Five great extinctions have already occurred in the history of life on Earth. We are now witnesses and accomplices of the sixth one. Glaciers, corals, koalas and myths are dying. Myths about the relationship of human happiness to gross domestic product growth. Are we supposed to just look helplessly at the destruction of ecosystems and wait until we join the fossils ourselves? Or is there still some light smoldering in that darkness outside the window? The history of evolution shows that life can crawl out of seemingly hopeless situations. Life is a fight for breath. Life is a fight for hope. Life is a fight for fire. (Żelisław Żelisławski).

“Fight for Fire and Economic Growth", or the Camp of Evolution and Interspecies Curiosity, is a stage vision of the evolutionary race that embraces not only the homo sapiens species but also an interspecies perspective of the struggle for survival and a better life. An attempt to imagine other – than human – consciousnesses, sensibilities and motor abilities. 

It is also a journey across the different earthly species' ways of being in the world using the medium of the dancers' bodies. The journey spans billions of years and the infinite variety of shapes that life can take, from single-celled organisms to primates to fantastic materializations of “possible existences” derived from the concept of speculative zoology.

The performance is a collaboration between artists-dancers of the Polish Dance Theatre and a group of artists selected in the competition for the Polish Dance Theatre’s premiere in the Year of the Scoffers 2020: director Szymon Kaczmarek, choreographer Mikołaj Karczewski, playwright Żelisław Żelisławski, stage designer Kaja Migdałek and composer Kamil Tuszyński. It is part of the idiom “Man - Plant”, namely the program slogan for 2021 at the Polish Dance Theatre, signifying a time of intense inspiration by the biodiversity of nature's forms and movement omnipresent in the phenomena of nature. 

“Fight for Fire and Economic Growth "was included in the ranking of the best performances of the 2020/2021 season, prepared by the Teatr/Theatre monthly.

The performance is co-organized by the Institute of Music and Dance within the framework of their own program Choreographic Commissions 2021, financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

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