"I didn't know who I was supposed to be...at fifteen," sang Taylor Swift, about two decades ago. Retroperspektywy Festival, by contrast, seems notably secure in is identity as it reaches that same birthday this year, even as the festival continues to grow, expand, adapt, evolve.
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| Audience watching The Tiger Lillies concert |
Disruptive, punky spirit, embracing warmth, social concern, intellectual depth, drive to experiment, and sheer lightness and fun remain the characteristics of one of Łódź's most exciting and vital cultural events, which combines theatre shows and concerts with workshops, "happenings," DJ sets, dance, discussions, and more.
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| Tomasz Rodowicz in Konferencja ptaków |
This year, the festival takes "Wywroty", or "Subversions," as its title. The idea is to work "against the limitations, closures, blockages and manipulations that currently exist on all fronts," in the words of Tomasz Rodowicz, Artistic Director of Teatr CHOREA, Retroperspektywy's founder.
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| Ola Shaya |
According to Rodowicz, the intention of this year's edition - one that resonates with the festival each year, really - is "to open people, to burst bubbles" through, as main programmer Ola Shaya puts it, the creation of "communal experiences where the divide between artists and audiences dissolves."
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| Konferencja ptaków |
The festival opened in characteristically bold fashion with Konferencja ptaków (Conference of the Birds), a welcome reunion for CHOREA and the crazy genius of director Łukasz Kos, whose collaboration on Śmierć na gruszy (Death on a Pear Tree) made for a startling start to the festival's 2021 edition. Based on Farid ud-Din Attar's 12th-century Persian poem, which was notably adapted for the theatre in the 1970s by Peter Brook, Konferencja ptaków was slightly less anarchic than the previous collaboration but still wild enough, drawing on both the poem and Brook's dramatisation, and starting out as a species of delirious avian rave.
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| Konferencja ptaków |
Throughout, live music and sound effects by Maciej Maciaszek added atmosphere and texture, complementing the kinetic energy and dreamy beauty of the recorded and live camera work by Kamil Wallace Walesiak. CHOREA's commitment to finding both contemporary and eternal resonances in ancient texts was very much in evidence in this account of the epic quest of the Birds to meet a legendary, winged king. The show conveyed the effort of an attempt to find shared values through the transformation of each individual.
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| Konferencja ptaków |
Another layer was added to the performance by the strongly-felt spirit of one of CHOREA's signature shows After the Birds, including in the presence of some returning cast members. Rodowicz, Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, Joanna Chmielecka, Małgorzata Lipczyńska and Paweł Smagała formed a superlative ensemble, alongside memorable cameos from Wallace Walesiak and Kos himself.
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| PlastSupper |
A second striking addition to the opening night was Michalina Kostecka and Dominika Sobolewska's PlastSupper, a culinary installation, its title a religious pun, evoking the vexed relation between humans and plastic, especially as it has entered the food chain. As white-clothed servers presented coloured pasta and other delicacies at a ceremonial table to the sound of Marta Kluba's musical compositions, a surreal, ironic feast worthy of a Peter Greenaway cinematic tableau developed.
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Jan Mażewski's Kółko Graniaste |
A more traditional but equally compelling exhibit opened downstairs at Fabryka Sztuki in the form of Jan Mażewski's “Kółko Graniaste” ("Square Circle"), a set of acrylic on canvas paintings evoking childhood imagination, solitude and moments of connection. I felt pulled back to these paintings again and again; Mażewski's work created a contemplative space for those attending the festival to return to: modest, soulful, and very beautiful. A festival regular, DJ Papa Bo Selektah, meanwhile, delivered a fantastic set to close the opening night.
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| DJ Papa Bo Selektah |
Saturday's events took place across a trio of venues that, just like Fotofestiwal a couple of months ago, revealed the dynamism and creativity of Łódź's revitalised spaces.
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| Lament/ر ِ ﺛﺎء” |
Despite currently undergoing renovation work, the festival's usual centre of Fabryka Sztuki still remained open for performances. It hosted, among others, Lament/ر ِ ﺛﺎء” , Aurora Lubos's haunting show inspired by the destruction in Gaza. This found Lubos picking her way back and forth across a miniature set of destroyed, smoking buildings, her precise movements variously expressing grief, despair, and defiance.
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| Labyrinth |
A tonal contrast was offered in next door's Fuzja complex, which hosted Fabian Krestel's Labyrinth an absolutely delightful interactive mix of juggling and art-making. And the day ended spectacularly at the Central Textile Museum, with Radar, a transfixing acrobatic dance piece by Il Posto/Wanda Moretti and Marco Castelli Small Ensemble performed on the walls of the White Factory to music ranging from Delibes' Lakmé to Home Alone-sampling polka-techno.
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| Radar |
Brilliantly, the connective tissue between the spaces and events was provided by more Italians, the adorable company of clowning musicians Compagnia Samovar & Banda Storta. These six avuncular fellows led delighted attendees from place to place with whoops, song and brass accompaniment - sometimes roping unsuspecting passersby into the divine madness.
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| Compagnia Samovar & Banda Storta |
On Sunday, Janusz Adam Biedrzycki directed CHOREA's Intergenerational Group in Brainrot, a broad, sharply funny show, which began with a 2001: A Space Odyssey homage and, in a series of short scenes, offered a satirical look at the contemporary challenge to communicate, taking in everything from selfie culture to religion, advertising, the cosmos, and fashion.
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| Brainrot |
Reminiscent in form and tone of the extraordinary devised Łódź Film School Diploma shows directed by Mariusz Grzegorzek in 2018/2019 and 2019/2020, Brainrot provided a great showcase for the talents of the current group.
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| Grief//Bot |
It was followed by Grief//Bot which modishly but effectively made Artificial Intelligence a protagonist as - like the BBC's recent sitcom hit Ann Droid - it examined how AI might assist the bereaved in working through loss. With a bot based on the biography and data of the late singer, poet and filmmaker Natasza Czarmińska, and audience members invited to ask questions of the model in the final section, the show boasted a tour de force performance from Paweł Palcat, which gave a deeply human face and sense of longing to what sounded in synopsis simply like a tech exercise.
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| The Sin of Pride |
Maternal loss was also a starting point for Asher Lev's The Sin of Pride, which began with the artist recounting how the death of his mother prompted his move from Israel to Belgium. But the primary inspiration for this piece was Lev's guilt and conflict over the current Gaza war.
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| The Sin of Pride |
The deceptively gentle, therapeutic opening - with the soft-voiced Lev welcoming the audience and inviting them to write their own current concerns down on pieces of paper - became a radical performance art provocation, with the artist gyrating, chanting and miaowing, before smearing himself in blood and spewing blue liquid over a representation of the Star of David, a symbol he proceeded to destroy in a snarling feral display.
As a gesture of externalised Jewish self-excoriation, The Sin of Pride wasn't something to be easily shaken off. But by the time Lev was encasing his legs in rubber tubing and propelling himself across the performance space the piece seemed to have degenerated into sheer exhibitionism. Finally washing off the blood, reciting a Palestinian poem, and encouraging the audience to pat their hearts in rhythm to a song, Lev himself appeared to conceive of the piece as a deeply cleansing, bonding collective ritual. But the unsettling result undoubtedly proved the most polarising piece presented on the festival's first weekend.
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| The Tiger Lillies |
An event that definitely did succeed in creating a united audiences was the Saturday concert by cult British band The Tiger Lillies, whose mix of Weimar cabaret and music hall brought longstanding fans to Fabryka Sztuki and clearly won over many new admirers. With their signature white-painted faces, singer/pianist/accordionist Martin Jacques, Adrian Stout (double bass,jaw harp, theremin) and adorably gurning percussionist Budi Butenop seamlessly interwove tracks from last year's Songs From the Sewer record alongside older material. As ironic and macabre as some of the band's material can be, the concert was somehow deeply life-affirming - closing with a tender "Birds Are Singing in Ukraine" - and a cheered swipe at Putin.
From Belgium, Italy, Britain, Israel, Poland, and Belarus the global artistic expressions presented at Retroperspektywy made for an opening weekend that was by turns comforting and confronting, but always energising. Following the four days of Robert Hayden's dance residency, the festival opens to the general public again today with a packed programme of events including children's shows, New Circus performances, queer cabaret, and free DJ sets. There's much more to explore; further details here.
Photos by: Agnieszka Cytacka fotografia
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