13 minute read
The Roots of Dance with Jacek Luminski
by Shanny Rann
The Roots of Dance / Korzenie tańca is a multicultural artistic project for dancers and choreographers. It is about stimulating creativity by going back to the roots of cultures, looking for inspiration for the development of contemporary dance, and enriching the world’s dance culture. Traditional Polish culture is the springboard serving to jumpstart the exploration of these processes. The project includes participants from all backgrounds. The participants learn about elements popular in traditional Polish music and dance, and look for similarities in their own cultures. Inspired by this, they delve deeper into their own traditions to develop new contemporary choreographies.
This year marks the third edition of The Roots of Dance project, which includes journeys to: – New York: May 6-16, 2022 – Zagreb: June 8-12, 2022 – Tbilisi: June 12-18, 2022 – Kuala Lumpur: August 8-19, 2022 – Kolkata: September 10-19, 2022 – Poland: September 21-October 3, 2022
The list of project partners spans a number of art schools and dance companies, including the Department of Dance at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Arts Research Institute with Tbilisi (Georgia), Moving Borders with Mérida (Mexico), The Dance Centre in Vancouver (Canada), TRAFIK dance/theatre company and Croatian Institute for Dance and Movement in Zagreb (Croatia), Kofago Dance Ensemble in New York (USA), Sapphire Creations Dance Company in Kolkata (India), Zhejiang Conservatory of Music in Hangzhou (China), ASK Dance Company in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), as well as several diplomatic missions, including the Polish Institute in Tbilisi (Georgia), Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Mexico City (Mexico), Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Vancouver (Canada), Polish Institute in New York (USA), and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). It is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as part of the Inspiring Culture program.
Jacek Luminski
© Bartek Barczyk
SR: Jacek, would you like to start by introducing yourself to our readers?
JL: My name is Jacek Luminski. I am a choreographer, dancer, and organizer of dance events across Poland and internationally. For twenty years, I ran a dance festival that was one of the largest dance festivals in Europe. I also have a dance company called Silesian Dance Theatre. Recently, I have been more involved in education. Based on the experience I had with Silesian Dance Theatre and the dance festival, I created a dance curriculum that is now running in our Academy of Music in Katowice.
SR: What got you started on The Roots of Dance Project? What was your inspiration?
JL: It was a long time ago when I was still a student at the Academy of Music in Warsaw. I thought at that time that there was not much for me to do in this world because everything was already discovered. My frustration ended with an idea of going back to the roots—investing in researching my own roots and also the roots of culture, and asking questions in the villages that I visited. What is culture for them? What does it mean to dance for them? What does it mean to cultivate art? What does art mean to the people in the villages in Poland? My focus at first was Jewish dances because I thought that Jewish culture was an important part of Polish culture. Both cultures were together for more than 10 centuries. This is important to talk about and to trace the roots back as far as possible, and this was the first branch of my research that ended up with more diverse but localized Polish dance cultures.
Kofago Dance Ensemble, 9-14 May, NYC
© NIMIT Archives
I was looking for the smallest possible communities across Poland to dig in, to somehow be accepted by them, and to gain access to the local cultures. This gave me a lot of fantastic information about what culture is and what culture means to people that are very far away from big cultural centres in the country. These people have a very sophisticated take on cultures, I would say more sophisticated than people in big cities, who I know can speak highly about everything, using very sophisticated language, but it is not always convincing. When you go and speak to them, they speak with the heart, and that is a completely different realm.
At that time, I wanted to look for sources that could revitalise an art form—in my case, dance. José Limón once said that true modern dance comes from the local roots. Once found and transformed through the modern dance idiom, it becomes a source of richness for contemporary dance. That was a sign for me that I needed to go deeper into the local roots to develop Polish contemporary dance.
In 1992, I was invited by the American Dance Festival to participate in a program for international choreographers. I got a chance to choreograph a short piece that was presented in an evening performance alongside nine international choreographers. It was a 20-minute piece, called From a Journey. After that performance, it was shocking to me to find my creation completely different and strange compared to the rest of the choreographic works at the festival. I had to find a distant place for myself, just to isolate myself from other people because I felt alone in that investigation.
After three days, a friend of mine from India met me on the street and said, “Jacek, we are looking for you. It was a fantastic piece!” I could not believe the reception of my piece was positive. She said, “You need to talk to Daniel Nagrin. He believed that this was fantastic.” I decided then that I should take a chance—maybe the only chance in my life—to be able to talk to someone like Daniel Nagrin about my work. I approached him, and he said, “Well, I must say that this was the only piece in this six-week-long festival that I liked.” For me, it was a very important statement of appreciation. He also said, “I don't have any comments, you know what to do with this.” I felt encouraged. That was my beginning with dance roots.
SR: Was that piece From a Journey inspired by your fieldwork in the village?
JL: Yes, absolutely. The elements from Jewish and Polish folk traditions were brought together in this piece in a way that worked and were integrated well by the dancers. With time, I realized that there is value created when elements, which do not normally exist side by side, are put together. Silesian Dance Theatre is a laboratory for that kind of research and a lot of dances were created based on this idea. For 25 years, we travelled across the world as a company. The United States was like a second home for us, we spent at least three months there each year, travelling across the country, heading residences, teaching, and performing. It was a fantastic period for the whole company. We made a lot of friends across the world. We were in India and China and other countries across different continents. When I spoke to the people who kept inviting us, there was one very important, overarching argument: that we are presenting something completely different, that is not Western— neither European nor American. People from India, Malaysia, or other countries were looking for a springboard to develop their own way of thinking about their own cultures, and they saw us as the perfect example of that.
SR: Amazing! So, this is how The Roots of Dance Project got started. You mentioned you started doing fieldwork in the villages in Poland as a student, have you gone back to the field since?
JL: I tried to keep my connections with the locals, many of whom were already old when I first met them. I was aware of the time passing, and I knew I had to catch the time and record them before they were gone. For almost twenty years, I kept going back over and over again to the villages, some more frequently than others, because I found some people more aware of their own cultures and their importance as culture bearers.
I started in 1985 and out of this research, I wrote my master’s thesis, which was later published. I continued my research after that; it was not just a one-time endeavour. I wanted to do it because I found not only a cultural source in these people, but also a historical source. I liked talking to people who were born at the end of the 19th century because they were aware of the history from the beginning of the 19th century from their parents and grandparents. When I sat in their houses, it was like a time and space gate which transported me to a completely different era because of the historical information they were passing on to me. It was fantastic!
Later I went to Bloomington in the United States to continue my anthropology studies in dance anthropology. Jewish dance was my anchor. This was something I always returned to because I knew that the information I had was unique. I had to do something with this information. Many of the people I met, after they passed away, their families contacted me for information I had gotten from them. It was strange that within the families that information was not available to the younger generation. For me as a person from the outside to have easy access to the information from which members of the families were locked out was an interesting experience.
SR: Does this information include dance knowledge?
JL: Dance is not only movement. It is a multidimensional sense experience whereby you receive information by touching, by smelling, by seeing, by hearing, and by tasting. Right from the very beginning, dance was all encompassing for me. I would ask about everything, movements were part of it, but the movement presentation was always elaborated around everything with a cultural value. Dance became a window to culture.
SR: Perhaps that's what you mean by saying the villagers have a more sophisticated approach to culture, because of how integrated dance is with their lives, their activities, and their mode of living. Did you have to make a conscious transition from a dance anthropologist to a choreographer? Can you talk a little bit about this process of improvising with the materials you have found in the village and making it into something of your own?
JL: This was a very long process because I started in ballet. In the beginning, it was very difficult for me to abandon the classical ballet routine and the integration of other elements was kind of artificial, I would say. That is why I felt that movements are not only important, but it is also equally important to understand the culture and the people. The contact with real people was the most important because I could sense them, and when I did that, I integrated the information into my own body as knowledge.
I am always dividing information from knowledge. You may have information, but it does not mean that you have knowledge. You can get information from books, from the internet, but knowledge is something deeper. I would say I had information in the beginning, but I didn't have the knowledge. You have to work on integrating this information before it becomes knowledge.
It was not only me, but I also had a group of dancers with whom I created this dance roots laboratory. Some things worked and some things did not. It is part of the learning process.
SR: You brought The Roots of Dance project to The Dance Centre this April; can you walk me through what happened?
Scotiabank Dance Centre BC, 8-10 April, Vancouver
© NIMIT Archives
JL: We had a group of people from completely different backgrounds. In the beginning, it was difficult for me to find a common ground for the project, but whenever I go to a new place, I am open to everything that I experience there. I am not coming up with ready-made solutions because it is also a learning process for me when meeting the participants, to learn about their goals which were diversified. Some people had Polish background, so they wanted to learn more about Poland. One person had a Jewish background from Poland, and she wanted to learn about her own family roots. It was important for me to harness all these energies and find a common interest.
When we proceeded to the next step in the process, I gave people examples of Polish Jewish concepts and let them experience certain elements that are typical of the culture, like apocope, tempo rubato, syncopation, irregularity of the musical form, modal scales versus antique, old Greek scales, that are still present in various places in Poland—how they are used and why they have been preserved as they were. Once we passed on this information, I encouraged participants to use their own dance experiences, and they started to look for similar elements in their own cultures.
I usually start by talking about cultural patterns. Ruth Benedict, an American anthropologist, refers to it as cultural relativism. It is about pointing out elements that are present everywhere across the world. The only difference is that these elements develop in different geographical settings and evolve differently. You can find tempo rubato in many other countries, Mexico is a perfect example, and syncopation is present in many different cultures too.
Humans are rich in diversity, which is crucial to developing civilizations and cultures, but at the same time, there are similarities between all these diverse cultures and people. It is important to find all these elements that connect us and appreciate the differences. This is what roots is all about.
SR: I know you are heading to Croatia, Georgia, Malaysia, and India, so I wish The Roots of Dance the very best and look forward to watching the documentary film that will cap this entire project.
Jacek Luminski
© Bartek Barczyk
Jacek Luminski is an internationally acknowledged contemporary dancer and choreographer and is an Adjunct Professor and Head of the Dance Division at the Academy of Music in Katowice, and a professor at the Beijing Dance Academy, China. In this workshop, he was joined by Angelika Karal, dancer, and choreographer with significant experience of working across Poland and internationally; Professor Aleksandra Dziurosz, PhD, dancer, choreographer, teacher, former Deputy Director of the National Institute of Music and Dance and a professor at the UMFC in Warsaw; and Mateusz Czekaj, Coordinator of The Roots of Dance and international projects at the National Institute of Music and Dance in Warsaw, and a dancer and lecturer.
