I have to transfer at the Times Square in order to get to La MaMa in the lower Manhattan. The underground passage at the junction metro station turns into a circus spectacle on Friday nights. First, already on the line 2 platform, you have to circumnavigate the island of gapers watching a Chinese lute player. Then you pass next to the Church of Scientology booth, where the sect’s enthusiasts will measure your blood pressure for free, as a pretext for conversation. Yet you already hear the percussion throbbing in the distance. A wide semi-circle of fans gathered around four musicians beating rhythms on their African drums and large plastic buckets. As you descend to the line R platform, you run into seven dark-skinned youths wringing their bodies in a dizzying break dance in the midst of a tight throng.

Next to the Times Square marketplace and the din of the packed metro, the spacious Annex of the La MaMa Theatre seems a peaceful oasis. There are just a few minutes left before the performance. People are sipping coffee. Here, a few young people chat in Polish. There, someone speaks about acting workshops to be offered by the Dada von Bzdülöw troupe in Philadelphia. The small crowd is buzzing with pleasant expectation, such as inevitably accompanies a sold-out show.
An actor-dancer appears in our midst nearly unnoticed. Slightly hunched, he smoothly glides among us. He stoops, stretches out on the floor, as if measuring distances between invisible points of reference. His navy-blue get-up brings to mind a worker’s uniform. He himself is rather unremarkable: of medium height, modest bearing, handsome face, yet nothing particular. He has a preoccupied face, as if he had important work to do, too absorbed in his own thoughts to pay any attention to us. And yet, it us he addresses with his state of preoccupation. He shoves our calves aside. He elbows his way from who-knows-where to who-knows-where.
People standing near the dancer automatically turn around to face him. They watch as he pulls a trash can from a corner. He plunges his head into the waste basket, as if making sure it’s the right fit. He sets the basket aside. He takes off his jacket. Again he stretches out on the floor, hugging the tiles, even though it must feel quite cold to cling to the stone chill with his bare chest. Practically nothing is happening, surely nothing as spectacular as the drums thumping at the Times Square or boys spinning like crazy. Conversations are slowly dying down, however. People start to form a circle. They are attentive to the simple gestures, repeated in concentration. Their intentness spreads around like a ripple on the water surface, gradually hushing the entire foyer. Even people standing in the back, though they can’t see anything, focus on the remote center of gravity.
This is how Leszek Bzdyl gave form to the initial formless of the congregation. Without a word and without show, he subdued everyone. The spectacle began even before the dancers entered the stage, even before we took our seats in the audience. Theatre is everywhere. Theatre, it’s us.

Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre escapes generic definitions: neither a theatre troupe nor a pantomime nor a dance group. The mix of genres is a natural result of the group’s history. It was founded in 1993 by two Gdansk artists. The dancer Katarzyna Chmielewska brought her thorough classical education and her passion for contemporary dance. A graduate of the State Ballet School in Gdansk, she also studied at the School of Contemporary Dance in Brussels with the outstanding choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Leszek Bzdyl comes from Wroclaw’s Henryk Tomaszewski Pantomime and from Wojciech Misiuro’s Theatre of Expression, tending to narrate with gestures.
The artists fulfill multiple functions: they prepare choreography for theatre performances (for instance, A Dog’s Testament at the Variety Theatre in Warsaw or An Angel Descended Upon Babilon at the City Theatre in Gdynia). They run acting workshops and give dance classes. Since 2000, they have been organizing the annual contemporary dance festival, together with the Gdansk club “Żak.” They put up original performances as well as cooperate with choreographers in Poland and abroad, including Magdalena Reiter, Tatiana Baganova, and Avi Kaiser. They have been regularly performing in Europe, among others in Germany, France, Czech Republic, Finland, and Switzerland. Their November performances at La MaMa marked their U.S. debut.
They brought to New York a performance prepared in cooperation with the dancer and choreographer Rafał Dziemidok and with the jazzman Mikołaj Trzaska known for his musical invention. Several Witty Observations forms a kaleidoscope of fast-paced solo arrangements, various configurations of pas de deux, and trios. It is a kind of dance-pantomime variation on a few leading motifs from Witold Gombrowicz: how we compose ourselves before others; how we slap a “mug” onto others; how our immaturity tenses and pulsates under our skin; how a serious matter can easily turn into ridicule and innocent play into a murderous confrontation.
“Mankind is accursed because our existence on this earth does not tolerate any well-defined and stable hierarchy, everything continually flows, spills over, moves on, everyone must be aware of and be judged by everyone else, and the opinions that the ignorant, dull, and slow-witted hold about us are no less important than the opinions of the bright, the enlightened, the refined. This is because man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man’s soul...,” writes Gombrowicz in his Ferdydurke). Chmielewska, Dziemiok and Bzdyl constructed their show on the basis of this “curse” both in earnest and mockingly, with an amazing sense of movement and space.
Katarzyna Chmielewska’s elegant solo performance opens the show. Her graceful ge-stures suggest an exuberant and self-sufficient world. Her dance, punctuated with lofty meditation, at times approaches prayer and at times an idealized vision or a dream image. Potent rhythm accompanies the dan-cer, creating a hypnotizing effect. The sounds of a familiar yet unintelligible language lend the melody a mysterious hue. Everything changes when a second person enters the stage: nothing will be univocal or peaceful any longer. Contortions of mutual boasting and seductions begin: continuous belittlement, kneading, driving, entrapment, and other merry mugs, to use Gombrowicz’s vocabulary.
Dance arrangements are superbly adapted to the different physical figures of the dancers. Dziemiok, although heavy-set, moves with surprising agility. It’s as if the body weight gave him self-confidence; or perhaps it is the simplicity of his mind that assures his advantage over the ever-hesitant Bzdyl. Bzdyl compensates his relative inconspicuousness with constant mobility. Like another Puck, he doubles and triples, contrives new conspiracies and confounds old plots. The contra-dance spins around: the object of desire turns into the subject or loses its raison d’être when the one who desires turns his attention elsewhere. Men seeking the woman’s attention take more interest in themselves than in her. Intimacy is fleeting. Inconstancy is a stable thing.

Gombrowicz challenges the reader at the end of Ferdydurke: “And now come, oh mugs! No, I’m not saying goodbye to you, strange and unknown mugs of strange and unknown people who will read me, I say hello to you, hello, graceful bundles of body parts, now let it all begin—come, step up to me, begin your kneading, make me a new mug so I will again have to run from you and into other people, and speed, speed through all mankind. Because there is no escape from the mug, other than into another mug, and from a human being one can only take shelter in the arms of another human being... I’m running away, mug in my hands.”
Similarly, at the end of Several Witty Observations, the trio of actors-dancers confronts the audience. From silent witnesses, hidden in the shadow, we turn into participants of the spectacle. Darkness falls upon the stage. The dancers disperse through the hall. They hand out bits of paper with, as Bzdyl puts it, “instructions for the next dance.” Even rows of zeroes and ones resemble a computer print-out. Human passions and anxieties arranged into enigmatic patterns.
Chmielewska, Dziemidok and Bzdyl stop next to the first row, facing the stage. White brilliant light floods the stage. All of us stare at the void ahead. The light goes out, turns back on: the stage remains empty. An invisible dance goes on.
The dancers instantly abandon the audience to take over the stage once more, this time together, as if bound by a new agreement. They change positions, directed by Puck-Bzdyl. “Hey!” he yells, and the three unanimously rush towards us. “Hey!” the call repeats, as does the rush.
“Hey!” for the third time, with joy and vigor: the actors are ready for the next dance. Yet the brisk shout betrays a tinge of uncertainty: What dance? Who am I?
“Hey?”