Ten years after graduating from Codarts University for the Arts in Rotterdam, Wojciech Grudziński invited his former professor to join a new project that would interrogate the dynamics of their past student–teacher relationship. The teacher refused, and in doing so prompted a deeper reflection on the bittersweet memories of dance education.

TEACH ME NOT! is a choreography of trust and dependence, of admiration and quiet resentment – a dialogue that emerges only through the absence of the master.

Polished wood. Solid. Smooth. Strong enough to hold on to. Imagine a ballet barre: an object both pragmatic and sacred, easily fetishised, silently reinforcing hierarchies. Touching it inspires intimate, physical sensations – of both pupils and masters. The barre becomes a wooden axis of time, carrying the lineage of dancing bodies. It can be a prosthesis, a vanishing support system. Or a fetish – rigid, hard, phallic in shape, marked by the touch of countless hands.

Sweat stains. Fingerprints on mirrors. Dust gathering in the corners. The dance studio is swollen with silent traces of cohorts who have inscribed themselves onto every surface. Within this charged space, is a relationship structure without a teacher simply a duet of the mutually submissive? Without hierarchy, is saying “no” even possible? What might a choreography of refusal look like?

Be warned… TEACH ME NOT! is not a game. Students always have the right to refuse – though refusal never comes without consequences.

Production: Zodiak – Centre for New Dance, Wojciech Grudziński, Nowy Teatr, Adam Mickiewicz Institute
With the Support of: ICK Dans Amsterdam.
Co-organised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute
Funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland
Co-financed by the City of Warsaw