The Body Museum

The Body Museum is an intervention staged in the new building of the MSN by performers who have contributed to the opening’s Choreographic Programme, drawing on the ability to improvise and collaborate, a universal prerequisite in this artistic field.

30 people will make their appearance in the museum space, playing around with the idea of being an exhibit in motion, an artefact from their own act, a body moving in dialogue with the architecture, the audience and with one another.

It is a fantasy on group action rooted in the idea of presenting to the general public the enormous possibilities on part of this artistic community, of manifesting the scale of experiments and diversity within modern dance and the role played by the local dance and choreographic community in contemporary art.

The programme features the most interesting and original representatives of the dance community, who significantly contribute to the progress of Polish art. They are joined by outstanding artists of young generation, who in turn contribute their own perspective. The choreographers, dancers and performers enter the new MSN building as bodies-archives of artistic practices. With that gesture, they open a new chapter in the institution’s history, setting the course for its new identity. Experimental choreography, in its comprehensive and diverse form, becomes one of the first art “objects” presented in the new MSN building. The Body Museum serves as a go-between for the architecture and the audience, pointing also to the living and – simultaneously – political nature of the relation between the spectator and those who let the spectator look at themselves.

The Body Museum invokes the practice of the Museum of Dancing by Boris Charmatz, a project developed over many years (it was once hosted at a former venue of the MSN; Farewell Emilia, performance expo zéro, 2016), searching for new contexts in which to present dance, but most importantly dedicated to dance as an active political medium, whose special power consists in its immediate impact effected between bodies.

The event is part of the opening’s Choreographic Programme. With more than twenty shows, the audience will be offered an opportunity to witness diverse artistic strategies and a multitude of formal takes. The programme includes works in progress, dance acts and choreographic installations, with spectacular group productions sharing space with intimate solo activities.