created and performed by: Katarzyna Chmielewska
choreography and stage design: Chiharu Mamiya & Katarzyna Chmielewska
music: Wojtek Mazolewski
lighting design: Michał Kołodziej
produced by: Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre & Klub Żak, Gdańsk supported by: Marshal of the Pomorskie Voivodeship
special thanks to Off de Bicz Theatre in Sopot
Complexion – a solo performed by Katarzyna Chmielewska, and co-created by Chiharu Mamiya - a japanese choreographer from France. It is the 33rd premiere of Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre.
Katarzyna Chmielewska: “I suppose I see the meeting with Chiharu as a vital and intriguing artistic challenge for both of us. We’ve got different stage experience and use different codes of communication. Over the several weeks of work in a studio, somehow by inspecting ourselves in a mirror of other cultures, we were making “Complexion” – a performance where the dancer’s body is home to numerous happenings which make her feel some joy, some suffering, some thinking, the birth, the death, her own sex, some laughter, some sneezing, some trembling, some crying or some forgetting. “Complexion” can as well be the colour of human existence, a meeting place of the person’s innermost and public sense of self, where the body starts reviving and performing some dance of sense or nonsense.”
Chiharu Mamiya - born in 1977 in Sapporo, Japan. Starts dancing at the age of 5. In 1996 she goes to France, to study dance at Centre International de la Danse Rosella Hightower in Cannes. In 1997, after a project with the choreographer Nicole Caccivio in Berlin, she joins the company Kubilai Khan Investigations, with which she performs in e.g. Tanin No Kao, Mecanica Popular, Sorrow Love Song, As Long As It Blossoms. In 2006 she settles down in Montpellier. Nowadays cooperates with Anne Lopez, a choreographer of the company Les gens du qua (Montpellier), Gilles Jobin (Geneva), Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre (Gdańsk).
reviews:
Complexion by Katarzyna Chmielewska (co-choreographed by a Japanese artist Chiharu Mamiya) from the very beginning appears to be very feminine, delicate, sensuous. After a birth she starts to learn the world, discover it and gain experience. This simple and obvious metaphor translates into some micro-actions - the dancer limits the space for movement into the colourful square and its edges. Slowly, with a child’s curiosity, she’s scrutinising the textures of the matter. Gently, with her feet, she’s feeling its diversity, dissimilarity: the cool smoothness of satin, the safe warmth of flannel, the surprising softness of fur, into which she delves with pleasure. She’s cuddling it, smoothing down, ruffling, joyfully fondling. But that won’t do for her. (…) Chmielewska draws inspiration from different cultures, telling a story of finding home, a story with a rainbow of innermost worlds, and a similarity of human fate, no matter what skin colour. Because as the show goes on, the colourful patchwork translates into a message - the lot, doom, life-story - create a unique, individual pattern of fate. (…) Jadwiga Majewska, Didaskalia, 79-80, June-August, 2007
2007
17-18 May - Klub Żak Gdańsk / 26 May - Old Brewery, Poznań / 17 Oct - Dance Corporation Festival, Klub Żak, Gdańsk / 16-17 Nov - Off The Beach Theatre, Sopot / 8 Dec - Klub Żak, Gdańsk
2008
7 April - Uppsala Konsert & Kongress, Uppsala, Sweden / 12 April - Teatr Narodowy, Warsaw / 19 Aug – Teatr Polski, Poznań / 22 Aug – Teatr Lubuski, Zielona Góra
