GENERATIONS: POLAND

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March 16 and 17, 2016 \| FAMILY THEATER \| 7:30pm
SNOWZILLA has come and gone, and now its time for GENERATIONS: POLAND - THE REBOOT. ALL tickets are honored from the January 22 and 23 shows which were rescheduled due to the SNOWZILLA blizzard. In the midst of a season taking it to Russia, Algeria, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and beyond, Company \| E returns to the Terrace Theater Stage with an evening of startling, stunning repertory and music which spans 60 years. From a world premiere by 26 year old Robert Bondara of the Polish National Ballet to the restoration of "Dirge" from the late Pola Nirenska's "Holocaust Tetralogy," "Generations" is at once an evening of art and a reflection of one country's journey. The remarkable "Who Let the Dog's Out," by Warsaw's Lidia Wos makes its U.S. premiere in an entirely new form. Henryk Gorecki's haunting "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" finds its movement voice in "AIR" a world premiere by Paul Emerson and the Company with a special arrangement of the Second Movement for Gospel Choir by Gavin Stewart. Performed by Washington Performing Art's Children of the Gospel Choir, under the Direction of Michelle Fowlin, the music is transformed, bringing hope to a score set in tragedy. On Saturday evening, January 23 the Pola Nirenska Awards for 2015 and a special presentation to 2014 Winner Douglas E. Yeuell will be made from the concert stage, bringing together for the first time both the art and the memorial legacy of Ms. Nirenska, who was, and remains, a seminal figure in Washington, DC's contemporary dance geneology. "Generations" is about many generations, from Poland to Washington, DC. TICKETS: $35, $25 and special student seats for $18. IN PERSON: The Kennedy Center Box Office BY TELEPHONE: 202.467.4600 ONLINE: BUY TICKETS FOR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16 at 7:30PM BUY TICKETS FOR THURSDAY, MARCH 17 at 7:30PM
LIDIA WOS
"WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?" LENGTH: 35 Minutes WATCH ALL THE FILMS OF LIDIA CREATING "WHO LET THE DOGS OUT" FOR COMPANY E. Lidia Wos is a Polish/Swedish freelancing dancer and choreographer, born in Pulawy, Poland, in 1970. She got her professional dance education at Public Ballet School in Warsaw between 1981 and 1990. After the graduation she has been working as a dancer at New Dance Theatre in Bytom, Opera Baltycka in Gdansk and Polish Dance Theatre in Poznan and from January 2002 until June 2015 at Skånes Dansteater in Malmö, Sweden. Residence In 2003 Lidia made her debut as a choreographer when she made a short duet called Pas de Fly for a mixed Lunch Dance program at Skånes Dansteater. Her second choreography Ecru from 2005 was invited to an international choreography competition for young choreographers in Hannover. Totally she has created six choreographies for Skånes Dansteater’s Lunch Dance programs. In 2011 she was commissioned by Skånes Dansteater to create a longer piece. The result was Who Let the Dogs Out? - a personal, melancholic and humorous piece, in which Lidia also created the costume and set design. For Skånes Dansteater she has also created the full evening performance “Songs from a cancelled divorce” with three dancers, two singers and four musicians on stage. It was a co-production with Malmö Opera based on a song cycle from one of Sweden’s most famous singer and songwriter. Besides her works for Skånes Dansteater Lidia has been commissioned as a choreographer by different dance companies as Norrdans, Sweden, Ballet Prague Junior, Czech Republic, South Bohemian Ballet, Czech Republic and Company E, Washington, USA. She has also created choreography for different dramatic theatre companies as Malmö Stadsteater, Sweden, Teater Foratt, Sweden and Teatr Osmego Dnia, Poland. As a choreographer Lidia Wos has a characteristic and personal style. She has a natural and organic way of creating the movements even though she often add an extra twist. Her choreographies are full of fantasy where new body angles and positions are suddenly revealed. But her choreographies are not only about movements and steps. Lidia put a lot of attention to all details, where everything – costumes, set, props, light etc – is as important in the universe that she creates. Her creations are full off images, often with an absurd and humoristic twist. Musicality is another of Lidia’s trademarks as a choreographer. She gets most of her ideas when she listen to music and from there she starts to paint her chorographical tableaux. In addition to her artistic work Lidia also has a broad experience from teaching and to give classes and different kinds of workshops. She is giving classes in classical ballet for professional dances as well as more playful workshops for amateurs. In the spring 2016 she will start working for the Malmö Theatre Academy where she will give classes in contemporary dance for the actor students. MEET THE COMPOSER Marcin Brycki – Composer, sound artist and acoustic engineer Marcin Brycki was born in Poland and move to Sweden when he was 12 years. Already as a kid in Poland he started to play classical piano and his highest dream was to be a famous concert pianist. From his young days he also had a great interest in experiment with different sounds and as a teenager he started to make his first compositions. Through the years he has been working with all kinds of genres and music styles, everything from sound art and contemporary art music to jazz and mainstream pop music. He has been a producer, worked as a composer and been playing himself. In 1999 he started his own record company, MBA Records and through that company he has among other things been working with different artists as well as for Swedish national TV, radio and different commercial companies. Marcin composed the music for Lidia Wos dance performance “Who let the dogs out?” in 2011. That was his first composition for dance. After that he has also created the sound image for choreographies by Marcos Morau and Martin Forsberg at Skånes Dansteater. He has an exam as an acoustic engineer and is now working as a music and acoustic consultant for where he is making different acoustic and sound work connected to construction of new buildings and city environments.
	VIDEO OF "WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?"

POLA NIRENSKA
"DIRGE" LENGTH: 11 minutes Pola Nirenska posesses one of the most recognized, and yet least understood, names on the contemporary dance scene of Washington, DC today. Each year her name is the source of the most important award for individual achievement in dance through the eponymous "Pola Nirenska Award" administered through Washington Performing Arts and the Pola Nirenska Committee. Yet her work, which was a defining element of the dance scene in Washington in the 1950, '60s, '70s and 80's is nearly lost to time. Company E, in partnership with the Nirenska Committee and Washington Performing Arts returns a part of that legacy to the stage in GENERATIONS with "Dirge," and excerpt of her defining "Holocaust Tetralogy." WIth a guest performance by Rima Faber, reprising her original role of 25 years ago, "Dirge" is the centerpiece of the evening. On Saturday, January 23, the Annual Awards Presentation will take place from the stage of the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. LEARN MORE ABOUT MS. NIRENSKA.
ROBERT BONDARA
DIDI AND GOGO WORLD PREMIERE LENGTH: 13 MINUTES One of the most intriguing young choreographers emerging in Poland today, Mr. Bondara is still at the height of his career as a performer with the Polish National Ballet. His work has shared the stage with the dances of Ohad Naharin and Jiri Kylian. Mr. Bondara is a graduate of the Feliks Parnell State Ballet School in Łódź, the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, which he cooperates with as a teacher, and Warsaw School of Economics. At first he performed at the Music Theatre in Łódź and then he moved to the Grand Theatre in Poznań. In 2005 he joined the Ballet of the Polish National Opera, currently the Polish National Ballet and in 2008 he started cooperating with Aleksandra Dziurosz’s Warsaw Dance Theatre. He creates the WORLD PREMIERE of DIDI and GOGO for Company \| E. LEARN MORE ABOUT MR. BONDARA. MEET THE COMPOSER Pawel Szymanski was graduated with honours from the National Higher School of Music in Warsaw, where he studied composition with Wlodzimierz Kotonski (1974-78) and Tadeusz Baird (1978). Szymanski won numerous composing competitions including the Young Composers' Competition of The Polish Composers' Association in 1979, in the Works by Young Composers category at the Unesco International Composers' Tribune in Paris in 1981, and the Sacred Music Composition Contest of the Internationale Bachakademie in Stuttgart in 1985. In 1993 Szymanski received the annual award of the Polish Composers' Association, followed by the Grand Prix of the Culture Foundation in January 1994. Pawel Szymanski's music is performed all over the world and a number of his works were commissioned by European institutions and festivals and were premiered by world-famous musicians. Pawel Szymanski’s music is highly sophisticated and always subject to strict technical discipline, yet it enthralls the listener with its variety of emotions and moods ranging from sensuous sound play to metaphysical musings.	SUPPORT FOR MR. BONDARA IS PROVIDED BY CULTURE.PL
COMPANY \| E and HENRYK GORECKI
AIR WORLD PREMIERE LENGTH: 10 MINUTES Building on the collaborative process which is a signature of the Company \| E aesthetic, Co-Artistic Director Paul Gordon Emerson, in collaboration with five members of the Company, has built a work around the Second Movement of Henryk Gorecki's iconic Third Symphony - the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. The Third, his work in memory of the Holocaust, is among the most powerful of all the works surrounding the Holocaust. For Mr. Emerson and the Company, the idea was to honor that time, but to find a path to look forward as well. Working with Composer in Residence Gavin Stewart, Mr. Emerson set on transforming the Second Movement from an orchestral to a choral work, and specifically a work for Washington Performing Arts' Children of the Gospel Choir. Bringing young voices to the fore offered both remembrance and the path to the future that all young artists offer. Mr. Stewart's arrangement is the realization of that goal and AIR is the outcome of a journey, a quintet that begins earthbound, but ends far above it. MEET THE COMPOSER* The Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Górecki was born on 6 December 1933 in Czernica, Silesia. He studied music at the high school of music in Katowice (now the Academy of Music). In 1960 he graduated with distinction from the class of the composer Boleslaw Szabelski (author of five symphonies), who had been taught by Karol Szymanowski. Górecki had his début concert as a composer in 1958 in Katowice, which led to performances of his works in the next editions of the “Warsaw Autumn” International Festival of Contemporary Music (including Symphony No 1 “1959” in 1959 and Scontri in 1960). Shortly afterwards he gained his first significant international success as a composer, winning first prize at the 1961 Biennial Festival of Youth in Paris with his Symphony No 1. If the style of Górecki’s compositions during his first years of studying could be described as “vital-explosive” with a significant element of post-Bartók moto perpetuo, then by the start of the following decade it had been supplemented by features of post-Webern expressionism—his technical style contains selective usage of serial technique (“free serial technique”). Among Górecki’s output of the 1960s special attention should be paid to the two cyclical works Genesis I–III (1962–63) and La Musiquette I–IV (1967–70), both of which were created for selected, mostly chamber instrumentations. As much as Genesis is a continuation of the Polish “speciality” of those days, known as “sonorous expressionism”, a considerable limitation of sound material follows in Les Musiquettes. The two cycles were separated by the orchestral Refrain, for which Górecki received third prize at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris 1967. Refrain is seen as a turning point in the style and aesthetics of Górecki’s compositions. The usage of huge blocks of sounds with full textures (here clusters), and above all the creation of a great reverberating “space” of musical events, heralds Górecki as he is known from the legendary (let’s not be afraid of this description) Symphony No 3 “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” (1976). His Symphony No 2, Kopernikowska, uses a solo baritone and chorus, combining texts from the Psalms and from Copernicus into a remarkable creation. *Bio from the NAXOS label website.