On 18 and 19 October 2024 Janusz Prusinowski and his Kompania band will play live at the FONO club in Budapest. It is yet another venue on tour following the heritage of Dance Houses, as part of which the best traditional bands from different Central European countries connect together such traditional Polish dances as kujawiak, powolniak and mazurek through musical and dance motifs.
Traditions of old historical Galicia in Janusz Prusinowski’s music.
Concerts, dance events, workshops and meetings with local musicians set the route for the concert tour tracing the heritage of historical Dance Houses. On tour, Janusz Prusinowski Kompania present fascinating correspondence between the traditions of the historical land of Galicia. The tour will lead the band through Austria and Slovakia to Hungary. Along the route, such dances as polonez and mazurek were rehearsed and performed with musicians from Vienna during the Schrammel Klang Festival between 12 and 14 July 2024. At the largest meeting of Slovakian Dance Houses – Rozhybkosti Festival between 18 and 21 July 2024 – the audience had a chance to enjoy the dancers’ skills while watching them perform kujawiak, powolniak and mazurek dances.
On 18 and 19 October 2024, Janusz Prusinowski Kompania will be playing at the famous FONO musical club in Hungary. Both the most important traditional music bands and world music stars perform live at that venue in Budapest. Janusz Prusinowski and his band are followers and heirs to the legacy of village musicians and at the same time form an avant-garde ensemble with a characteristic sound and its own language of improvisation. They combine music and dance as well as archaic and modern experiences. Kompania’s recognisable style is an attempt to read the most important elements of folk music from the Central Poland, but not only. In Budapest, Kompania will present the repertoire of Kapela Sowów from Piątkowa, which – as the legend has it – was formed by a wandering Hungarian musician.
Dance Houses – communities gathered around traditional music
The link between subsequent stages of the tour is the Dance House movement originated in the 1970s in Hungary, which has become an inspiration for traditional music enthusiasts from the entire region. Dance Houses are communities scattered around Europe in which traditional music and dance have room for natural growth. Musicians forming part of those communities learn traditional performance techniques, but at the same time breathe new life into them and offer them a new role in the modern world.
The formula of Dance Houses’ activity places emphasis on learning through a living message from folk artists and focusing on faithful recreation of traditional techniques recorded on film and tape. Interplay and cooperation between musicians and dancers as well as improvisation within the confines of a canon have replaced orderly and rigid stage performances, detached from a live experience. The meetings allow playing music together as well as exchanging experiences and inspirations.
The Adam Mickiewicz Institute is an entity supporting the concert tour. It was co-financed from the funds of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage.