30.09.2021 in Goyki 3 Art Inkubator park, Sopot, PL

Rusałki (nixie, water nymphs)

Shown as part of Inne Rytmy: Sopot exhibition, it is a result of artist’s collaboration with Julia Sokolnicka and Wera Morawiec in frame of Inne Rytmy project. It dwells the discussion around crowd choreography and hospitality and deliberates upon “a third body”.

“Rusałki” performance refers directly to a figure from Slavic mythology, transferring it to the ground of contemporary tourism and placing the figure of Rusalka in the context of holiday rituals.
These rites are often an imagined sanctity of holidays, leisure time, a resort that welcomes visitors from outside “should” look like. “Rusalki” is the effect of immersion, of meeting different parts in oneself: the one that gives judgmental looks and the part that joins the crowd, because to some extent it shares with it the national, social, historical, cultural fabric. It is also a story of a creature from in-between, a sort of third body mediating between juxtaposed arbitrary figures.
”Rusalki’ is also an attempt to elevate a character perceived through carnality and sensuality towards a spiritual experience, something close to ecstasy.

Anna Steller – dancer, performer and choreographer. Graduate of Slavic Studies at the University of Gdansk. She has been performing on stage since 1993. For many years she has created dance choreographies, performance actions and site specific performances. Collaborates with many choreographers, directors, visual artists such as: Krzysztof Leon Dziemaszkiewicz, Anna Królikiewicz, Anita Wach, Nigel Charnock, Rebecca Lazier. Since 1993 she has been dancing in Dada von Bzdulow Theatre in Gdansk.
As a performer she focuses mainly on the clarity of the message, on radical artistic solutions. The interdisciplinarity of dance and stage art is an area she has been exploring for years, trying to understand and convey to the audience the content and concepts important to her. She has presented her work at Arts Station Foundation in Poznan, L1 Contemporary Dance Festival in Budapest, “Body-Mind” Warsaw, among others. Recently, in October 2020, a few months after giving birth to her third child, she danced in a performance of Giacomo Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” directed by Mariusz Treliński in Brussels.