'Climbing dance' performance by Barbara Gryka draws on elements of the regional culture of Pomerania, combined with the extreme sport of climbing. It is a dance balancing on the border of opposite worlds: muscular power, agility in close contact with the stable base of a massive building, a former bunker – combined with ethereal movement performed in the air, in feminine proximity, intimacy of gestures.
Two female performers, members of the Tri-City Mountaineering Club: Mona Rena Górska and Karolina Hryniewicka, were invited by Barbara Gryka to collaborate. The artists will recreate a choreographic arrangement taken from the dance figures of Kashubian folk dances on the wall of the Bunker at 3 Olejarna Street in central Gdańsk. Intimate contact between the two performers and their dialogue in dance will manifest the power of women and their presence in this extreme sport. The author and the performers want to create a multidimensional image of the contemporary femininity, combining its different models and qualities. On one hand the femininity represented by the dances of the region, carrying a message about the tradition, a long-standing legacy passed on from generation to generation, the attribution of specific roles and images to both genders in dance, and, on the other, by marking the participation of women in the world of sport climbing, carrying the qualities of causality, strength, risk, adrenaline and the kind of individuality of the chosen path.
'Climbing dance' is also intended as a meaningful gesture towards architecture, emphasising power and authority, but also as a reminder of what architecture should be – tactile, close to people. Performer’s movement is a manifesto, exposing the negation of the primary purpose of buildings, meaning its function and use, intended to bring out the subjectivity of the user. Climbing the wall of a building – a former bunker which has been transformed and now functions as a night club – is only to show it as a lifeless mass, an obstacle, a monument whose interior has lost its original function becoming a monument to the old order, old ideologies and structures.
Barbara Gryka’s performance will also turn to the local costume tradition present in Kashubian region. Created by Mona Rena Górska costumes are inspired by colourful dresses, corsets adorned with sparkles, artificial flowers pinned in the hair, ribbons, embroideries, beads and pristine white lace, combined with the practical aspects of climbing costumes, harnesses, ropes, carabiners. The choreography, meanwhile, draws on elements of Kashubian dances, such as: "Marëszka", derived from the "dances" of sailors; modelled on Scandinavian "dances"; it is danced in a circle in pairs; "Dzëk" – a "dance" that fishermen learned from corsairs; it is wild and violent; performed by men only; "Shoemaker" – the basis of the dance arrangements is to imitate the work of a shoemaker such as sewing and hammering in studs; danced in pairs; "Wôłtôk" – a sea dance; with the hands imitating the movement of the sea waves and with the body depicting the whirlpools of the waters, "Òwcôrz" – a dance derived from the rituals of "welcoming spring".
'Climbing dance' performance is the result of Barbara Gryka's artistic residency at the ŁAŹNIA CCA.
Barbara Gryka's initiatives encourage different social groups to act commonly, to unite, to be together. The artist most often works with the local context, looking for characteristic elements of a particular place. Issues of identity and memory are at the heart of her interests. However, she does not seek them in the public – history, monuments, grand narratives – but in smaller things, closer to the body and the individual. Identity for the artist consists of small things: what can she see through the window, what does she eat and who is her neighbour.
Barbara Gryka, an artist from the village of Końskowola (Poland), was born in April 1992. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, specializing in the Faculty of Media Art. In 2019, she obtained her diploma from the Studio of Spatial Activities led by Mirosław Bałka. In her practice, she engages in performative activities. Her work involves collaborating with people, not necessarily those who are involved in the field of art. She learned these skills from her mother, Beata. Her favorite activity is conversing, and she also enjoys observing other people, their behaviors, and lifestyles. In her project "Architecture from the Inside," she visited her neighbors in the LSM district in Lublin. She knocked on their doors and asked for an interview. She plans to continue visiting modernist Polish housing estates. In "The Motorcycle Dance," she led a group of 8 men on motorcycles, dancing the Lublin folk dance.