MAZUREK FREESTYLE - workshop of the Traveling Academy for Traditional Dance

At the beginning we will teach you the traditional steps of rural mazurkas, oberek and rural style of dance. Then we will develop our skills in the field of fluent pair dancing, the use of ornaments and performance manners taken from individual rural master dancers from various regions of Poland.

On this basis, we will begin to improvise and develop the forms we learn, enriching them with dance decorations drawn from dance traditions other than Poland, especially our closest neighbors, thus enriching our mazurkas and oberek. 

Country dances were formerly performed by peasants in a different context and cultural space. Times have changed and the main recipients of rural dances and music are now urban intelligence, which has never dealt with a rural lifestyle and rural norms. The modern world, the modern way of life conditions how we move, how we behave. Of course, this also translates into the language of dance. This is the source of the style we call freestyle.

Just as the language we use every day changes, so will our dance, which in the spirit and style of old dances will "talk" in a new, contemporary way.

Dance is a living matter and, like 100 or 200 years ago, it is constantly changing naturally, it develops, although this process is much faster than it used to be today. Traditional dances and music undergo natural metamorphosis through borrowing and creative inventiveness. This is the way Mazurkas and Oberkas dance begins to appear more and more often on urban-rural dance parties through out Poland, enriching our native choreotechnical forms with new decorations and stylistic forms. Thus, the process of slowly emerging a new performance style that corresponds to our modern perception begins. So, in summary, during our workshops you will learn how to dance in a pair, interact in a group, spontaneity in dance, use varioustypes of ornaments both native and borrowed from other cultural circles andimprovise, while maintaining the old style characteristics and performance manners present in our native mazurkas or oberek.