Bzdyl’s INTERVIEWS


You and Katarzyna Chmielewska make up the permanent core of the team, but a number of artists from all over Poland have performed under the Dada label. What determines this form of cooperation with artists?  Leszek Bzdyl: I’ve always wanted to work with free people. I appreciate the fact that artists we have cooperated with for a shorter or longer period of time at some moment become independent artists and establish new places of artistic creation. This way dance can develop as new islands of this art form arise. A.M.
Dada Theatre is undergoing a steady evolution process and yet it has preserved a clear and consistent character. How is the team’s development stimulated? How are the themes that you elaborate on born? L.B.
In Dada’s performances, people who create them have always been the most important. We have touched on subjects that concern us all – so, in a manner of speaking, we have coauthored these subjects. Our performances are usually “dramas of the end” but that end is endless. For the past two years, we have been moving in a climate of a certain apogee. There have been such subjects as contact and drama between men and women. There was no mere acting – we moved beyond theatrical conventions. Out of this, “Magnolia” could be born, in which a woman and a man are only “acting” stage acting – they use the circumstances to present a certain coexistence, just as in real life but in more vivid forms. At the end they could thank each other for the game. There’s no game in “Strategy” though. “Strategy” brought an end to the theatre. It shows that we behave as vampirical insects sucking time off one another.  There’s no other aim in “Strategy” but to find the right strategy and survive. We can see here that one uses the group and the group uses that individual – each of them to their own particular purposes. Everybody knows that it is all about survival. ”Kilka błyskotliwych spostrzeżeń a la Gombrowicz” (A few clever remarks in the style of Gombrowicz) is a story of egoism. Sown by one person, egoism inflicts many. Everybody tries to gain something for themselves. The egoism as shown here is trying to shape into identity but that identity keeps falling apart because people steal it one from another. Human identities do not hold shape because everybody tries to shape them in their own way and to their own needs. In “Gombrowicz”, what matters most are the moments when nothing happens. Nothingness hides in pauses, in solos, it fills shapes – its symbol is an inflated mattress. There’s no nihilism in this performance. We are just examining a state of vacuum here. A.M.
Initially, Dada made larger productions, followed by solo spectacles and stage duets. With the latest spectacle “Eden” you return to spectacles involving a large number of viewers. It also, as you said, summarizes your work, being, at the same time, a reverse to your achievements. What did you want to manifest through that performance? L.B.
”Eden" was born out of a surplus, out of an overpressure of what presses us and also out of the reality’s overweight. We wanted to check if there was a chance of a moment that could be extended. We wanted in all of it to find the nucleus of what it means to be man for another person. To find the answer how it is possible that life flows on its own and yet there are meetings. In “Eden” we resort to the Qur’an but it doesn’t really matter what religion you will use in this medium. Religions are created by man. Paradises are a way to break free. It’s about interrelations that are no longer a nervous agitation or suppression. It is a moment in which one note holds a whole series of vibrations. What is small can become vast, and nothing causes death. It is another dimension, another reality. There’s a specific kind of narcotic here, which causes that you live your life inside it. “Eden” was meant to become such a narcotic. It was to make us lose the sense of time passage. There’s no time here – there’s timelessness. This timelessness undergoes changes, it expands. I once experienced it at Osjan’s concert. I still have that feeling in mind. A.M.
All these years Dada has been trying to show us an alternative reality. Not a reality detached from it but seen from a different angle. What do you think could be the basic pillar of the subjects you move about? L.B.
Theater – this is Dada’s subject. The question what theatricality is and what its function is. What are the limits to theatre, if any such limits exist. It always starts with observing the reality and then transferring those observations into another dimension. I treat theatre as a never-ending experiment. I am pleased when the viewer is moved by something that they may not be able to verbalize. Theatre is shamanism. A shaman’s role was to take everybody present to a metaphysical world, with the shaman staying in the role of artisan. With the use of words, gestures, rhythm, herbs, he would let people migrate to another dimension. He himself had to remain sober and mad. Theatre must also be sober and mad. All the time it must conceive methods of how to make the viewers experience another reality dimension. This is what we are trying to do in Dada on every occasion, using theatrical conventions and examining their limits. A.M.
You are consistent in revealing the borderlines between theatricality and real life. Many spectacles begin by marking the theatrical space and separating the hero from the actor. You don’t hide the fact that you are merely acting your roles within a certain place. L.B. Yes, because it is not about cheating the viewers. We are just trying to take them to a point from which they will consciously start their journeys. In “Eden” it was a journey in time. In a specially formed time. We wanted to find a way to, in a certain sense, abolish time, both extend and shrink it. Our only chance for it was to have no dramas taking place then. Drama means cause and effect. It generates time. In “Eden”, the kind of reality determined by cause and effect falls apart. We could sense how far we could go giving up typical theatrical rules, preserving what we believed to be the essence of theatre. We don’t want to cheat the viewer that it is reality, because theatre is not reality. A.M.
It is a very bold attempt at crossing beyond what the viewer might expect from a theatrical performance. There have already been in the theatre’s history conscious attempts to give up a dramatic chain of events, to give up a certain perceivable continuity. It is not an unprecedented way of artistic creation but it has never been the favorite one. Why did you decide to follow this way? L.B.
Today’s theatre is spasm – I don’t want spasm. Everything changes with time and vanishes – just a few more spasms and it will vanish, too. In “Eden” I want to touch on something that evades time, and so perhaps it will be immune to its effects. It is an attempt to be ahead of certain events and to ask oneself the question if it is possible to come to the theatre not to see something happen but to linger in timelessness. It is an attempt to go beyond, but it still is a theatrical attempt. In Dada there have always been a variety of subjects, and co-authoring. We are trying to reach a moment of understanding in the form, subject. In “Eden” it came in the form and this form was created within an intimate experience. A good actor doesn’t have to and doesn’t want to understand fully. They don’t want to play in dramas, unless it’s just a game and I know it will be a game. I don’t know where our future performances will take us.