Linda Krūmiņa

Pawel Sakowicz is a choreographer and dancer based in Warsaw. His main artistic interests are the history of dance and issues of cultural appropriation in choreography. Pawel collaborates with theatre and cinema directors across Poland and internationally. His own work has been presented in three editions of the Polish Dance Platform, at the Divine Comedy Festival in Krakow, NYU Skirball, La Biennale de danse du Val-de-Marne, Muzeum Susch and CAC New Orleans amongst others.

Currently Pawel is working on the theatre performance Rotkho in Dailes theatre as a choreographer.

So how is the work on Rotkho going and what is the collaboration with the local team like?

This is my first time in Riga, so everything is new. The thing that we are proposing to the actors is probably quite new to some of them. Our approach to theatre as a genre, to thinking about storytelling is a little bit different. Lukasz (Lukasz Twarkowski, director of Rotkho) and our team work a lot with video: there are 4 cameras in each scene, the action happens live, but it’s being transmitted on a big screen above the stage, which actually merges theatre and cinema.

Mark Rothko was our starting point, but we mainly focus on the ideas of originality and copy in the European and Asian approach to art. We have been reading a lot of Byung-Chul Han, and he states that there is no distinction between original and copy in Asian culture. So something that we care so much about here in Europe – authorship, being a pioneer – is not such an issue or an ethical problem in the East. In a choreographic sense, I use the tools of copying, mirroring, and stealing movement from others. So this is quite exciting work. And I think the team is on our side.

You have worked with some of your team members before, but how do you all start working with new people inside the group? Do you also have some kind of discussions with actors or creative teams to kind of get on the same page?

Yes, this is my forth time working with Lukasz and the whole team is quite stable. There are new people coming, some have dropped out, but we know one another quite well. Basically the first two weeks we were just watching videos, reading some texts and discussing things, seeing how it all resonates with all of us.

During the rehearsal process, I lead a one hour long dance and movement workshop with actors in the morning. So I have a lot of time to get to know them and share some things that would end up in the final piece. Also, we practice some choreographic tools that help them to relate to one another, to the space and to the camera.

What new approaches do you feel you are bringing into this project? And what are the challenges connected to that?

The new thing for the team is probably our approach to the genre of theatre and using theatre in a slightly different way. Because sometimes I feel it’s more like a film that is being made live rather than a theatre play. Also, we are not into method acting at all. The actors on the stage act natural, they are supposed to have a neutral presence. Sometimes it may be a struggle to get rid of these layers of pretending and representing.

So we are not looking for some extraordinary acting. Actually we work more with people just being themselves or having a feeling that they are in between themselves and a specific kind of persona or avatar; these shifts are really subtle. It’s never just the character; it’s this area in between that we play around with.

How do you work with movement?

Just to give a wider perspective: I work quite a lot in the theatre, both in Poland and internationally. So I have already established some methods and tools I find helpful while working on a theatre piece.

I like to describe myself as an experimental choreographer. In Rotkho, we are not just making dance sequences that the ensemble performs. We are playing more with a specific kind of eagerness and readiness to see what’s happening on stage and being able to make decisions in real time. I am also exploring ways in which the stage and the whole stage machinery can be choreographed.

How do you feel working in the theatre and on dance and solo pieces? What do you get from both of these fields?

Sometimes I even do choreography for TV commercials. So I’m very open. And I love having this balance, because it gives me a kind of freshness.

I cannot really imagine working only on my own projects, because I would run out of ideas and energy very soon. So theatre and working for someone else gives me the opportunity to work with larger groups, it’s a bigger experience in general, because obviously there is more money going into these kinds of projects. It also has to do with responsibility. In theatre, it is shared between many people. When I do my own work, I can take more risks, but there’s also more struggle. Anyway, I am happiest while working on my own projects because they are the things that speak my language. It’s clearly my voice.

You mentioned that in this performance you are working with such notions as copying, repeating, and stealing. These ideas can be transmitted in movement quite straightforwardly. But if it isn’t possible to transmit ideas so directly, how do you go from idea to movement then?

Usually I have very vague ideas at the very beginning before I meet the team. I start with a very long list of exercises that make me see what’s actually there. I never force anyone to do anything. It’s more like checking the potential within the group, how people connect to movement and one another. That is the time for me to see what the energy thread between people is like.

Obviously there are some specific things that I want to try out. Coming here I already had a thought that I want to dig into the idea of TikTok dances which I find really exciting. It’s a new phenomenon, it’s questioning the authorship of choreography in general, spreading through the whole world and being copied constantly. I was also interested in the choreography of the crowd in an art gallery, and questions such as: How do we use our bodies when we watch art? What kind of positions do we take, how do we relate to the space, how do we relate to other people in the space watching the same painting or the same object? And I’m also very excited about symmetry. So we play a lot with copying in a symmetric mirrored way, which is very intricate and very detailed.

You said that Mark Rothko was the starting point for this performance, an inspiration. Is he also a character in the performance?

Yes, Mark Rothko is there in the play, but it is only one of the plot lines, mainly connected with a complex topic of the relationship between art and the market. There is someone who buys and sells Rothko’s pieces for very big prices. Also, there are people who question the European art market and the way it works. We start with Rothko and then we take it into the present and probably the future as well. We’re asking: How is artwork and art market changing nowadays? When is art exclusive, when is it inclusive? What’s the value of good art? And what is good art in general? Rothko is a starting point, but there is more to ask, actually.

Have you found some answers to these questions, for yourself? Especially thinking about the art market: how do you see the relationship and the balance of ethics between this selling-buying capitalistic approach to art and just wanting to connect with people, to share your work, et cetera?

I was truly excited when Lukasz shared the idea of this piece with me. Because notions like authorship, originality, fakery and forgery have been important in my own artistic career for years. A few years ago, I worked on a solo piece (TOTAL) which was a lecture performance questioning virtuosity in dance. Does it really matter if you dance something well or not? What’s the notion of artistry in dance? In general, in my own work I’m busy with dance history and researching how something as ethereal as dance can be political and have meaning. How can we dig into the history of a specific dance or a dance style to find out something more than the representation of it? Generally, most of my performances are orbiting around ideas of what art really is.

I think dance virtuosity and artistry are really interesting themes in dance.

There have been so many discussions about the ability of dance to communicate, to pass on particular ideas, with some trying to oppose it to the functions and qualities of language. And there is this expectation that dance has to be super virtuosic in order to actually be considered dance.

Maybe there is something else to movement that is not necessarily the opposite of language. This is not so much a question as a theme.

Yes, I think you are right. I am not that person who’s very strict with dance being the only kind of medium that I can actually use. Two years ago, my friend Anka told me about a book by Lukas Feireiss called Radical Cut-Up: Nothing is Original. It’s thrilling to imagine the history of the whole 20th century as a remix. So when I’m trying to embody that I’m not really worried that I have to create something new because probably nothing really new can be created. And this question of making something fresh, something new in contemporary choreography is not really restricting me anymore. That’s why I usually use a little something from popular culture, but then transform it into something different. For example, I made a solo piece Jumpcore in which I jump for 40 minutes.

So it always starts with a specific task that I set to myself. I do a lot of academic research before, but the moment I step into the studio I close all my papers and tabs in a browser. I check what is possible using my own body or with other people, if it’s a group creation. And we are not scared to play the piano, even though we are not even intermediate in it. We sing a lot in my performances, we use text in a variety of manners. I am happy to steal from other genres and mediums as well.

Continuing on these comparisons or different ways of communication through a performance; I think, in order to connect to different ways of performance, audience members do not necessarily need to know more information, background et cetera, but rather just be in a different mindset. How do you think artists can help with that?

I believe dance happens because there’s someone watching it. I really care about the whole notion of educating the audience and bringing new audiences to dance performances. In Warsaw, for example, there are many options to see dance. There’s not much money and support from institutions that are supposed to support us, but we are not giving up, we’re trying to bring good quality performances and show them in different places. There are also many people focusing on education, academic work and research based on dance. I think it all merges together to make sure that it’s not just a piece that the audience sees. I often hear that people don’t understand a dance piece, especially new dance or new choreography, and they are afraid to ask questions. They feel that they are lacking some kind of intellectual aspect of reading dance which is nonsense. Quite often I’m trying to encourage people not to censor themselves. You should share whatever approach of seeing dance you have. It could be theoretical, but I actually care more about the emotional feedback that someone shares. And you can use whatever words you have to describe what you see. But all of this is the common responsibility of dance critics, artists, the audience, and curators.

So this communication between dance pieces and the audience takes place not only while the performance itself is happening, but so much more before and after it. All the choices and activities and so on.

You mentioned lack of support. Now, let’s go back to the political aspect of the arts and dance. It can be seen as a political statement, a political act from the artists: resisting this non-welcoming work situation, and despite it all still creating possibilities, opportunities et cetera. But what makes a single performance political?

I would start thinking about it from the other end: politics is the kind of working conditions designed for the project. Who do you work with, how do you share the budget of the piece, what’s your approach to all the conditions of creating dance? How do you actually care about other people? How do you plan the rehearsal process? How do you care about other bodies? How do you share the authorship?

I won’t say that my work is specifically political in its content. It’s something that I’m not interested in. On the other hand, I use some soft skills in creating work that could be read as political. I would say my works are usually conceptual with a very clear idea. The content itself does not deal with political issues but they can be read as political seeing some of the decisions I make.

To be honest, as an audience member I don’t really like performances that are addressing a political issue. I believe dance has the power and capacity to be political, even while not trying to be political.

Yes, many choices are made during the creation of a piece, and so many of them are political in a specific context. Even choosing dancers of a specific gender, race or nationality, or a venue, or choices around money etc. I think these kinds of questions are interesting and useful to talk about for the sake of conversation. As we know, answers vary from moment to moment and place to place, we can’t stay fixed on them.

Do you think your experience and knowledge from political studies have impacted the way you work with dance now? Or do you just try to forget and erase that?

No, I’m trying not to erase anything! I’m at this point in my professional and personal life when I don’t want to treat specific time periods as separate things. I am trying to see the threads that I learned from specific times, and then how one thing influences another. I think I got a lot of tools from that specific course, which I am using now. Definitely some things regarding creating an environment for people to work with, negotiating and just being with people. Maybe my curiosity in dance history also dates back to that time. In my works I’m focusing on specific dance styles, specific problems of dance that arose in the past, how they influence today, and what are the possible futures of dance.

Your piece on ballroom dancing (Masakra), for example, tackles dance history but also some political questions of colonization and the exploitation of the colonized cultures.

At that time that I actually started digging into cultural appropriation in choreography. And this is something that I’m still busy with. I did a sound installation (Vortex) with two of my friends recently, and it also deals with the ideas of stealing dances and cultural appropriation of choreography. Another example: two years ago, I worked on a piece focusing on the first romantic ballet (Drama). So there’s always some history in my works, but I’m trying to use it just as a starting point and put it in today’s context.

So what’s next for you?

There are many plans, but we’ll see what actually happens this year. After the premiere in Riga I’m going back to Warsaw to start working on my new solo piece that has been commissioned by the National Museum in Warsaw. It will be part of an exhibition about everyday objects from different periods. My idea is to join pantomime and postmodern dance. Later this year, I will collaborate with another theatre director in Münchner Kammerspiele. And show my work at some festivals.

Photo: Alexandra Kononchenko