THE SPELL

“The Spell” is a choreographic project inspired by the work of one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, Louise Bourgeois, her monumental sculptures and her intellectual legacy. The performance is an attempt to immerse the viewer in the raw physicality of her work and find a way to translate it into movement and stage image.

Bourgeois’s central themes are femininity and form. Her art captivates through its emotional complexity and rich symbolism, weaving personal stories with universal themes and revealing the depth of human experience. Her work repeatedly returns to the motif of the body in different states – birth, life, fear – and challenges traditional representations of femininity, offering a unique, intimate perspective that touches on universal archetypes.

In “The Spell”, Marta Kosieradzka and Marta-Luiza Jankowska attempt to capture and reflect on themes inherent to Bourgeois’s work, such as the tension between strength and sensitivity, presence and absence, intimacy and being.

This project was born out of the need for a more focused dance practice, rooted in the physical experience of dance, connection with the body, and intuition.

Marta Kosieradzka is a dancer, performer, choreographer and visual artist based in Warsaw. She holds an MA in Fine Arts from the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw, a BA in Dance from the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (Artesis), and an MA in Dance from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

She works primarily as a dancer and performer while developing her own choreographic and interdisciplinary projects. She also teaches contemporary dance and movement-based workshops. Her artistic practice spans dance theatre, physical theatre and experimental performance, combining embodied awareness, technical precision and physical intensity.

Marta-Luiza Jankowska is a dancer originally from Stavanger, Norway. She completed her education at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2009 and spent the first years of her career working as a freelance performer with artists and groups including Ingun Bjørnsgaard, Christopher Arouni, Hege Haagenrud and Batsheva Dance Company. In 2014, she moved to Israel to work full-time with Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Company and one of its successors, Avshalom Pollak Dance Theatre, with whom she remained until December 2022. Jankowska is now based in Norway, where she collaborates with local and international artists. She has recently performed in Do Not Stand Too Close with Hege Haagenrud at Ice Hot Nordic Dance Platform 2024 and with Karolina Bieszczad-Stie’s Butoh Encounters platform.