The main goal of the company’s artistic research is a personal attempt to find and create pure body language – we are exploring its borders by using many different methods taken from performative arts. We are working with human body in the first place, hence we are looking for the answers to our research questions within it - considering its limits / dis-abilities as our reference point. The metho
ds we are using in our work, are focused on the process of making actor’s / dancer’s body move - we are distilling and analysing them - the technique is an important yet secondary set of skills. Our performances - created by ever-changing group of people - come from experiencing the presence. Our main way of expression is experimenting with ‘body leading’ techniques understood in a wider context as using various contemporary dance forms - with an emphasis on intuitive dance and a performative aspect of body as a space. Word has always been a primal base for our process of creating a performance. For past 8 years the company has been working very independently, researching on modern culture. Since 2009 it has been also organising the international festival of dance and experimental movement MAAT FESTIVAL. For us, it has been a place to showcase outstanding avant-garde physical theatre individuals and companies. TEATR MAAT PROJEKT has been critically acclaimed both in Poland and abroad - its conceptual works are now being considered to be one of the most important Polish on-going theatre projects. As a consequence, Tomasz Bazan’s performances gained recognition as remarkable experimental dance explorations - his research is at the moment focused on the long-term ‘The Body Leading Techniques’ project. The key to company’s activity is the cooperation of people from different areas: including not only arts and culture professionals but also experts from science background. Through recent years the company has been been able to establish their very own unique style, pursuing various projects which include interdisciplinary performances, happenings and collective installations. Their works have been shown at prestigious places in Poland and abroad (Germany, Norway, Ukraine, Belarus, France, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Spain and Belgium). From the beginning Lublin has been a home for the company’s rehearsing and performing space as well as for its administrative department, however its activity area has been always broader and takes a place where the company’s current team resides at the time.
‘Tomasz Bazan, just like Pina Bausch, aims to observe the reality with care and to know how emotions are being born’ (Anna Królica)
‘Maat and Bazan’s activities are escaping from being traditionally defined art forms. It means they can be placed where all forms meet in often surprising ways and where the barriers between the performative genres are being broken [...] I always have an impression that this company has slowly becoming one of the most interesting groups involved in the physical theatre research.’ Julia Hoczyk ‘Dance theatre - hope and continuations’
