Melancholia II
choreography: Jakub Lewandowski
music: Michael Lis
performed by: Sylwia Hefczyńska-Lewandowska, Kinga Duda, Dominika Wiak
production: Nowa Huta Cultural Centre – Krakow Choreographic Centnre
premiere: November 18, 2017 BalletOFFFestival
The performance was created as part of the residency program at the Krakow Choreographic Center.
„It is hard to bring in something lasting while aware of the bland reality around and convinced that some “avalanche” just has to come. Everything that the fate brings us comes from fantasy. A place between presence and absence, emptiness and excess. “For a moment I thought that my absence would be longer, but I changed my mind.”
Laura Brown, Los Angeles 1951
The inspiration here is the works of painter Edward Hopper, considered to be an icon of the 20th-century American painting. His seemingly realistic works, depicting calm and nostalgic scenes from the American world, also have a rich magical dimension. The main theme of Edward Hopper’s works is human loneliness. Loneliness represented by the figure of a woman. The majority of his paintings show lonely women, sometimes in the company of men not interested in their presence, sad women, lost in thought, abandoned, and mysterious. What they are thinking about, what has happened to them, what their story is – we can only assume. One thing is for certain – the figure of a woman accompanies the artist and intrigues him throughout his entire career.
“Hopper’s works, intriguing and pervaded with nostalgia, arouse great curiosity in me. What were the women in the paintings really like? I would like to bring them to life. One woman in three scenes. The depiction of the spirit of the 1950s is of great significance here. The atmosphere and character of the world at the time and the role of the woman suspended somewhere between what is real and what is in her dreams. This world, so distant now, keeps intriguing me, causing a sort of elusive nostalgia. Nowadays, when everything is becoming unified and standardised, even the division into what is masculine and what is feminine is disappearing. I am always hungry for more of this work and I want to keep studying this topic. I treat it as a continuous process that I hope will give me an answer to one burning question: can one experience happiness in loneliness?” (Jakub Lewandowski)
