Lighting Dance Cecilia Bengolea

With the second opening of Solarium of Nowy Teatr we offer an escape from urban heat waves. Argentinian artist Cecilia Bengolea in her piece Lightning Dance puts together two powerful forces: the storm and the dancing body, to cause a short circuit, a real electricity clash. 

The black and white video is a recording of dynamic choreography performed by young Jamaicans, somewhere in a small town in the middle of a raging storm. Their movements refer to the popular Jamaican Dancehall style, a highly sexual dance which, according to Cecilia Bengolea, is infused with magical healing powers. 

In many collective imaginaries storm is represented as a dangerous, revolutionary power that brings relief from oppressive swelter and stuffiness. In Lightning Dance a majestic spectacle of nature corresponds with human performance — the lightning takes the shape of the dancing bodies, and the bass in music merges with thunder striking somewhere far away. 

Cecilia Bengolea - born in Buenos Aires, 1979, translates her practice of  anthropological community dance through video, sculpture and installation. She conceives performance as a form of  animated sculpture that allows her to become both object and subject simultaneously. Infused with the symbolic energies found within nature and empathic relationships, her compositions are formed around ideas of the body - both individually and collectively - as a medium. Bengolea  has presented her works in many international venues, including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Pompidou Center in Paris and Tate Modern in London. She also took part in the 13th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, Performa 19 in New York, Biennial of São Paulo and parisian FIAC: the International Contemporary Art Fair.

Lightning Dance 

2018

black and white video,  6’03’’

SOLARIUM OF NOWY TEATR

In Solarium of Nowy Teatr visual artists present works that are meant to warm us up. The program is a counterpunch to mental winter - the darkness of mind, frozen horizons and ice-cold feelings. 

Curator: Michał Grzegorzek