Secrets of the Paving Stones – 2003

Choreography by Jonathan Hollander, original music composed by Jarek Bester and performed live by Craców Klezmer Band, Jaroslaw Tyrala, violin, Jarek Bester, accordion, Oleg Dyyak, accordion, clarinet, percussion and Wojciech Front, double bass. Polish dancer Tomasz Wygoda joins Battery Dancers Kyla Ernst-Alper, Sean Scantlebury and Ruping Wang in this work created with support from the U.S. Embassy-Warsaw and choreographed in Kraków and New York. Secrets… brings the virtuosic quartet of Polish musicians onto the stage, sharing the space with the dancers. The ancient spiritual history of the City of Kraków, home of one of the world’s first universities; the transmogrifying events of mid-Century in Kraków in which the City’s Jewish population was annihilated; the seeking for a now lost culture by Poland’s young people; and the very architecture of a city which has preserved much of its Jewish quarter as well as its medieval Wawel Castle, churches and guild halls, are subjected to an imagistic palette, richly perfumed at times, dank and spare at others.

PHOTO CREDIT — Richard Termine