Skarbek was developed by Antje Majewski and the author Ingo Niermann in collaboration
the choreographer Tomasz Wygoda and the composer Katrin Vellrath. The result
was an artistic modern dance theatre play. It had its premiere in Bytom (Upper
Silesia, Poland) at the Bytomskie Centrum Kultury and was shown two days
later at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin.
Bytom is a city in which for centuries the mining of ores and later coal was the main source of income. The region is extremely rich in underground treasures; after they were exhausted there were still huge fields of coal to be dug up in the 19th and 20th centuries. The coal was even excavated underneath the city. Today most of the mines have closed down and the whole region suffers from a high percentage of unemployment. The fact that the Centrum Kultury itself is situated above some mines that are still in use became our starting point. Many houses are standing oblique, have cracks or have collapsed; the tunnels below had been filled up, but they were still moving, and with them the upper crust on which the city was built. Unemployment is high; unlike its neighbor Gliwice with its new car factory no new source of income has sprung up. Progress has left this city behind.
The people in Skarbek don't want to wait any longer. They hastily go down into an abandoned mine and try to wring another treasure or adventure out of the earth. The lack of air and stimuli makes them dizzy, their sense of proportions of space and time is disturbed. They move on the border to death, and it seems as if by their intrusion the abandoned mine starts to move as well. Skarbek and the treasures of the earth, gold, silver and crystal, make their appearance.
Skarbek is a figure of the fairy-tale world of Upper Silesia; a gnome who lives in abandoned mines and keeps watch of the underground treasures. Being an Earth spirit, he relates to death and the dead. He guards over the miner's ethos and punishes those who don't respect the mountain. He makes his presence known with noises and can take on various shapes. Sometimes he plays harmless, amusing tricks on people, but he can also become vengeful and very dangerous. Skarbek is unpredictable for the human beings in our play. Belonging to the realm of the inorganic, he follows its laws, which are alien to human beings.
Antje Majewski’s
stage design consists of two very large paintings, executed by the stage
design painter Andrzej Starzyk from Krakow; one of them is folded and creates
a three dimensional space. They show gold, silver and crystal the way they
can occur in the mountains (even though this is quite rare); the originals
are not larger than a few centimeters. In the whole play one of the ideas was
that the dancers / human beings would loose their sense of equilibrium and proportion.
Skarbek himself appears in various manifestations, materializing as a mouse,
a dead miner and three figures with masks: a very large one, one of human size
and another very small one, which was used for the head of the marionette. All
three masks were bought in Mexico. With their dramatic gothic carvings they stylistically
reflect the time in which the Spanish conquered Mexico and its rich gold and
silver mines. Some details in the costumes were inspired by Mexican folk art
as well, and the axe and the walking stick were even carved by a maestro from
Chiapas.
The play
wasn’t meant to be a purely regional tale, but rather
a story that is about death and greed, friendship and isolation. The world
underground is the realm of death; alien to us in its timelessness and lack
of air and life. It consists of the same suffocating material that we ourselves
will one day become. Mining has always been one of the hardest and most dangerous
jobs; any miner had to fear death at any moment. The Bytom miners of two
generations ago said a prayer to Santa Barbara before and after their shifts,
but they were just as careful not to offend Skarbek. The dancers in the play
don’t know about
these rules. They have to go to their limits, to nearly die under the influence
of Skarbek, who is playing around with them, before they understand that
it is better for them to leave the mine and its treasures behind.
Katrin Vellrath composed the electronic music with its peculiar moods and rhythms for the dance of Skarbek, the human beings and the treasures of the earth.
Skarbek was generously funded by Kulturstifung des Bundes within the framework of the Polish-German Cultural Year. Büro Kopernikus helped in every way.
