The Polish Dance Platform

Do I like dance platforms? Not particularl. Do I believe they are effective in promoting exchange or they do good to business? Not really until recently. Platforms were invisible, though present, for years. It was a meat market for art showcases. However now with finæcial crisis haunting the scene, platforms are becoming tomorrow's alternative path to know each other. With cash shortage, it is more of a new informality created, in order to conquer stages too high up until yesterday. I'm afraid though hat it may end up in sub-cultures sharing the margons of metropolitan art. Having sais that, I should bring into the picture the reason for these thoughts, being non other than the well organized dance platform in Poznan, in Poland. Being infatuated as the polite compatriots of Nijinsky with Sr—avinsky's Rite of spring, the platform could not but present two spectacles, already during the first two days of the event, on the sunject. Sacrifice and the alleged denial of the designer of the historic Ballets Russes performance, namely Nikolai Roerich, of the version adopted by scandal seeking Diaghilev, Teatr Dada von Bzdulow, presented its "cover" of the work. In the pswudo-medieval premises of the huge castle built by emperor William II, known as CK Zamek, the two hour hommage to lost possibilities of proto-chaotic beauty and self-denial would have been more interesting had the casting not mixed real dance with the -understandable- desire to dance. Meaning that next time performers should absolutely be of the same calibre. Best moment of the collage, the voices of the women aiming at deciphering Stravinsky's "primordial cry" in composing his modern pagan masterpiece. How much I agreed with Blavasky's mambo jumbo? Not at all, but the demythologization ofthe "Rite" was another myth and if it's convincingly narrated, then there is no problem whatsoever. Janusz Orlik at the Stary Browar space took the original score and kept to iits rhythm iñ a trio for male dancers in grey folded leotards in a way that they became shorts, leavi.ng the upper torso naked. Sttavinsky, despite the brave efforts and good moments, took the best of them and was the protagonist. I guess needs a bit more experience and then come back to the re-staged, mythic ritial which still haunts audiences of today's more disillusioned world, fulfilling its retrospectivist, escapist vision.