within it, struggling with these excess voices, cacophony, and noise. It is a movement that strives to represent emotional states that often escape clear comprehension and words.

‘I think Rooms by the sea is not only a journey through spaces and emotions, but also an intense exercise in listening, seeing and feeling. With each scene, the dancers and the audience together discover new horizons that are at our fingertips yet remain ungraspable. Whether we close our eyes or keep them wide open, we are guided through a world full of contrasts – silence and noise, tenderness and tension, light and darkness’.

For me, the best place to rest is in a room by the sea.

– about listening and watching by Karolina Graca

full text on nck.krakow.pl

Photo: Klaudyna Schubert