Krakow Dance Theater – Milan Tomášik

TREATISE

PREMIERE 15th of March 2024 at Cricoteka, Krakow, Poland

choreography: Milan Tomášik
co-creation and performance: Agnieszka Bednarz-Tyran, Pawel Urbanowicz, Agnieszka Kramarz, Patrycja Marszałek, Yelyzaveta Tereshonok
choreographer assistant: Agnieszka Bednarz-Tyran
music: Piotr Peszat
light design: Michał Wawrzyniak
costume design: Dominik Więcek

graphic design: Weronika Wawryk
coordination and production: Paweł Łyskawa, Izabela Zawadzka

About the performance

Treatise dance performance choreographed by Milan Tomášik is inspired by the eponymous graphic score by Cornelius Cardew, written between 1963-1967. The musical graphic score consists of 193 pages of symbols, lines, and various geometric and abstract shapes. According to David Hall, Treatise is the ‘Mount Everest’ of visual musical scores and graphic notation. When published in1967, Cardew did not offer a thorough explanation of how to perform the score except in Treatise Handbook (1970) to indicate that the interpretation is ‘to be musical’. Although Cardew’s score was intended to be a music score, it surprises with its unconventional, though original visual notation, which is in a way closer to an abstract typography, rather than music partiture. It is exactly its visual richness, from simple dashed lines, curves, dots and spirals, to overwhelming intricate structures that offered Treatise dance performance its starting point. The challenge became an excitement: how to interpret, transform a music (though visually impressive) music partiture into dance and choreography. The performance is playful at the same time thorough exploration of physical, visual, and sonic manifestation of one of the potential interpretations of selected pages of the score. Every single action is built within the score but in its final form and composition goes beyond: Krakow Dance Theatre performers create their own spatial, temporal, unique universe.

– Milan Tomášik