Kasia Wolińska – Grand re Union

Kasia Wolińska is a graduate of the Dance Dept. at Music Academy, Łódź, Culture Anthropology Dept. at University of Łódź and Dance, Context, Choreography at HZT Berlin. In 2016 she was a part of the Global Practice Sharing Program in New York and a resident of a Norbergfestival in 2017 and 2019. She presented her work in Berlin, Amsterdam, Lima, Copenhagen, New York, Stockholm, Warsaw, Lisbon, Goteborg. She is an author of a choreography to “Autotrophia” movie by Anton Vidokle. Her solo “Dance, pilgrim, dance ” was selected for the “Introducing” Programme of PAF Berlin in 2018.

Kasia runs the blog danceisaweapon.com and is a board member of ZTB – organization representing the free dance scene in Berlin. Together with Frida Sandstrom she is a co-founder of the Future Body At Work – an interdisciplinary study practice. They published texts in the e-flux journal, Palleten Art Journal and DNA Blog of HKW Berlin.

Contributions

Kick off
Offering

On the occasion of the Grand Reunion I would like to offer a fragment of my interpretation of “Crossing” – one of Isadora Duncan’s latest choreographies. This short dance is part of the trilogy that Duncan created in 1923 for Scriabin’s etudes. Both “Crossing” and the other two parts – “Mother” and “The Revolutionary” – were the subject of my work in the process of creating the solo “Dance, Pilgrim, Dance”. My encounters with Duncan’s works, ghosts and thoughts largely took place in the space of Słodownia 3+ . “Crossing” was to be created “from memory” as an expression of Duncan’s reminiscence of her first trip to Russia in 1905. While still traveling through the Tsarist Empire by train at that time, she witnessed a man being shot while running through the field. As we can read in Isadora Duncan Archive :

In the choreography, this recollection of the impact, the suspended stillness, and the fall to the ground are repeated in a furious encounter with rebellion and destiny.

The first meeting with Russia left its mark on Duncan’s life and career so that she could return to (Soviet) Russia in the 1920s and open her last dance school in Moscow. From the perspective of a few years since the solo “Dance, Pilgrim, Dance” was created, I see that moment of work as a beginning, an opening on my artistic and life path. Therefore, this short video seemed to me to be an adequate gift for the Grand Reunion forum.