Live streaming in cooperation with the Warsaw Theatre Institute.
Babie Lato / Indian Summer is a story about the interpenetration of two worlds. Together with the dancer we go on a journey following the voice of her blind grandmother Chaja. This name has several meanings in Hebrew; two of them are “alive” and “lived”. We can also see this duality in her personal history. During the work on the performance and the premiere in May 2018, Chaja was still alive and in Israel, but her memories, recorded during a series of interviews, concerned her childhood – Chaja lived and grew up in a pre-war Polish town.
In the dark, following the protagonist’s voice, the artist tries to capture and preserve her visions, feelings from the past, her character and nature, weaving into them her own experiences and themes related to the decision to move to Poland at the end of summer 2017. As in Józef Chełmoński’s painting that bears the same title, we are accompanied by a certain mood related to the end of a season, metaphorically linked with the process of life changes and things and people passing into the past. The realist landscape also brings to mind the image of life in the Polish shtetl and its rural surroundings, known to the artist from colourful, naturalistic stories told by Chaja.
Little by little, to the rhythm of sequential imaginings, the dancer’s body becomes a go-between and instrument for the voices of the past, moving between the past and the present. Thus, we witness the journey of souls, as in Jewish folklore tale, Kabbalah or Hasidic mysticism. Through sound and movement, the artist attempts to bring back the dead and places, traditions and a world that no longer exists.
Adi Weinberg is a dancer, choreographer and gaga teacher. She has been instrumental in the development of the Gaga community in Warsaw, teaching Gaga and other dance workshops in Poland, Europe and Israel. She graduated from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, the Haifa programme for professional dancers and trained with the Vertigo Dance Company. As a contemporary dancer she has performed at many festivals around the world. Since 2014 she has been developing as a choreographer and has performed her creations on various platforms and festivals, including the Machol Shalem International Dance Week, Tel Aviv Dance Festival, KRoki Festival and others.
On 12 December Adi Weinberg will give an online workshop: Movement Research.
