While visiting Prague, the choreographer Irena Lipińska will research the relation of imagination/interpretation in reference to the body, to space between people, and to choreography. Her starting point will be the unimaginable, which is the symptomatic sphere in dance, usually associated with difficulties in naming and describing. Successive stages will mark out the moments of becoming – of performing – in ever-changing situations and groups of people. Improvised movement may become the language of these events, while the pre-conceived structure will constitute their bounds. This chorographical research will contain experiments in order to check how much does the unimaginable affect choreography and how does it verbalize moments and meanings. The visit will result in a work-in-progress show, together with select artists from Prague.

“This artistic, Polish-Czech meeting is a vessel that we’ll fill. We’ll become something exceptional and united, during this particular moment of exchange and of building new qualities. Using our creativity and collective interpretation of actions, we’ll grasp the indescribable. I’ll become water, which fills the vessel, not only in my personal vision of creating, but also in a collective act. This is how I imagine movement: the lack of specialization changes all systems and encountered formations; that, which is structured, named, and included in particular vision and thinking, will never be completely interesting and exceptional or new. I hope to break down the already-imagined structure and arrive at that, which is still new, still unimaginable.”

The residency visit in Cross Club in Czech Republic will be a part of Idiom 2017 – second edition of the Performat Foundation project, which promotes Polish dance and performance artists in Czech Republic. This stay will serve to deepen artistic relation with foreign creators, and allow networking between Poles and Czechs.

Irena Lipińska - a performer, dancer, and choreographer. She received a scholarship from the Alternative Dance Academy in Poznań (2011) and was a resident of Solo Project for young choreographers by the Art Stations Foundation (2011). Her solo pieces include: hydrohypno, line, Kompilacje, DNACE, dwa na jeden, LU2077. After receiving a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of Poland, she developed !GROT! (2014) in collaboration with the new media artist Paweł Janicki. The same year she participated in a choreographic exchange program between Poland and Philadelphia, USA as well as the choreography project Isabelle Schad Collective Jumps. She collaborates with contemporary music and new media artists. She conducts dance and movement workshops, including ones for future actors, as well and children and adults with psychological disorders and movement disabilities.