One Grand Dance (2015)

One Grand Dance is the re-staging and re-imagining of iconic works from Jan Bartoszek’s repertoire. It is at once a retrospective and reflection on 30 years of creating dances under the banner of Hedwig Dances (and 40 years of work as a choreographer).

Program Note from the Director:
One Grand Dance is both the title of Hedwig Dances’ 30th Anniversary Concert and the linking of five select dances from my early career. Within this collection, I have taken the liberty to reshape and restage excerpts from my original dances into a collage. In some cases I embellish thematic ideas and choreographic structures, rather than present a literal re-creation of the work. I have integrated a set of two moveable walls. The walls serve as a motif that links and frames the overall work.

Waltz #3 (1993) appeared in Hedwig Dances’ production of Dances of Innocence and Desire at the Dance Center of Columbia College as a commentary on social mores and courtship. Lynn Book wrote and performed the text accompanied by Dave Pavkovic’s original score. The text is based on nineteenth century advice manuals that outlined codes of conduct for courtship and social dancing.

The I Depend on Tango delves into the curious entanglement between dependence and independence. I choreographed this dance for a performance workshop at MoMing in a shared evening with choreographers Timothy O’Slynne and Bebe Miller.

Sweet Baby, Baby Suite (1993) delved into the joys and challenges of motherhood.

Ache of the Arc (2002) is a dance about confusion wrought by fear. I built the dance around a set of ladders and walls after the attacks of 9/11.

In the original Polka (1983), dolls emerged from barrels, as the dance took on the seemingly incongruous domains of heaven and beer, the sacred and the profane. Polkas were an important part of social gatherings such as weddings and church picnics in the Polish American community where I grew up.