Rafał Urbacki / choreographic workshops

From the beginning of my choreographic practice, due to my history, I am dealing with the body with alternative motor skills and how movement derives from its identity and origin. For several years I have been dealing with the archaeology of the worker’s body (mainly in Upper Silesia) and the forgotten workers’ ethos. I work mainly with former workers of closed factories. I ask a lot of questions that I would like to discuss during the workshop. Can you talk about projects with the community and about designing the future of the community using dance and choreography? How do we identify with the community we come from at the level of movement? What has the body identified with, and what has it forgotten? What has been recorded in individual memory? What does it use every day? What does it go back to? Is it possible to talk about a community based on the experience of the body? I would like us to go through the selected paths from the diagram accompanying the presentation of the work of Jaśmina Wójcik “Symphony of the Ursus Factory” and try to embody them. Maybe we can build individual motion alphabets based on what we do together. We will be working together, and we will move according to the discussion. The three-day workshop will end with the transfer of the developed choreography to the exhibition space. (Rafał Urbacki)

Rafał Urbacki

director, critical choreographer, anthropologist, lecturer, author of motion in dozens of theatrical performances and creator of approx. 50 projects with communities. He works mainly on thematic blocks, creating a number of projects on a given subject, such as alternative motor skills and sensory skills, the archaeology of the worker’s body, post-industrial heritage and its revitalization. For 11 years he moved only with the help of a wheelchair. Thanks to the development of his own method of motion, he now moves without it. He has previously worked as a director or choreographer, including with the National Old Theatre in Kraków, the Polish Theatre in Wrocław, the Silesian Museum in Katowice, Stary Browar in Poznań, the Z.Raszewski Theatre Institute in Warsaw, etc.