Choreo-graphics created in texts are based on one simple principle and limitation: they are created only with the characters and symbols available on the keyboard and in Word (offline mode).
14 June 2020
This is:
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rain.
And this is:
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bow.
These are:
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letters
This is Erich:
from
And this is:
%&^^$##))*&!@^!!!!
War Saw
This hot and shimmering with all the colours of the rainbow summer, during the presidential campaign, one of the two main candidates called Andrzej, feverishly informs his heavily right-wing electorate that, in addition to the fact that the prices of mustard and sanitary pads in Poland have fallen, ‘They are trying to tell us that LGBT are people. But it is simply an ideology.’ Thus, he joins the homophobic choir, which has existed for at least several years, with its leading soloists: the hierarchs of the Catholic Church and the ruling political party. In this polyphonic piece, we hear voices like: ‘Poland is the most beautiful without LGBT!’, which we can find on the Twitter feed of a Polish MEP. Or ‘The red plague no longer walks on our soil. But a new neo-Marxist one has emerged, wanting to control our souls, our hearts and minds. Not a red one, but a rainbow one’, coming from the lips of the Archbishop of Krakow. Never mind their names. Smells like shit spirit. I wonder how it’s possible that in the 21st century, words like these in public space go unpunished, despite legal complaints concerning public incitement to hatred.
That day, I practise authentic movement. I turn on Nirvana, I sing from the top of my voice, I dance, or jump, actually. ‘Raapeee meeeeee … I’m not the only oneeee aaaaa,’ then ‘Heyyy, wait.’ An then from my guts, from the need to calm myself down with the light pulsation of cerebral and spinal fluid waves, I move on to All apologies: ‘In theee suuuun in the sun … I feeel married, burieed, …What else could i saaaayy, everyone is gay.’
I’m lying on the floor, looking at the treetops outside the window. I’m better for a while. For a while.
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29 June 2020
Walking across Saviour Square eating a vege-burger. There used to be a beautiful art installation here, Rainbow by Julita Wójcik. It was set on fire seven times by prayer/national groups. Finally, after a few years it was dismantled. Now, the place looks bold bare.
A riddle:
Here’s Rainbow in Herz:
183, 53 Hz > 207.36 Hz > 221.23 Hz > 126.22 Hz > 140 Hz > 141.27 Hz > 140 Hz > 14.25 Hz
Here’s ‘Om’ in Herz:
136, 1 Hz
question: between which colors the ‘Om’ resides? * (look for answer below)
12 July 2020
I am waiting with my friends in Komuna Warszawa (cultural center )for the results of the second round of the presidential election. A DJ is playing outside the window. After the results are announced, Der Mother will perform their musical show where the leitmotif is ‘choose me, choose me not.’ We don’t know yet if we’ll be dancing in ecstasy or digesting the energy of loss. If, as a society, we will have chosen normality and human rights, or if we’ll be starting the final episode of leaning towards intolerance based on lack of education, superstition and minds that have gone through the mill by social engineering.
And here I am, looking at two bars on a graph, which literally differ by a little over one percent. The national television announces the victory of the Law and Justice candidate, Andrzej Duda, and we are now looking at the following choreography: Silence in the courtyard. The VJ mixes the campaign footage with psychedelic images displayed against the backdrop of a school wall. Der Mother transforms the sounds of shock into the rhythm of something larger than politics: the rhythm of the earth, the heartbeat. And this is the only thing that lets us survive this moment. In the hall, the iconic 1980’s surreal comedy Teddy Bear is being shown, which somehow soothes the tragedy of the situation a bit. The president’s daughter, all dressed in white, speaks to the people, speaks to the electorate. Silver moondust is spilling from her mouth, rainbow soap bubbles in the shape of unicorns, magnanimous words: ‘I appeal to you. No one in our country should be afraid to go outside, because no matter what we believe in, what colour we are, what views we have, what candidate we support, who we love, we are all equal, we all deserve respect. No one deserves to be an object of hate. Absolutely no one. Let us respect each other.’
What do I feel? Absolutely four out of the six basic emotions: fear, anger, sadness, repulsion. Without any shades in between. I’m scared to hang a rainbow flag on my own house. Every second banner in my small community shows Andy’s power-pointed smile. Yes, I dream of experiencing the other two emotions, joy and surprise, more often.
A few weeks later, the President’s daughter is silent, just like her also white-dressed mother. When the protesting LGBT+ supporters are brutally beaten and removed from the streets, there is no white dress anymore, no lofty speech based on London savoir vivre scenarios for the royal family, no hands spread wide. There is also no Mayor of Warsaw, no Prime Minister, no nothing, only silence in the streets. Only a few left-wing or liberal party members and MPs are there. The rest are on vacation from democracy. Only the police does not rest.
Vacation from democracy
or
democratic v-action
6 August 2020
Today, a rainbow choreography happened in the Polish parliament. It was beautiful! The inauguration of the President. Left-wing women MPs dressed in colourful suits which form a rainbow when they are sitting down. Anti-covid masks on their faces. One of them, dressed in black, takes out a banner which says: ‘Perjurer.’
An excellent piece of performance art.
The rainbow is not offensive. Yet the photos from the inauguration where you can see the rainbow-clad women are removed from the national media.
7 August 2020
With no more powers in me left, I’m looking at one of the saddest street choreographies I have ever seen in my country. I feel so helpless. People have come to Krakowskie Przedmieście street in a gesture of solidarity with the arrested Margot, who is becoming the voice and body of LGBT+ affairs.
I have already asked myself a thousand times: How can we undo the equation of LGBT with paedophilia. Invented by the worst type of social engineering, transmitted to the world every day through the cable-veins of all the government media outlets. Directly into the minds of people who are vulnerable to collective hypnosis. Have they replaced the word ‘priest’ with ‘LGBT ideology’ in this riddle? How veeery veeeeery clever. Divide and rule. Masters in creating a mental chasm.
Margot can’t stand it. Her justified anger leads her to damaging a van that drives around Warsaw with slogans like: ‘The LGBT Lobby wants to teach 4-year-olds masturbation,’ ‘See the relationship between paedophilia and sexuality’ or ‘31% of children raised by lesbians and 25% of children raised by pederasts are sexually abused.’ The evil of misinformation in pure form.
Someone says that Margot has broken the law by demolishing property and hitting the driver. I ask: How can you break the law in a situation that’s already breaking the law? And how can the slogans on these vans be legal?
They put Margot, who is a remarkable person, in a men’s cell. I must point out that from the perspective of current psychological knowledge, this procedure is equal to violence.
I make a FREEZE-frame shot. I don’t curse. I do one asana, and then another one. I find Jarosław in my tendons. I stretch the painful fascia that surrounds them. In the shortness of my breath, I find the ministry of environment. I exhale and do a pranayama. In the palpitations of my heart, I find the ministry of justice. Poland is my body. My body.
Unfortunately, I am far from Warsaw. Meanwhile, the activists are showing unstable phone-camera images on their FB walls. You can see a dance macabre with police vans driving into the crowd. A woman with blood marks on her forehead. Her arm twisted. Her body on the ground. A policeman pressing her face to the ground with his knee. A man sits on the ground with his friends. All of a sudden, he is pulled from the huddling circle by four cops. They grab him by the arms and legs, like in scenes from the darkest times of communism and the militia. You can hear someone saying: ‘Well, then just catch at least three of them!’ And after a while, you can see policemen attacking passers-by. Kinga writes that her niece and her boyfriend, the embodiment of kindness, are in the TVPiS coverage with a ticker saying, ‘Aggression and provocation from LGBT circles.’
I cry and feel great love for all the activists who are there. They need lawyers. I call the lawyers I know, as well as psychotherapists to provide psychological support to the families. The best documentary filmmaker in the world, Anu, reports that the detainees will be tried on a 24-hour basis and that there are still not enough lawyers. He is exhausted by collecting evidence of violence, of abusing detention regulations. I talk to one of the detainee’s mother. She is petrified because she doesn’t know what’s happened to her son.
10 August 2020.
Today, I am practising telling fact from interpretation.
Facts:
A spokesperson for the Krakow police does not rule out the possibility that the young people who hanged a rainbow flag on the Wawel Dragon may be accused of ‘placing objects in the wrong place.’
A few days later, the spokesperson announces that this time, ‘due the insignificant social noxiousness of the act, the case is likely to be dropped.’
Interpretation:
A spokeswoman for the Krakow police came to the conclusion that a rainbow hanging on the Wawel Dragon monument offends the feelings of the Wawel Dragon.
After a couple of days, the police come to the conclusion that the Dragon didn’t feel offended.
Well, the Dragon does live in the Dragon’s Den, where, as legend has it, there used to be a brothel. The Dragon has probably seen much more than a rainbow flag.
11 August 2020
Ewa is a street artist. She models magical balloons into figures. She models the balloons in all directions bending the space-time continuum, until some unusual form emerges: a cat, a clown, a teddy bear, a heart, a devil or an angel.
Today, she has posted on Facebook:
I’ve just read a text from my co-landlady (I signed the lease with her sister, but she owns 50% of the flat): ‘Please remove all the coloured balloons from the window.’ The text obviously alludes to removing the rainbow which I put in the window like all my earlier balloon figures … Do you think I should expect a visit from the police? A rainbow on a dragon is a misdemeanour… Is a rainbow in a rented place too?
B”îîOOPz puffff
18 August 2020
The European Union is withdrawing funding from municipalities that have tagged themselves as ‘LGBT-free zones.’
And what does our Justice Fund do? It grants them money as compensation. The Minister of Justice explains his support for the municipalities saying that he supports family and rejects any ideology that is contrary to Polish culture, including the LGBT ideology.
I’m so scared of Polexit.
23 August 2020
Is society negatively biased? Nah…
Quite accidentally, a cyclist from Wrocław demolished the stand of an organisation that promotes replacing old coal furnaces with new, more environment-friendly ones. In Polish, the catchphrase ‘Replace your furnace’ (Zmień piec) looks very similar to ‘Change your sex’ (Zmień płeć). The stand was placed outside a church. The aggressor misread the text and started yelling: ‘You do this even in front of a church?! Get the fuck out of here!’
As you can imagine, there was no end of fun with memes on Facebook.
24 August 2020
I am walking down the street with my girlfriend. A neighbour passes by and shouts: ‘Hey, babes! Fancy a ménage à trois?’ I stumble. I don’t say anything. I fall face to the sand and dust that come from under the wheels of his BMW.
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I wonder if my relationship with this country is not a typical one based on the Stockholm syndrome. Sometimes it’s quite cool here. Then, boom, it’s shit. Then it’s cool again. Beautiful nature, mountains, forests, the food is so good, the bread is real. And then boom again, it’s even shittier, because next to the real bread, the only real family is a man and wife.
I don’t want to dance to Martha Graham’s Lamentation anymore. I want to see what’s new on the NASA website. I want to be the next child Madonna adopts and perform in her videos. I want to be an academic teacher and choreographer just doing my job. I want to make a musical about cats.
I desperately scan my body and mind: ‘What can I do to make things change? Maybe my country will change,’ I tell myself like the wife of an aggressive drunk.
What can I give? I can only listen (or really listen). I can simply be here. Be as I am. Don’t get the fuck out of here. Be a salt in the eye, a pain in the ass, when in fact, I am a child of Polish women and men who wanted a free and tolerant Poland.
I’m looking at a great photo of my friend on FB, a talented dancer, actor and choreographer. The photo shows him during the ‘You will never walk alone’ demonstration of solidarity with Margot. He is holding a banner. The banner says: ‘One day, you will apologise to me for this, Poland.’
Yes. One day, you will apologise to me for this, Poland.
25 August 2020
A black series. The outstanding Polish singer Ewa Demarczyk dies. And then one of the greatest Polish minds, Maria Janion. Once, on the basis of her book Uncanny Slavdom, among other things,I choreographed Summer Solstice, a performance staged with Zorka Wollny and Anna Szwajgier, under the wings of Joanna Leśnierowska and Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk. It was presented in the Old Brewery during the Malta Festival. It was an honour to connect with Maria Janion’s thoughts and translate them into the language of movement and emotion. Till the end of my life, I will remember the words of this outstanding critic of Polish literature, author and mainstay of all minority movements in her opening letter to the Culture Congress in 2016: ‘I will be straightforward: Messianism, and especially its official and clerical version, is the curse and doom of Poland. I sincerely hate our messianism.’ And another one, from Uncanny Slavdom, which gives me strength and motivation to remain in my home country: ‘I believe that the foundation of the humanities is the story. It is not enough to see, experience or even understand something. You still have to be able to tell it.’
28 August 2020
For a year, the Polish Episcopal Conference worked on their ‘Position on LGBT+’ to release it today in the form of a public document. Like a rotten fart from under a medieval soutane, where the fetor of ignorance and violence hovers. Catholic priests, who are unable to deal with the enormous problem of paedophilia and bribery in their organisation, are fervently calling for a ‘cure’ for homosexuality and transgenderism. They write that ‘it is necessary to set up counselling centres (supported by the Church or its organisations) to help people who want to regain their sexual health and natural sexual orientation.’ All this, despite the fact that they are promoting conversion therapy, which its creator refuted when he came out as gay and concluded that homosexuality cannot be ‘cured.’ Despite what the Polish Sexology Society says about its ‘[incompatibility] with modern knowledge of human sexuality.’ Despite Sexologists’ warning that it can cause ‘serious adverse psychological effects.’
It makes me sick.
My mother asked me not to apostatise. Now, it is ‘no fuckin, mercy.’ I won’t contribute to their statistics.
So, the LGBT+ community doesn’t have full rights in Poland: rights to partnerships, to inheritance, to a partner’s health information, to adoption. Even according to the Liberals, ‘as a society, we are not ready’ for adoption rights (we aren’t ready for democracy either; does this mean that the system is totalitarian?) But why should I care? Maybe this should also work the other way round? Maybe we shouldn’t have to pay taxes if we don’t have the same rights? Maybe if I am sick, I should be on a pension? I would be happy to go on sick leave. I would be happy to be exempted from listening to this nonsense.
On my favourite director David Lynch’s website:
Fix your heart or die.
30 August 2020
A peaceful pride march takes place in Krakow in a happy atmosphere. At the front of the counterdemonstration, organised by nationalistic youth groups, the head of the local school authority is shouting: ‘Mary will win over Satan!’ Her solo resounds against the background of other slogans: ‘To hell with you whores!’ and ‘The Market Square in Krakow will never be gay!’ Earlier, she expressed her views in a slightly more ‘reasonable’ way, explaining to Polish men and women that ‘the LGBT environment has one goal. To destroy the world we live in, and to build a neo-barbaric world on the ruins of this world.’
31 August 2020
Together with the HOTELOKO Movement Makers, we are preparing for a mini tour with our show Absolutely Fabulous Dancers at Kaleidoscope Festival in Białystok, Cracasonne Festival in France and Mandala Festival in Wrocław. I have the impression that our performance has become even more significant in the context of the recent events.
At night, in a nightmare, the right-wingers from Białystok shoot us during the performance.
A bullet for criticising Polish education and the Catholic Church, which doesn’t give a shit about the teachings of Pope Francis.
A bullet for gender
A bullet for LGBT +
During a rehearsal, one of the male dancers, who performs in a tutu and a dress, shares with us exactly the same fear. That they will insult us, that they throw eggs at us or that some maniac will throw a knife at us.
Are we exaggerating?
No. I look at the pyramid of hate and I know we’re not exaggerating. In my country, some citizens have already become so prejudiced by politicians and the media that they have gone from neutral (I don’t give a shit), through biased, to hating (they told them that LGBT+ is a threat to children, striking the most sensitive chord in the minds of heteronormative families).
SŁOWNY BRAK AKCEPTACJI = ANTILOCUTION
hate speech, language of exclusion, language of hostility, disseminating myths/stereotypes/hearsay, malicious jokes, display of concealed or indirect prejudice
UNIKANIE = AVOIDANCE
marginalisation, isolation, dehumanisation, demonisation
DISCRIMINATION
inferior treatment, unequal treatment, exclusion, persecution
PHYSICAL ATTACK
assault, acts of vandalism, rioting
EXTERMINATION
assassination, genocide, arson, bombing attacks
PREJUDICE -> HATRED -> VIOLENCE
For the past two weeks I’ve been suffering from stomach-ache. Marta Graham again, but not in Lamentation this time, but in contraction.
My instinct whispers: ‘Get the fuck out of this country.’ But this is my country and I won’t run from it. When I get back from the tour, I will do something about this. I promise.
This really is the last moment to do something.
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OFL
PYRAMID
4 September 2020
PS. There was a wonderful atmosphere at the Kaleidoscope Festival: after the Covid-19 suspension of festival and dance life in Poland, we all jumped at each other like hungry dogs. The audience is wonderful, safe environment, the city running on the last bits of still holiday energy, as if nobody gives a f..ck on politics. I am probably in a sociological bubble and if I went to a different pub than the post-performance conversation space, maybe it would be lost as well. But so far, let’s this moment of normality last… hold on.
5 September 2020
PS.2. My joy lasted two days: at the other end of the country, in my home town Krakow where I run workshop right after festival, the first image that greeted me were the (in)famous banners on the “LGBT Lobby”, right next to St. Mary’s Church, and held by two young men with a radiant smile.
7 September 2020
I’m packing for the Carcassonne Dance Festival in France. I fantasize and visualize Emmanuel coming to our show and adopting me like Madonna did her kids. Renata, who studied in Montpelier and her husband is French, she sends me maps of French regions in which it is worth establishing a settlement.
* ‘OM’ resides between green and blue
Polish version
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