Anna Steller – Transportation // Performing Poland
*Transportation *as defined by the cultural anthropologist Richard Schechner is a process in which one enters into an experience, is affected or touched by it, then abandoned and once again brought back to the beginning of the process. In the performance I relate to events in the past as well as to states in the present, trying to face them from another perspective in order to experience a state of exaltation, balancing on the edge of what is real and what is pretend, of being in a trance while simultaneously being oneself and creating a dialogue with the audience at the same time.
Credits:
Concept, creation: Anna Steller
Music: Adam Witkowski
Duration: ca. 60 min.
Schedule
Anna Steller – dancer, performer and choreographer. She began performing on stage in 1993 at Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre, with which she has collaborated ever since. She has been creating dance performances, action-performances and site-specific performances for many years. Anna Steller collaborates with many choreographers, directors and visual artists, such as: Krzysztof Leon Dziemaszkiewicz, Anna Królikiewicz, Anita Wach, Maciej Salamon, Ramona Nagabczyńska, Tomek Bazan, Nigel Charnock, Rebecca Lazier. Since 1993, she has been dancing at Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre in Gdańsk. In 2005, she co-founded the group Good Girl Killer, which she currently forms with Magda Jędra.
As a performer, she focuses mainly on the clarity of her message, on radical artistic solutions. She is interested in working in a duo, in working with an artist with different areas of interest, in negotiating the field of art, from which a new, fresh quality is born. The interdisciplinarity of dance and performing arts is an area she has been exploring for years in an attempt to understand and communicate important content and concepts to the public.
She has presented her work among others at the Art Stations Foundation in Poznań, Maat Festival in Lublin, Malta Festival in Poznań, L1 Contemporary Dance Festival in Budapest, Body-Mind Warsaw, Open’er Festival in Gdynia, Four Days and Festival of Naked Form in Prague.
Anna Steller is a winner of various scholarships and awards, including Dance Web at the ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna, the Visegrad Fund Scholarship, the Special Award of the Marshal of the Pomorskie Region for outstanding merits in the field of artistic creation and the Award of the President of the City of Gdańsk for Young Creators for the performance “Good Girl Killer”. In 2014, she was a scholarship holder of the Alternative Dance Academy at the Art Stations Foundation in Poznań. She has twice received a scholarship from the Polish Minister of Culture.
(photo: Michal Andrysiak)
Perform[ing] Poland
Perform[ing] Poland brings seven original pieces of art, ideated and created by the new generation of women – Performers, Dancers, Actresses, Artists and Artivists currently living and feeling in Poland.
All the works oscillate around the problems with which we can describe the reality of the Era of Social Change, which still has not received its final shape and seems to be drifting in an undefined, dangerous direction. What values are we called upon to describe anew, call it the language of the art at the time when the language of politics and the language of our streets failed like never before.
Will Freedom, Dignity and Love retain their place only in the space of the “composed experience of art”? or will they be able to inhabit our Hearts, our Homes, ours Streets, as always till now and as always anew.
Perform[ing] Poland was established as a result of the Interstices. Women in Performing Arts program, curated by Monika Wachowicz and implemented in 2021/22 by the Jerzy Grotowski Institute in Wrocław.
Artus
Artus is an open, diverse intellectual and creative workshop, a meeting place for people, ideas and art.
Artus is both Gábor Goda's company, the Artus Studio - a studio in an abandoned factory building of 2000 square metres - and the collective of 30 artists who work there, as well as the Association, which provides the institutional backdrop.
Founded in 1985, Artus is an independent, contemporary, all-arts collective. We have created more than 100 performances and presented them in 25 countries. Since the beginning we have organised international projects, residencies and co-productions.
The Studio's regular programmes include performances by the Artus company, guest performances, visual arts exhibitions, music and other cultural events, as well as self-awareness and movement workshops.