Toujours de ¾ Face! / Café Müller

According to Johnny Cadillac, a former Belgian karate fighter, “3/4 face” is the ultimate defensive position: a posture so precise that inevitably betrays a will of perfectionism and a deep desire for control. Loraine Dambermont makes this principle her own and, through a live tutorial, reveals her best secret self-defence skills.

“Toujours de 3⁄4 face!” is a 20 minute hyper energetic solo performed as a survival guide with hints of humour. Dambermont also tackles the complex Belgian identity through movements and an outvurst of self-mockery.

This performance challenges the physical and mental virtuosity of the performer by pushing the limits of a constrained body between a marathon of hyper fast movements and extreme precision with its own musicality.

“Das ist mein Café Müller“ (This is my Café Müller) declares Dominik Więcek in his solo, which is inseparably intertwined with Pina Bausch’s original from 1978 and at the same time a deeply personal portrait of himself today. Born in Germany, raised in Poland, Więcek pondered the question: What would have happened if his mother had not chosen to return to her country of origin after his birth.

DominikWięcek’s “Café Müller” is a fanfiction; an imaginary universe embedded in Pina Bausch’s work and in honour of his own mother. It is a universal story full of nostalgia for something that never happened, admiration for the bravery required to confront oneself. He plays a character inspired by the personalities of Bausch’s original, yet rooted in his own queerness and feeling of displacement.

Dominik Więcek is an artist whose works are filled with humour, playfulness and a sense of lightness. As a choreographer and performer he is deconstructing dance history, theatre rules and tradition without hesitation. Taking autobiographical topics, he aims to make them resonate with the audiences’ lived experiences. Więcek believes in confessional performances in which honesty can be situated somewhere between privacy and theatrical formality. In his work he flirts with many theatrical genres, experiments with his own image and challenges societal norms by being an unapologetically queer artist creating in Poland. Trusting his intuition and driven by curiosity he allows himself: not to know, to make mistakes, to take roads to nowhere, as well as getting excited about the smallest of discoveries.

Więcek graduated from the Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts, Dance Theater Department and is a scholarship holder of the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen. He collaborated a.o. with Jacek Łumiński, Idan Cohen, Jeans van Daele, Jo Strømgren, Ben J. Riepe and Bodytalk (Yoshiko Wakki, Rolf Baum). From 2016 until 2019, he was a dancer at the Polish Dance Theater in Poznań. Together with Dominika Wiak, Daniela Komędera – Miśkiewicz and Monika Witkowska, he co-created the performance Sticky Fingers Club, and won the second prize at The Independent Theatre Competition, The best OFF 2022 and the Zygmunt Duczyński Award during the 55th Review of Small Theaters KONTRAPUNKT 2021 in Szczecin. Together with Michał Przybyła he co-created Bromance With Maciej Kuźmiński he worked on a solo performance Dominique, which received numerous awards and recognition such asan Alexander Izailovski Special Award at the 21st Choreographic Miniatures Competition in Belgrade (2017), 2nd Award at the 30th International Choreographic Competition in Hannover (2016), and Audience First Choice & Audience Final Choice Awards at the 20th Solo-Tanz-Theatre Festival in Stuttgart (2016).