B@ttle between Carnival and Lent

It is not without reason that the title of the performance, which is readily called a choreographic-musical installation by its creators, brings to mind Breughel's famous work. In the Poznań creation we do not however find confabulations as dense in meanings as Breughel's figures. Rather than aesthetic convention, what is common is the thought about the human condition, about nature and its contradictions, about the longing for an ideal and submission to the seduction of disharmony. The sign of human fate becomes the freedom of choice, a road saturated to the same degree with freedom and imprisonment, truth and delusion, beauty and ugliness, happiness and suffering. The road with seven turns, seven principal sins, seven simple truths, which are us and which we are. Notwithstanding the fact that the Battle between Carnival and Lent, between Lent and Carnival is very modern in its choreographic, visual and musical conception, it is by way of its thematic universalism that it joins the age-old attempt to answer the question: 'where are we going?".
This performance does not pretend to the role of 21st Century morality, it answers the important question in a manner known from the ludic theatre of the Middle Ages, not shying away from joke, paradox or pastiche. Its authors remember that during the Middle Ages 'ludus' was understood to mean play as well as art. With the belief that from distance is born a greater chance for reflection than from fear, we invite you on a journey that is homely play, not free of risk, unexpected situations, and solutions entirely dependent on the spectators' decisions.
The Polish Dance Theatre was laureate of the Hetman's Bulaw Prize for best performance at the Zamość Theatre Summer 2002.