Zawirowania Dance Theatre
Dancing The Divine Comedy

Choreography: Elwira Piorun
Dramaturgy: Aleksandra Kostrzewa

Performers: Michał Adam Góral, Ilona Gumowska, Aleksandra Krajewska, Michał Przybyła
Creative collaboration: Gieorgij Puchalski

The piece is an ambitious attempt to grapple with Dante Alighieri's 14th-century vision of the afterlife, so powerful that it still has an impact nowadays. The performance's aim is not to render all the poem's multiple stories, which could not be possible within an hour-long show, but to explore some of the themes.

Just as the Divine Comedy described the medieval world's wealth of ideas and served as a warning against eternal judgement, Zawirowania offers reflection on the state of contemporary world with its established rules and principles upended by the pandemic. The ballet is not set in the afterlife or the olden days, but here and now. It revolves around the idea that you can experience your Hell, Purgatory and Paradise here on Earth.

Dancing the Divine Comedy is more of an impression of the themes of the classic than an in-depth examination of them. It is a challenge for the choreographer and dancers to translate Dante's fool-blooded, visually-appealing poetic language into the language of dance and construct an equally suggestive vision of a world that can be experienced with all senses and inspire reflection on the contemporary life and its consequences. It is an attempt at introducing a degree of order into the world of chaos and excess that surrounds us.