Reviews

RE//Accumulation

 

“Everything starts with the movement of the wrists. Ramona Nagabczyńska stands- calm, relaxed, in a casual, neutrally coloured outfit- in the far side of the sparsely lit stage and turns her wrists. Right and left. Gradually the movement sequence develops, but every new movement leads back to the beginning and from which the whole composition is repeated from the start. The artist’s body successively covers more and more space, it becomes expansive, moves towards the centre, in order to finish the sequence on the other far end of the stage. These actions are complemented by a video projection, which show the performer multiplied and performing the same sequence of movement. The phantom Nagabczyńska’s overlap or pass each other, always staying in one line but in shifted time. Finally the artist breaks the order. Although she keeps returning to the starting point, she does not repeat the original sequence of constant modification- Nagabczyńska introduces new movements, others she marks or cuts short, creating a variation on the theme of the previously performed choreography. Nagabczyńska’s performance, in which she confronts herself with the work of Trisha Brown, is most probably the fullest expression of the ideas of the RE//MIX project created by Komuna//Warszawa. (…)

(…) What is important to know, is that Nagabczyńska chose to remix one, carefully selected artistic proposal of Brown’s- Accumulation, of which corporal memory is the dominant theme. In a permeable and interlaced manner, over time the body collects layers over layers of tonally and stylistically diverse movements, which stay in a dynamic relationship towards one another. The artist acquires the “organicity”, ease and lightness characteristic of Trisha Brown movement vocabulary, and performs it to the music of a looped soundtrack. However, she makes a radical gesture of friction, which is both destructive and creative at the same time. Memory is not absolute, on the contrary- the cracks in memory are inevitable, and it is them that are responsible for memory’s creative character. Culture is based on accumulation, but in this process each next layer develops from the previous one, interacting with one another, haunting, clashing and modifying one another. Such a vision of memory and culture permeates the concept of the remix, which becomes particularly well articulated in Nagabczyńska’s RE//MIX of Accumulation. (…)”

 

Extract from “O nich//o samych sobie” (About them//about themselves)- a review of the RE//MIX cycle created and curated by Komuna//Warszawa.

Agata Łuksza. Didaskalia.

 

 

 

 

“The performance, which uses Trisha Brown’s vocabulary in order to re-write itself, isn’t only ‘an accumulation of quotes’ as the choreographer herself states, but first of all a wonderful example of the fact that the incorporation of previously used choreographic material in new performance conditions does not have to follow a “copy- paste” logic.

RE//MIX. Accumulation © Trisha Brown, presented in Komuna//Warszawa is an innovative artistic proposition. The performance has been created in the frame of the RE//MIX cycle, which was started in 2010. The artist is one of the winners of the open call organized in partnership with the Institute of Music and Dance (IMiT).(…)

(…)The audience gathered at Komuna//Warszawa, is meant to decide, whether the conceptual dance piece of Trisha Brown from the 1970’s, based on a series of simple movements, has any power to affect. Whether it can still convince the audience, or whether it has fully exhausted itself. Judging by the enthusiastic reception of Nagabczyńska’s RE//MIX we can state, that the dance vocabulary of the American artist still surprises us with its simplicity and sparseness. Above that, the roughly 15 minute applause that the dancer received confirms the power of her stage presence, artistic maturity and professionalism.(…)

(…)Other than a great precision in performance, one always had the impression of the dancer’s lightness. Nagabczyńska remembers to associate with Trisha Brown work: with a characteristic casualty, she performs the individual movements, which- accumulated into one sequence- are a combination of virtuosity and precision.(…)

(…)On the footage that is screened onto the back wall of the space, the virtual images of Ramona dance: they start from the movement of the wrists, into the following movements, to finally come to the end of the sequence and walk back to the starting point, in order to start again. The digital multiplication of herself is the quotation of a quote: Nagabczyńska performs the same sequence as her digital reflections (or vice versa), however their dance quotes the dance of Trisha Brown. The virtual “multiplication” (accumulation) of the artist is also a comment on the current status of Brown’s heritage. Referenced, reproduced and quoted in other dancer’s choreographies, it is a source of inspiration. As it is for Ramona Nagabczyńska, for whom “the heritage of the past is a bottomless well, not an intimidating limitation”, the work of Trisha Brown is a starting point for the creation of a unique project. By referring once again to the words of the dancer herself- “The challenge is in the fact, that movement cannot simply be sampled, movement adapts to each body in a different way. That is why I chose to deal with the idea of accumulation- it reflects this constant build-up of the layers of meaning”- and comparing them to the impact of the performance, I come to the conclusion that an exploration through dance and a journey back to the source is the best path to ones own success. Although by rule, the performance is an accumulation of quotes, it makes copyright laws highly undesirable”.

 

Karolina Wycisk. Nowa Siła Krytyczna.

 

 

 

 

New (Dis)Order

“In this pumping homage to rock music and friendship, one man and two women set out to share with us the music they love via an ever-pulsating sway of hips, torsos and heads, hair flying out horizontally to the beat until they themselves become it. Honest and strangely vulnerable, dancing out front and unadorned by steps, their camaraderie is evident both in their play fighting and in the dance’s last passage, where they hold onto each other by hands or fistfuls of clothes. Flailing, falling, running, never letting go. No matter what, no matter how dangerous, and it is dangerous. They’ve given everything. To each other and to us. To my surprise I notice that I’m crying…”

Sally Marie. Springback

 

 

 

“Devised with dancers Magda Jędra, Anita Wach and Konrad (shades of Jim Morrison) Szymanski, and utilising an infectious playlist as soundtrack, Ramona Nagabczynski’s New (Dis)Order rides the rhythms of rock as a means of showing how potent an impact music can have on the body. The cast’s early, gradual head-banging gyrations are both easy to grasp and hard to resist. In a somewhat more diffuse, possibly self-indulgent manner the work converts its spot-on aural backdrop into social metaphor and variously a signal for conflict (a la mock Reservoir Dogs violence), habitual escapism (a series of tableau set to Chinawoman’s great track ‘Party Girl’) and struggle.”

Donald Hutera from The Times for Springback