Nutida: Anna Nowicka OBS! Ärlegården!

The Opening

“The Opening” is a research on how to instantly transform night dreams into choreographic situations, building a sense of community, intimacy and openness. I am exploring how to best create circumstances, in which participants can trustfully share their dreams, and reflect upon the deeper meaning of their night adventures. I am curious how to form a welcoming space, where different generations, people from diverse backgrounds and cultural contexts can meet. I am curious how to design a new format that can be both choreographic, and participatory, spectacular and educational, allowing for intimate connections and a sense of belonging.

I invite participants to bring their night dreams to the studio. These dreams are spoken out loud and they become the content for my dance improvisation. I embody images from the participants’ dreams and use dreaming principles to compose live unrepeatable dances. One dream at a time, a unique choreography is built for the individual who brought their dream, and for the whole temporary community. Spectators’ inner imaginations become tangible compositions, forming directly in front of witnesses’ eyes. Visitors become immersed in the work. They are invited to ask questions about the dream, to name repeating patterns, to map the dream as it is danced and spoken, to put on costumes and become characters from the dream, to populate the landscape where the dream is danced, to reflect back their experiences, feelings and understandings. After the dance, there is time for integration and closure.

I am curious how I can unnoticeably slip from waking reality into a dreamscape, from rational thinking into living a different logic. I want to experiment with ways of bringing people closer to the magic of their inner life. What would the world look like, if I could recognize that my neighbor has a lush inner life? How would my attitude change if I acknowledged that they also fear, mourn, get despaired, that they make mistakes, long for a change, love passionately, and desire? Can connecting to their story boost empathy and shift how we co-create the world?

Every night – without exception – you plunge into a dreaming reality. You are carried away by a flood of seemingly unrelated images, unforeseen meetings, and unconventional resolutions. You wake up deeply moved, often wishing to erase this night’s journey. “It was just a dream”, you say. What if these nighttime adventures are not only an assemblage of coincidental pictures, but they weave a precise, clear, and deeply embodied image of your current life? What if they reveal to you a personalized, inner map depicting numerous choices you face, and possible responses to your reality?

Dreams are showing you where you are. They are “news from the body”. Every night, without exception, they reflect your deepest desires, challenges you are currently facing, and possibilities that exceed your rational thinking. If you can understand the poetic, nonlinear language of dreaming, an interactive, clear, and very actual map unfolds, and an accurate action presents itself.

In most ancient cultures, dreams were woven in the tissue of the everyday as valid signposts helping the whole community to navigate in the moments of change. Dreams were listened to and addressed. They were painted, sang, and danced. They prompted rituals, helping unfold dreams’ deeper meanings and rooting them in the waking reality. As Jonathan Crary writes in: “24/7 Late capitalism and the ends of sleep,” with the turn of the industrial revolution and the discovery of electricity, a new sleepless way of working and being was introduced. Nights get illuminated with artificial light: light that keeps awake, separates, and objectifies. And thus, for the majority of people, dreams get lost.

In the times we live in, where our way of being proves as not being sustainable, where profit-oriented choices destroy the planet and darken the possibilities for the future, dreams rise up as a way to reverse the damage. One cannot solve the problem from the same mindset one created it. Dreams offer solutions that are unthinkable yet imaginable. These imaginations are our way back into the body, into experiencing being in the world as an inseparable part of the universe, response-able and present. Co-creating reality.

I want to resurrect dreams as a cure for the hopeless future. I have been studying and working with dreams since 2010. They are the essence of my artistic work. Until now, I used dreams to compose “fixed” choreographies. Every move was well rehearsed and chosen, every structure composed to the minute detail. This year, I asked myself what could be an organic development of my artistic practice. I realized it is to return to the fluid origins of “opening dreams” and the sense of togetherness evoked by the practice. So instead of “fixing it”, I focus on researching ways of fluidly working with dreams in the present moment, collectively.

Anna Nowicka is a choreographer and dancer based in Berlin working with dreams and embodied imagination. She aims at unfolding the body into a resourceful, alive, ever flowing entity, able to be responsive and present. Graduate of the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD), MA Choreography at the HfS Ernst-Busch / HZT in Berlin and MA Psychology at the Warsaw University, she wrote her practice-based PhD on embodied awareness as the foundation for being present at the Polish Film School in Łódź. She is a certified Saphire® teacher of Dr. Catherine Shainberg’s The School of Images. Anna is a faculty at the International Institute for Dreaming and Imagery. Her most recent performance: “This Is the Real Thing (VR)” was premiered on the 8th of January 2023 in DOCK11 in Berlin. In her current project, “The Opening”,  Anna instantly transforms spectators’ night dreams into choreographies, cultivating a sense of community, intimacy, and openness. www.annanowicka.com www.mapsofdreaming.com