SALTO

“At old time, people fell and ascended vertically,
nowadays people are falling horizontally.”
(from poem Falling or about vertical and horizontal elements in the life of contemporary man by Tadeusz Rozewicz)

Tadeusz Konwicki’s Salto is one of the most outstanding masterpieces of Polish cinematography. It was created in 1965 during the flourishing of the Polish Film School which is still considered to be one of the most important movements in the history of cinema.

Salto is the story of Kowalski-Malinowski, a stranger who comes to an isolated, sleepy town, suspended between dream and reality. To the residents, he presents different, often contradictory versions of both his life and of reasons for his arrival. To some he says he is hiding from people wanting to kill him, and to others he says, he is a prophet. Based on archetypes, each character represents a different social attitude. Behind the game he plays with the people of the town, there is something more than his trying to win them over. He becomes the clown that shows them, as in a mirror, their true faces. He lies to them just to reveal his lies soon after. Finally he teaches them the dance Salto, through which he shows who they really are.

The mysterious Polish allegory Salto has a powerful theatrical force, a Kafkaesque style of storytelling where there is no one truth but countless and unlimited ways to look at oneself, to see here and now, to understand the game one plays with himself/herself as well as with others, with the world as well as with life, with God as well as with fear and love.

We dance Salto – maybe the only true dance – until death.

Salto has been realised with the support of the Grotowski Institute, the State Theatre of Istanbul, Kadıköy Theatron and Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi.

Director Alexandra Kazazou
Translation Behic Cem Kola
Dramaturgy Alexandra Kazazou, Karol Jarek
Performers: Kerem Karaboğa, Salih Usta, Cem Üzümoğlu, Didem Kırış, Ipek Seyalıoğlu, Aytek Sayan, Muhammed Ali Donmez, Bora Aksu, Anestis Vasilakeris
Stage, light designer Karol Jarek
Music composition by Nefeli Stamatogiannopoulou

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