JUMPCORE by Paweł Sakowicz at the Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival
Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 7:00 PM
Bohemian National Hall
321 E 73rd St
New York, NY 10021
FREE ADMISSION WITH RSVP

JUMPCORE by Paweł Sakowicz at the Voices International Festival
Sunday, June 16, 2024 at 4:00 PM
Jersey City Theater Center
165 Newark Ave
Jersey City, NJ 07302
FREE ADMISSION WITH RSVP

Screening of the dance performance Boa
Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 9:00 PM and 10:15 PM
Bohemian National Hall
321 E 73rd St
New York, NY 10021
FREE ADMISSION WITH RSVP

JUMPCORE project

In 2017 Paweł Sakowicz, a choreographer and dancer, started developing JUMPCORE and it was premiered in December 2017 in Lublin (MAAT Festival) and Warsaw (Studio Theatre). As the first choreographic work in Polish history, JUMPCORE was purchased to the collection of the state art gallery (Zachęta – National Gallery of Art). The piece was selected to be presented at the Polish Dance Platform 2019. 

The performance is inspried by a New York choreographer, Fred Herko. It is not entirely clear if Herko planned to finish his intimate performance with a suicide death. He took a bath, turned on Mozart’s Coronation Mass and began to dance naked in his friend’s living room. He approached an open window several times. When Sanctus resounded, he ran and jumped out the window of the apartment on the fifth floor of New York’s Cornelia Street. Ballet dancers are said to believe they can fly. And indeed, suspended for a second in a jump, they do.

Choreography and performance: Paweł Sakowicz
Dramaturgy: Mateusz Szymanówka
Music: Indecorum
Costume: Doom 3k.

Dance Performance Boa

Boa is the first choreographic play in the history of the National Stary Theatre in Kraków. Its main theme and explored space of movement is desire, how it is demonstrated, embodied, and performed. In Boa, choreographer Paweł Sakowicz wonders about paths by which desire circulates in the body; how it is created through a spatial orientation of bodies; how it can be intermediated through popular culture, discourses, and technologies, and what its embodied consequences are. Delving into the trajectories of desire, Boa mainly focuses on two parts of the body: the hips and the eyes, which do not need the sense of touch in order to touch. Sakowicz draws from cinematic tools that build relationships, organize images, and internalize the outside gaze, though there are no cameras on stage. The bodies here bear traces of stolen choreographies and scraps of fiery soap-opera plots. The actors practice culturally stereotyped dances of the South, and they seduce a non-existent camera, the existing audience, and one another.

Choreography: Paweł Sakowicz

About Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival

Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival, honoring Václav Havel, is a showcase of contemporary European theater organized each year in New York City. Conceived in 2017 as a shared endeavor of the Václav Havel Center (VHC) and Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA), the festival honors the legacy of Czech playwright, dissident and political thinker Vaclav Havel.

Each edition of Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival addresses current sociopolitical trends in Central and Eastern Europe, offering New York audiences a unique opportunity to witness the region’s theatrical zeitgeist.

The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. The festival is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Paweł Sakowicz is a choreographer and dancer. He graduated from the University of Warsaw with a degree in political studies and holds an MA in performance and choreography from the London Contemporary Dance School. He has collaborated with Ramona Nagabczyńska, Marta Ziółek, Iza Szostak, Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Rebecca Lazier, Isabelle Schad, Peter Pleyer, Joanna Leśnierowska, Magda Szpecht, Łukasz Twarkowski, Michał Borczuch, and Anna Smolar. In 2013, Paweł began working on a solo inspired by Thomas Bernhard’s language: Bernhard premiered at the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute in Warsaw in June 2014. The piece was selected to be presented at the Polish Dance Platform 2014. In 2015, Sakowicz was an artist-in-residence at the Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk (as part of the Solo Project Plus 2015). In December 2015, he presented TOTAL: a piece that problematizes the issues of virtuosity and examines speculation as a potential choreographic tool. The piece was selected to be presented at the Polish Dance Platform 2017. In 2017, he was developing another solo work: Jumpcore. In autumn 2018, Paweł and Anna Smolar collaborated on Thriller: a theatre/dance piece for the young audience. In January 2019, Paweł premiered Masakra: his first group piece focusing on the latin ballroom dance and issues of cultural appropriation. Both Thriller and Masakra are in the repertoire of Nowy Teatr in Warsaw. In autumn 2020, he created a new piece – Drama – that was commissioned by the Body/Mind Festival in Warsaw. In 2021, in collaboration with Anka Herbut and Justyna Stasiowska, Paweł worked on VORTEX: a quadrophonic sound installation dealing with the non-linear approach to the dance history. In 2022, National Museum in Warsaw commissioned a new dance performance from Paweł: a solo work Amando premiered in April. Sakowicz’s artistic development was supported by a scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland, a residency programmer run by the Institute of Music and Dance in Warsaw, by the Alternative Dance Academy of the Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk, by the Centre National de la Danse in Paris, and 2017 danceWEB scholarship. He collaborated as choreographer with Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, Studio Theatre in Warsaw, TR Warszawa, Schauspiel Hannover, Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Lithuanian National Drama Theatre in Vilnius, Dailes Teatris in Riga, and Münchner Kammerspiele. Paweł was the curator of two editions of the dance education program Poruszyciele#Wałbrzych. He was awarded for the choreography („Schubert” directed by Magda Szpecht) at the National Competition for the Polish Contemporary Play Staging. He was nominated for the 2016 Polityka Passport Award. Currently, he is a guest teacher at the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw.

Lead image: by Klaudyna Schubert

Jumpcore belongs to the collection of the Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Production: MAAT Festival, Scena Tańca Studio, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Co-Presented by the Polish Cultural Institute