News from Polska: Performing arts festival takes place in Bucharest in May

The fifth edition of the performing arts festival News from Polska, set to take place in Bucharest between May 5 and May 11, proposes a curatorial concept dedicated to the human body seen “as a space of resistance, transformation, and empowerment in a world engulfed by crises on all levels.”

This edition brings four performances from Poland, meant to “raise questions, invite unfamiliar ways of thinking, imagining and defining multiple forms of the protest potential of the body in movement.”

It will begin with the contemporary dance workshop Between Disciplines, led by Dominika Knapik, an actress, director, and choreographer with extensive experience in Poland and Germany. The same day, on May 5, the performance Valeska Valeska Valeska Valeska, also created by Dominika Knapik, on the influence of the innovative artist Valeska Gert, a precursor of modern performing art, is scheduled. The show is a Performa Foundation production.

On May 7, the public can see To bitch or not to bitch, produced, directed, choreographed, and performed by the artistic collective Hertz Haus (Magdalena Kowala, Natalia Murawska, Joannna Woźna, Anna Zglenicka).

This will be followed on May 8 by the workshop Open Bodies. Intuitive Dance / Improvisation, led by Marta Wołowiec, also the initiator and curator of the Krakow Dance Festival.

WoW, conceived, directed, and choreographed by Marta Wołowiec, is scheduled for May 9. The show, a production of Przestrzenie Sztuki Taniec 2023, Wrocławski Teatr Pantomimy, reflects on the historical phenomenon of choreomania, also known as the dancing plague.

The festival ends on May 11 with Cezary goes to war, directed by Cezary Tomaszewski. It is a production of Teatr Komuna Warszawa, awarded for the best artistic team at the tenth edition of the Boska Komedia International Theater Festival in Krakow.

The event, hosted by the National Dance Center Bucharest (CNDB), is organized by the Polish Institute in Bucharest within the framework of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2025 and the Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024-2025.

All performances have Romanian subtitles.

(Photo: Valeska Valeska Valeska Valeska by Natalia Kabanow, from the organizers)