“CUTE & AWKWARD” – Wojciech Grudzinski’s new show at Frascati in Amsterdam

“CUTE & AWKWARD,” Wojciech Grudziński’s latest performance, will premiere on 10 December 2025 at the Frascati 4 stage in Amsterdam. In a solo performance performed by two persons, the choreographer explores queer spaces of encounters, somnambulism, and phantomness, asking questions about the limits of movement, contact, and presence. Adam Mickiewicz Institute is a co-producer of the performance.

Queer spaces, phantomness, and sleepwalking on stage in Amsterdam

“CUTE & AWKWARD” performance emerges from the shadows. In it, “awkwardness” is not a failure, but vulnerability. “Cuteness” becomes a camouflage – a way to survive. Suspended between memory and fiction, the show moves freely between queer meeting spaces and the pop culture fantasy of somnambulism. The creators draw on cultural icons: Warsaw’s first gay cruising bar – “Phantom,” and the hypnotic, melancholic sound of Annie Lennox’s “No More I Love You’s.” Dance becomes an attempt to maintain the eternal creative immaturity of identity, which seeks answers to such questions as: How to reproduce the movement without appropriating it? How to stay connected without holding on by force? How to disappear and remain present at the same time?

In this solo act performed by two persons, the dancefloor becomes a magnetic drift zone. Bodies respond to invisible impulses, and movements develop slowly – as if recovered from someone else’s memory: tentative, shaky, yet precise in their delicacy. Performers dance together; while one of them is influenced by external forces, the other responds to them instinctively. Choreography becomes a flow of energy – a form of promenade on the polonaise, a return to the Polish national dance, and a gesture of being moved rather than moving. Invoking queer spaces becomes a form of symbolic resistance – a way of being close, moving through relationship rather than control.

Wojciech Grudziński – choreography of Polish national dances and conceptual approach to movement

“CUTE & AWKWARD” is a sister project to Wojciech Grudzinski’s earlier performance “THREESOME.” After working with biographies of three legendary ballet dancers (Stanislaw Szymanski, Wojciech Wiesiołłowski, and Gerard Wilk), the new piece takes up similar themes of body regime and gender, but explores them from a new perspective, through different bodies and points of view. It is a sensitive exploration of the state of being a phantom and the experience of sleepwalking.

“CUTE & AWKWARD” will premiere on 10 December 2025 on the Frascati 4 stage in Amsterdam. Frascati is both a prestigious theatre stage and the largest production house in the Netherlands. It supports theatre artists from at home and abroad, working in an interdisciplinary manner and seeking artists who shape the future of the art scene through creative intermingling between art forms. The works produced at Frascati grow out of dynamic urban environments and are often socially engaged or documentary in nature – they include textual theatre, performance, dance, pantomime, large productions, site-specific projects, and intimate solo performances. The project “CUTE & AWKWARD” was created with the support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, which enables Polish artists to develop and present innovative projects on stages in Europe and around the world.

The premiere of “CUTE & AWKWARD” in the Netherlands – practical information

• Premiere:  Wednesday, 10 December 2025, 20:00

• More shows: 11 and 12 December 2025, 20:00

• Venue: Frascati 4 (Nes 71, Amsterdam, the Netherlands)

• Tickets:  www.frascatitheater.nl

• Creative team: Wojciech Grudziński (concept, choreography, performance); Lucas Lagomarsino (artistic cooperation, performance); Igor Cardellini (artistic cooperation); Miguel Melgares (final direction); Maria Magdalena Kozlowska (text); Rafal Dominik (video, set design); Jacqueline Sobiszewski (light); Wojtek Blecharz (music, sound)

• Performance with English surtitles

• Co-production: Adam Mickiewicz Institute

• The performance is part of Frascati Producties 25/26

• Co-financed from the funds of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage