2024 was a year of celebration, and we can already say with confidence that 2025 has been about building alliances and collaborations.We see that this is exactly what the world needs right now. Instead of “playing for our own goal” and competing with one another, it’s worth noticing how much we have in common — together, we’re capable of achieving so much more.

With this mindset, we actively took part this year in conversations within Kraków’s contemporary dance community. One of the outcomes was the creation of the Kraków Alliance for Dance (Krakowskie Porozumienie dla Tańca). Still within the same year, as part of the Alliance’s ongoing talks with city authorities, we managed to reshape the City of Kraków’s scholarship program — from next year on, it will support not only the production of works, but also artistic processes. In addition, an open call for proposals was launched for the Independent Contemporary Dance Scene (Niezależna scena tańca współczesnego) program.

Most recently, we were also thrilled to share the news that Kraków will be one of the operators of Przestrzenie Sztuki in the coming years. For us, this is another very real step toward strengthening the position of dance in Poland — a step developed together with the Kraków Alliance for Dance and Teatr KTO.

When it comes to international collaborations, we were even more excited to hear that KCC has become a member of the European Dance Development Network, currently the only institution in Poland to do so. We can’t wait to dive into the activities and opportunities that being part of this network opens up for us.

We were also absolutely delighted to receive funding from the GPS / Global Practice Sharing, run by Movement Research in New York with the support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding. We don’t want to give away too much just yet, but we’re already counting the days until we can tell you who we’ll be welcoming to Kraków next year!

Throughout all of this, we were also strengthening our internal alliance — the collective itself. For many people, it still comes as something new, even unusual, when we say that we work collectively, especially within a public institution. And yet — it’s still happening, and it’s working well for us. We keep testing things out, negotiating, learning, and sharing.

So how do we nurture this? One way is by allowing ourselves small workations, during which we spent time, among other things, thinking together about the vision of the place we’re creating. If someone asked us for a recipe for collectivity, shared trips — and more broadly, giving ourselves space for conversation and collective dreaming — would definitely be one of its key ingredients.

One of the most important moments this year was also the 5th edition of the Kraków Dance Festival, held under the theme IMMERSIONS.

The organizers and curators (Agnieszka Barańska-Kozik, Karolina Graca, Aleksandra Honza, Monika Szpunar, Monika Węgrzynowicz, Dominika Wiak) took care this year not only to ensure formal diversity in the performances — especially in terms of different approaches to what dance and choreography can be — but also to reach a varied audience (including across age groups). The paths available to audiences were therefore diverse, sometimes blurred, and for some participants, charting those paths may have happened for the very first time. This applied both to regular attendees — whom I’d immodestly count myself among — and to new viewers. The fact that the festival is in constant motion and keeps changing — something the organizers signal directly through this year’s theme (“Immersions”) — like water, seems quite obvious. What follows from that?
— Deeper, Marcin Miętus, review of the 5th edition of KDF

You can find a short recap in this post, and Marcin Miętus’s full text is available here (the text is available only in Polish).

We also encourage you to check out the post-workshop zine, created by participants of the Writing Body writing workshops led by Ela Łapczyńska. (The texts in the zine are available only in Polish, but you can also find handmade collages there.).

This year, the festival was preceded by the 2nd Interdisciplinary Scientific Conference Immersions. Questions of Fluidity in Choreography and Dance which we hope will become a regular event organized by KCC. This year’s Call for Papers was met with great interest, confirming once again that there is a strong need not only to create dance, but also to talk about it and its many forms.

We promised an e-book bringing together the post-conference texts, and the work is already underway! It’s our first time creating a publication like this, so we’re learning everything from scratch — but we’re already on the home stretch. We’re hoping to welcome the beginning of next year with the premiere of our very first publication.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Another equally important moment this year was opening the doors to our studio. Open Studio KCC is a project created in response to voices from the community about the lack of accessible working spaces for artists. Wanting to meet these needs, we opened up our space for use on Mondays. The initiative was met with huge interest — reflected in the number of thank-you comments under our Facebook post, private messages we received, and the fact that all Mondays get booked up incredibly fast.

We hope that in the future more spaces in Kraków — and perhaps beyond — will join initiatives like this.

Alongside the initiatives mentioned above, the year was filled with many smaller and larger projects that were just as important.

We continued the Roztańczone Rodziny (Dancing Families) workshop series — with both spring and autumn editions — and we already have more sessions planned. The workshops enjoy great interest, and we’re happy to be able to offer families with children such a wonderful shared experience.

Thanks to support from KPO, the Matki w ruchu (Mothers in Motion) project also continued to grow. As part of it, our space hosted open workshops for mothers — a bit of movement, a bit of conversation, all in an open and safe atmosphere.

Although we still can’t maintain a “permanent repertoire,” this year we managed to present several exceptional performances:

• Rewolucja Księżyca – dir. Karolina Porcari;
• Rooms by the Sea – dir. Joanna Leśnierowska;
• Meltdown – dir. Małgorzata Lech;
• Babel. The Resonance of Language – dir. Baxi Ostrowski.

We hope to see even more performances like these in the future!

We also hosted two dance jams: one as part of Dance Night, and another under the theme “This Is How I Dance to My Favorite Song” for participants of our regular groups, in celebration of International Dance Day.

Besides the shared trips we mentioned earlier, we place great importance on national and international delegations. This year, we managed to take part in several — there’s nothing quite like seeing performances live, networking, making new connections, and learning along the way.

We visited, among others: New York (USA), Prague (Czech Republic) – Bazaar Festival and the Czech Dance Platform, Moving Balkans, Hellerau (Germany), AeroWaves in Gorizia and Nova Gorica (Italy/Slovenia), the Biennale of Children’s Art in Poznań, and the Dance Congress in Warsaw.

In addition, we undertook training in curation, production, and facilitation, continuing to grow our skills across different areas.

We also had the chance to take some of our productions on the road:

• Rooms by the Sea – Galeria Biała, Opole;
• Tens – Teatr KTO and Gdańsk;
• MISSPIECE – Teatr KTO, Rzeszów, Berlin.

This year, KCC also created a new production — Ślad ślimaka by Alicja Czyczel, which premiered during the Kraków Dance Festival. It was a truly special event, as it marked the first time we stepped outside the NCK premises and performed in a space right outside our window — Łąki Nowohuckie, so close to our hearts and eyes.

We also supported projects with seniors led by Monika Szpunar — Hold onto Dance, her solo performance Hold onto the Wind, as well as Bezdroże. Wilderness by Marta Wołowiec.

As part of the Dance in Process project, this year we supported:

• Zuzanna Jeglorz and Karolina Stępień
• Marta Mietelska and Małgorzata Czajkowska
• Marta Wołowiec

Dance in Process is one of our ongoing projects, and next year we’re planning a small refresh. We want to focus on learning how to give and receive feedback together, so that will be one of the main points in the project’s reorganization.

And if you’re interested or in need of an external perspective — just reach out!

Of course, this isn’t everything that happened this year — it’s impossible to capture it all in a single post.

2025 was full of movement, meetings, discoveries, and shared moments — both in the studio space and beyond. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who was with us during this time: artists, partners, workshop participants, audiences, and collaborators.

Ahead of us lies a new year, new dreams, new challenges, and more spaces to explore. We can’t wait to see what 2026 brings, and we’re excited to share the next steps of KCC’s journey with you!

Photo: Klaudyna Schubert, Janusz Skórski, Dominika Wiak, our own’s archive.