Whether as a dancer or choreographer, Ewa Dziarnowska is highly regarded by both audiences and the dance community. This is a look back at key moments in her career that have led to her production This resting, patience.

Ewa Dziarnowska's This resting patience can truly be described as a gift to the dance world. Premiering at the Sophiensaele in Berlin, this three-hour performance with its magical atmosphere has won many hearts. One can tell that Ewa feels comfortable in pieces that exceed the usual duration. In this extended length, there is a calm self-determination in every movement, allowing Ewa all the time in the world. Should I wait another five seconds before the next sequence? How does my partner react? Not only the audience is curious about what will happen next. Through this intuitive understanding, she can enjoy the choreography herself. In This resting patience Ewa's preferences, strengths, and interests from 20 years of dedication to dance come together. It is her space, filled with improvisational techniques, embodied knowledge of choreography, and the poetic and socio-political dimensions of dance. In interplay, the piece charmingly interrogates theatrical conventions, spectacle, and modes of viewing with great endurance.

One of her first engagements as a dancer was in Dance Constructions, created by the American icon of Postmodern Dance, Simone Forti, at the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg almost exactly ten years ago. Dance in a museum functions differently than on stage. Here, dance invites lingering; coming and going are allowed, and a less strict dramaturgy arranges the flow of events. At that time, Ewa was studying at SEAD—about a 30-minute walk from the museum—a training institution known for its technical focus, where Ewa also discovered her love for dance improvisation. Even during her studies, she began collaborating with independent artists, including Doris Uhlich, with whom she primarily tours the now-iconic piece more than naked, sharing this experience with 19 other dancers. The piece continues to be invited to festivals even ten years later. One of the reasons for this is undoubtedly the enduring sense of connection among the dancers, thanks to all the time spent together.

After completing her studies in Salzburg, Ewa turns to the next chapter: Berlin and the BA program in Dance, Context, Choreography at the Inter-University Centre, HZT, where an extraordinary freedom already defined the curriculum at that time. Ewa is able to compose her dance training herself; instead of ballet classes, she now engages in somatic practices—an interest that continues into her collaboration with choreographer Isabelle Schad, whose focus on physical presence and precision Ewa still appreciates.

In Berlin, there are more performances as well as more opportunities for going out than in Salzburg. On the dance floors of clubs, where time, rhythm, and shared experiences create entirely different physical sensations, Ewa meets new communities, including those from the visual arts. She values the greater freedom in the process that can exist there. Instead of strict rehearsal in dance, the emphasis is on spending time together. In the White Cube, she increasingly feels at home and performs for artists such as Tino Sehgal, Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, and later for Enad Marouf or Michelle Rizzo, for whose works different forms of endurance are required. Ewa is highly valued as a dancer not only for her technical training but also for her conceptual understanding of different spaces and logics—something that is palpably part of the DNA of This resting patience. Regardless of the scene she moves through, her work carries a particular interest in choreography that—quoting Jonathan Burrows—“is a negotiation of the patterns that a body thinks,” revealing other ways of thinking and networks. Her first performances also already play with duration, repetition, and compositions of bodies, often taking place in galleries rather than theaters.

The spirits of the choreographies Ewa has loved to dance in seem to be present in This resting patience. Not that they are directly quoted; rather, they are sensitivities she has developed from these choreographies. You can feel that this is a piece by a dancer and probably exactly for this reason it is so seductive, as her co-performer Leah Marojević and she dance for themselves together; thus, they engage with the audience's gaze.

Unknowingly, we have longed for such a piece as spectators. It remains a brief immersion into Ewa's world, where bodies exchange with one another, observe, and allow glances and thoughts to drift away—only to return and realize that what the world needs is not only love, as it resonates from the speakers at the beginning of the piece, but also this resting patience.

By Lewon Heublein

EWA DZIARNOWSKA
Ewa Dziarnowska is a dancer and choreographer based in Berlin and working internationally. Her projects explore improvisation and embodied knowledge, challenging notions of rationality and linearity. She is drawn to the apoetic dimension of dance—its sensuality, as well as the pleasure and pain it evokes.

Credits:

Supported by the NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ Guest Performance Fund for Dance, sponsored by the Federal Government Commissioner for Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Ministries of Culture and the Arts of the federal states.

A production by Ewa Dziarnowska in co-production with Sophiensæle. The 33rd Tanztage Berlin are a production of Sophiensæle. Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF). With the kind support of Tanzfabrik Berlin e. V., Theaterhaus Berlin Mitte.