Kozyra

dance lesson

dance lesson

performance, video installation, and color photographs, 2001

The performance is based on Igor Stravinsky's ballet Petrushka. There are three versions of the work: 1) performance (shown twice: at the Dance Festival at the Center for Comtemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, and at the Ludwig Museum in Vienna, 2001), 2) video installation (created for the Sao Paulo Biennial), 3) three colour photographs (produced for Postmasters Gallery in New York).
Performance: the six amateur dancers have been suspended on a revolving wall, three on each side. Each turn of the wall shows three boys performing 30 sec. Choreographed sequence. They copy the movements of a dancer previously recorded on video and screened during the performance. As an addition to the performers on the revolving wall there were two old women sitting in the audience. They are topless and made-up as men: wearing beards and moustaches. Their faces attempt to express astonishment and curiosity at what is going on "on stage". The revolving wall has been made into a video installation, shown as a separate work.