Fascinating Polish creators at the fifth edition of the “News from Polska” Performing Arts Festival From May 5 to 11, the Bucharest National Dance Center (CNDB) hosts the fifth edition of the News from Polska Performing Arts Festival, organized by the Polish Institute in Bucharest and realized within the framework of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2025 and within the framework of the Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024-2025.
Under the title „Resisting Bodies”, the festival proposes a curatorial concept dedicated to the human body as a space of resistance, transformation and empowerment in a world engulfed by crises on all levels.
This edition offers the Bucharest audience four performances from Poland, which provoke questions and invite them to unfamiliar ways of thinking, imagining, and defining multiple forms of the protest potential of the body in movement. All performances are subtitled in Romanian, and tickets will be available soon.
The festival starts from the premise that contemporary dance and performing arts need to be reaffirmed as meaningful and relevant. It goes beyond the level of artistic expression and treats these arts as instruments of critical reflection.
The selected performances explore physicality from multiple angles, the body’s visceral power to challenge and oppose repressive norms, forms of control and limitation, and the imposition of any behavioral, aesthetic or kinetic models. Along with these representative performances for contemporary Polish performing arts, the organizers also propose workshops dedicated to professionals in the world of dance, exploring the connections between other artistic languages and the body in motion, as well as the expressive power of improvisation and intuitive dance.
News from the Polska Festival Schedule
The festival program begins on May 5 at 9:00 AM with the contemporary dance workshop Between Disciplines, led by Dominika Knapik, an actress, director, and choreographer with extensive experience in the performing arts in Poland and Germany.
Access to the workshop is free, but the number of places is limited, so registration is required using the form here.
The day will continue at 7:30 PM with the performance VALESKA VALESKA VALESKA VALESKA, also created by Dominika Knapik, recovering and celebrating the influence of the innovative artist Valeska Gert, a precursor of modern performing art, recognized for her eccentric, radical and critical approach to the body in an artistic context. The performance is a Performa Foundation production. On May 7, from 7:30 PM, the festival continues with To bitch or not to bitch, produced, directed, choreographed and performed by the artistic collective Hertz Haus (Magdalena Kowala, Natalia Murawska, Joannna Woźna, Anna Zglenicka). The show challenges the dominant narratives through which we define our physicality and the lenses of perception and judgment through which we perceive the body.
On May 8, from 4:00 PM, the workshop Open Bodies. Intuitive Dance / Improvisation will take place, led by Marta Wołowiec and hosted by the Teatrelli space. Marta Wołowiec is a performer, choreographer, dancer and dance workshop facilitator, the initiator and curator of the Kraków Dance Festival. Participation is free, and registrations are made using this form.
On May 9, at 7:30 PM, CNDB will host the show WoW, conceived, directed and choreographed by Marta Wołowiec, a production of Przestrzenie Sztuki Taniec 2023, Wrocławski Teatr Pantomimy. The show is a reflection on the historical phenomenon of choreomania (also known as tarantism, dancing plague or the Dance of Saint Vitus), which occurred mainly in continental Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries and in Madagascar in the 19th century, causing uncontrolled fits of dancing among children and adults, causing them to move until they fall to the ground, exhausted.
The show speaks about the human need for liberation through movement and dance, especially in difficult times. The last event scheduled within the festival is the premiere in Bucharest of Cezary goes to war, directed by Cezary Tomaszewski, the most famous production of Teatr Komuna Warszawa, one of the most important theatrical events of 2017, with performances in many countries and awarded for the best artistic team at the tenth edition of the Boska Komedia International Theater Festival in Krakow.
The performance, scheduled for May 11 at 7:30 PM, is an invitation to deconstruct traditions, ideologies, and power structures, a critique of military pride and aesthetics, underlining its toxic and oppressive nature. Cezary Tomaszewski is a theater director and choreographer, known and appreciated for his iconoclastic musical theater productions.
The program of the fifth edition of the News from Polska Festival of Performing Arts, therefore, emphasizes that resistance is not an exclusively political phenomenon or limited to the space of ideas. The body is not just a medium for projecting these ideas but a concrete and complex instrument capable of directly and viscerally expressing opposition, defying political and social constraints and norms.
The event is held within the framework of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2025 and within the framework of the Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024-2025, the result of cooperation between the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw, the Ministry of Culture of Romania and the Romanian Cultural Institute, with the support of the Polish Institute in Bucharest.
