Where to Put the Blanket, cont.	4/7

Performance

Briefly, the performance tells the story of four women who find themselves in a room under the control of a strange man (Tomasz Wesołowski). At first, the women are strangers to one another. As the story develops, however, they begin to cooperate and form a group that, by the work's end, resist the dominance of the "supervisor." Already in this short description we can discern analogies to the real-life situation of the project. The dancers at first reported to me that they knew one another only loosely. After five weeks' hard work, though, everyone experienced a feeling of unity. The dancers–until then disparate individuals–came together as a strong group, tied emotionally by their joint effort.

One image in the work that evoked mixed feelings among the dancers during the creation process was that of the relationship between the dancers and the "supervisor"–it appears to represent a conventional male-female relationship in which a man dominates a group of women. But in fact, the stage image only reflects the situation in the studio: Wesołowski, a master of Łumiński's movement technique, served as a teacher and tutor for the dancers more than as a fellow dancer. That is perhaps also the reason why Wesołowski's movement participation in the spectacle was comparatively small. The character he created seems to belong to another, more metaphorical dimension. He acted as a kind of caretaker and ticket-taker, handing out and checking tickets for the spectators of the performance program as well as the dancers as they entered the stage to perform. The familiar ritual of checking tickets emphasized the theatrical nature of the situation. Similarly, Wesołowski's constant presence on stage as an observer who at times subtly directs the plot like an ever-present director calls attention to the theatrical illusion. During rehearsals Łumiński frequently recalled Tadeusz Kantor, the great Polish director who would control the course of his own spectacles. Observation was one of the leading motifs of the performance, alluding to the Latin etymology of the word spectacle (spectaculo), "I'm looking." The dancers often interrupted their movements suddenly, halting to look at their own and others' actions on stage.

Themes of looking and discovering oneself, surprising one's partner but first of all oneself, are reflected wonderfully in afterthoughts on the project, such as Christina Zani's observation that "It became more of a thinking process and being aware of single small gestures–thinking and rethinking all the time." Zani created the humorous character of a scientist exploring distant galaxies, a character who raises a question: are humans "distant galaxies" to each other? When she whispers the word "X-Ray" at the end of the first part of the dance, the performers appear alienated and spellbound, lost in a mysteriously ferocious trance that is underscored by Wojtek Blecharz's disturbing music. First they begin moving separately, then in a common rhythm dictated by Wesołowski's movements. These strange moments of alienation culminate in a punch line marked by disturbing, unnatural, hysterical laughter.

Laughter, which often functions in the theater as a source of catharsis or purification, is something new in Łumiński's theater. Łumiński's theater creation in Philadelphia was made in a poetic idiom that Roman Jakobson, a structuralist, described as having some "extra given order"–an extraordinary construction of a message built upon everyday language. In Where to Put the Blanket this is most clear in the final scene depicting that most American game–basketball–whose "script" (and thus the dramaturgy) is choreographed by Łumiński. The game is removed from its natural context and becomes a symbol or–as anthropologists of theatre would say–a social game, a lay ritual revealing truth about behavior of an individual in a society.

As Łumiński writes in the program, Where to Put the Blanket alludes to modern American society. The artists created these allusions by using local newspaper articles to develop material during the rehearsal process. At the same time, the spectacle can register to viewers on a more universal level, as if the stage were inhabited by people from anywhere in the world.

Yet while the social issues raised by Where to Put the Blanket are intriguing, an equally important or even more significant aspect is the way the dance reflects the complex process that the artists submitted themselves to during the five weeks of work. The fact that it was a difficult process is perfectly conveyed by the final shape of the spectacle: it at times may be harsh and annoying for an uninitiated spectator. D'Amato's words are significant in this context; for her, one of her most vital discoveries was that "Dancing shouldn't always feel good, shouldn't be always a kind of nice "body massage." Sometimes, if you're going to do something that affects people, you need to force yourself to move and behave in a way that may be further away from your comfort zone or from what feels anatomically correct." The discomfort or unfamiliarity elicited by the work, however, spurred members of the audience into participating in lively post-performance conversation with the artists.