After the performance of "Out of the Hat," the Polish Dance Theater Company will embark on a return trip from Japan to Poland. However, this does not mean that the Polish Dance Theater's participation in the EXPO 2025 World Exhibition in Osaka is coming to an end.
From September 27 to 29 in the Festival Station / Experimental Event Booths space, viewers from all over the world will have the opportunity to see Andrzej Grabowski's photography exhibition Natural Histories, for which the photos were taken during the 2020 COVID pandemic on the grounds of the Poznan Zoological Garden. They depict both Zoo residents and Polish Dance Theater dancers, provoking reflection on the animalism encoded in human DNA.
The Natural Histories exhibition follows the human-animal idiom that inspired the artistic activities of the Polish Dance Theater in 2022. The animal is in each of us - we are connected by anatomy, biology, corporeality, mobility, breathing, social behavior and emotions. We are one of many species - as important as elephants, badgers, owls or giraffes. The dancers of the Polish Dance Theater translate animal physicality into the human body, asking questions about the boundaries of identity, about the place of humans in the interspecies community. For is it really possible to separate what is human from what is animal?"
.Why is it worth remembering that we are all animals? Doesn't it stem from a concern for disappearing biodiversity and the man-made climate crisis? Natural Histories expresses a longing for a space where animals and humans - paws and hands, feet and hooves - can coexist in harmony. What are the relationships between humans and animals? How do we perceive human qualities in nonhuman beings? Where is the line between empathy and love for animals and the need to dominate them? The dancers of the Polish Dance Theater reverse this relationship and take on an animal's motor skills to tell through the body about the bond that organically and strongly connects humans and animals - however broadly we understand this world.
.The Natural Histories exhibition is based on the Natural Histories album, which won numerous awards: a bronze medal in the Best Book Design from all over the World 2022 competition organized by Stiftung Buchkunst, a gold medal in the European Design Awards 2021, and four honorable mentions in the 61st Most Beautiful Books of the Year 2020 competition (to the publisher Polish Dance Theater, to Ryszard Bienert for graphic design, typesetting and preparation of photos for printing, to Drukmania: Natalia Luczak and Krystian Luczak in Daszewice for printing the book, and to Andrzej Grabowski - author of the photos and creator of the concept for this exhibition).
Album "Natural Histories" is part of exhibitions at the German Museum of Books and Writing in Leipzig (Germany), Weltformat Graphic Design Festival in Lucerne (Switzerland), Museum Of Design And Applied Art in Garðabær(Iceland) and Printing Museum in Tokyo(Japan). With our message, therefore, we are in Japan for the second time. For the Polish Dance Theater, the presence of both the album and the exhibition in Japan is proof that reflection on animalism and humanity is universal - it knows no cultural boundaries. The World Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai is a symbolic culmination of the path it has traveled: from a book that won international recognition to the largest and most important economic and promotional event in the world.
The exhibition is part of the program of the Wielkopolska Province Week, which takes place in the Polish Pavilion during EXPO 2025, from September 24-30 this year.
More about Wielkopolska Voivodeship Week at the Polish Pavilion
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Poznan audiences will be able to view the exhibition upon its return from Japan in the Small Studio of the Polish Dance Theater.
