Just a few days after wrapping up a complex performative arts event that lasted an entire month, The National Center for Dance is now hosting a new festival that reunites some of Poland’s most relevant performance artists right here in Bucharest. News for Polska #3: The Tickler and the Ticklee is Larisa Crunțeanu’s brainchild after leaving the Bucharest art scene and settling in Warsaw in 2016. The event centers around the idea that no person can tickle themselves, the brain’s capacity to anticipate that the action is self-induced – the main theme is that of the interior dialog or monologue.

In order to better describe this concept, the festival debuted on March 31^st with the show Daughters of Lust by choreographer Aaron Ratajczyk FKA Zuzanna Ratajczyk, performed together with Eoghan Ryan – two young artists with an already impressive repertoire of works presented all throughout Europe. This movement oriented production seamlessly mixes hardcore dance moves with musings on history, space, belonging and the dynamics of human interactions. The two performers, both sporting matching pink hair, attempt to illustrate an internal discourse through wild dance and movement. It is intimate and alert at the same time.

The duo also held a 2-day body art oriented workshop over the weekend, New Breed Tournament, where they explored teenagehood as a form of social refusal. Their aim was to bring together a dynamic group that loses touch with any associative time and space. The participants took part in an intense workout, both physically and mentally.

Indeed, the CNDB venue had a lot of visitors on April 1^st and 2^nd as it hosted the aforementioned workshop by day and the show Offering What We Don’t Have To Those Who Don’t Want It by night. Ania Nowak spent no less than two years researching love and dance and how they might come together in order to tell a story. Her show positions love as a powerful entity within the power relations of politics. Love becomes more than just a feeling. Emotions turn into facts, love is seen as a language, a kind of dance, a way to question and mediate personal and collective desires. The show offers a unique and fresh approach to such an overdone and cliché subject. Offering What We Don’t Have To Those Who Don’t Want It is a kind of monologue by one person embodied in three performers. They make strong eye contact with the audience and keep a small distance between themselves and the spectators while making very little use of objects or props – there is no need for the message is loud and clear.

Anyone interested about Ania Nowak’s practice and documentation for this powerful piece has a chance to find out more during the artist talk hosted by trazit.ro gallery on April 3^rd. Nowak will be offering insight into her research that inspired several other performance art pieces and will discuss love’s potentially critical role in politics, language, power relations, intimacy and, of course, dance and movement.

News from Polska has some more surprises in store for us till April 9^th, so if you didn’t get a chance to visit CNDB yet, there’s still time. Stay tuned for more!

News from Polska #3: The Tickler and the Ticklee is at CNDB during March 31st – April 9th 2017.