Art stations fundation - by Grażyna Kulczyk

The OLD BREWERY NEW DANCE AT MALTA FESTIVAL Program is a festival presentation in a nutshell of the Old Brewery New Dance Project, a unique multi-layered program of contemporary dance (consisting of performances, lectures, workshops, productions, and residences), run by the Art Stations Foundation since October 2004. The project’s mission is to widely promote the art of dance, in particular its most recent avant-garde trends (conceptual choreography, performance art, body art, phenomena at the intersection of visual and performative arts). It is also aimed at supporting the development of young Polish choreography by creating a regular “creative space”, a venue for rehearsing and producing original performances and for exchanging experience between artists from different countries.
Dance presentations that have for the last six years been part of the Malta Festival sum up the yearly activity of Stary Browar in the area of dance. At the same time they play a most significant role of promoting the art of choreography in Poland. The Program, composed of performances by eminent choreographers of international acclaim, is usually focused on one theme. The corresponding shows reveal both self-reflexive traits, ever present in the most recent choreography, and authors’ references to their own tradition. They point to a need for debates about and creation of a theory of the art of dance.
Following the idiom of this year’s Festival, we will host the public at a true dance banquet, a manifesto AGAINST EXCLUSION from the narrow definition of choreography of all those trends and phenomena which are not necessarily seen in Poland as part of the world of dance. Hence the inclusion in the program of presentations whose language and form at first sight are far removed from a traditionally construed form of a dance performance. Humour, self-distance, intelligence, and choreographic reflection are the key words of this year’s fiesta prepared by Stary Browar.

It will be launched by a performance under a telling title KOMPOZYCJA by four women led by the Vienna-based choreographer Anne Juren. A Polish artist, Marysia Stokłosa, will present an intimate performance PRAWA PÓŁKULA, which was made with the use of techniques of work with the body that are still largely unknown in Poland (body-mind centering, authentic & idiosyncratic movement). Anna’s Kollektiv, a Swiss group of choreographers, architects and video artists, will prepare specifically for Stary Browar a night action, held in the park at the Old Brewery. The first visit to Poland of Keith Henessy, one of the most interesting US performers, will be a special treat. The artist will present to the audiences in Poznań the show CROTCH, a recipient of a New York Bessie Award. Lovers of absurd minimalist art will enjoy the first in Poland meeting with the philosopher-artist Gaëtan Bulourde and with Clement Layes, who dances with a glass on the head. Gilles Jobin, who is well known to the Poznań public, will this time perform one of his earliest shows, a reconstruction of an experimental choreography A+B = X, which over a decade ago firmly established him in the world of choreography. The performance is reinstalled to commemorate an anniversary of the renowned composer Franz Treichler, the author of music for the show. Finally, last but not least, this year’s program of the Old Brewery New Dance at Malta Festival will introduce shows for children, a group of the public that is the most excluded among all. An acclaimed performance The Cube Circus by the Israeli Train Theatre will prove that good choreographies for the youngest viewers can be made (even if not in Poland) and that they can entertain whole families.

Nobody and nothing will be excluded in the Old Brewery this year! Come and enjoy dance and choreography with us!