CONCERT Celebrating 30 Years of the Dance House of Poland

The pearl anniversary! Thirty years ago a group of enthusiasts discovered a most valuable treasure – one that is not diminished by sharing. The treasure of coming together to old music that naturally weaves the sounds of instruments with singing and dancing. With it, they also revealed the world of the people who keep this treasure alive.

This was the beginning of the Dance House of Poland, the first organization that kept offering the city dance parties with unstylized Polish village music. The news of the treasure traveled at its own, often unnoticeable pace, going against the currents of history and fashion. And yet, a decade later, the noble virus reached the biggest cities. Today, it spreads across the country with a net of resounding initiatives.

Thirty years is long enough for those who crawled around in the earliest days of the Dance House of Poland to grow up and play at the celebration as mature artists who, just like their parents, are in love with rural music.

There is so much to celebrate!

We want the evening to be, above all else, a meeting. We invited a few generations of the activists of the Dance House of Warsaw, leaders of similar initiatives from all across the country, and rural musicians – our masters and inspirations. Performers include bands from all across Poland – those who set the dance floors on fire in crudo in their communities today, and those we remember from the Dance House evens, such as the Dance House Camps, dance parties in the most unexpected corners of Warsaw and in the Embassy of Traditional Music.

We invite you for an evening and a night in the style of a New Year’s Eve TV gala of the mid-1990s, a time that was so fateful for us. We shall celebrate collectively, on the move, tongue-in-cheek, tear-in-eye. Instead of breaks, we will have interludes that will give us time to exchange numbers or – to those born later than the Dance House of Poland – to learn about its moments of glory and a few skeletons in its closet.

The program includes regional and stylistic rope pulling, tearing down stereotypes and building bridges (combined with the Pylons of Tradition award ceremony), walking the time line, musical hanky-pankies, an overview of dance house customs, phobias and textile habits, dance speed dating and making hay, the coming out of the Underground Tradition Tribunal, and observing the dynasties (out of the corners of our eyes).

There will be so much to learn! What does in crudo REALLY mean? Is there a philosophy behind being a wall flower? What do the so-called others say about us? Can you dance with a fridge? What do the mountain folk love about the lowland dances and the Lowlanders about highland dances? And, finally, who will get the candy tube?

Bring your good shoes, water bottles, handkerchiefs to wipe your foreheads and eyes, your fans and cotillions. We shall dance our hearts out and then some!

Will play:

Tęgie Chłopy, Diabubu, Kożuch, Chłopcy z Nowoszyszek, Andrzej Malik band, kapela Wiesławy Gromadzkiej, Warszawsko-Lubelska Orkiestra Dęta, Zwykli Ludzie, Janusz Prusinowski Kompania, Piękna Kompania, kapela Daniela de Latoura /Zwieże, Weterani z Wiru, kapela Agopsowicza, kapela Katarzyny Andrzejowskiej, kapela Fedaków, and others.

The event will be animated by Dorota Murzynowska and Marcin Żytomirski

Hosts: Ewa “Romina” Grochowska and Mateusz “Sam” Kowalski