‘SPEECHLESS’ by Aleksandra Nowakowska and Andrzej Józefczyk

SPEECHLESS by Aleksandra Nowakowska & Andrzej Józefczyk // 

SPEECHLESS addresses the subject of acousmatics, gestures and the body within the rigour of language. As Jean-Luc Nancy writes, the body is the place where language is formed, where something abstract and elusive, such as thought, takes shape and becomes physical. How can we show the body without labelling it or giving it meaning? Does gesture have a gender? What stories lie behind body language? The voice is something very personal and distinctive, reacting to its surroundings and connecting what is ‘in the body’ with what is ‘outside the body’. The performance deals precisely with this space in between, placing it on stage.

SPEECHLESS works with the transience of sound and movement intertwined around the dancing body. The soundscape of the performance is created live by the performer and musician. Processed and natural sound, accumulation and loops of repetitive gestures and movements make the sound and visual layers compete for the viewer's attention.

In the performance, the performer's body is constantly changing, emphasising the fluidity of patterns related to the visual aspects of the body. As artists, we want to blur the boundaries between performance and concert also in the performing sphere - making dance the only source of sound and sound the only source of performance. The performance plays with the audience's reactions, weaving them into the musical and choreographic structure.

Aleksandra Nowakowska
As a dancer, she works with gesture, everyday movement, repetition, the sonic qualities of dance, and the relationship between language and choreography. She is a student of Choreography and Performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, Germany, and a graduate of the Dance Theatre Department in Bytom, Poland. Her recent work includes the solo piece CORPUS, which premiered at the FUTUROFONIA Festival at the Baltic Opera in Gdańsk. She was Jonathan Burrows’s assistant during Rethinking Choreography at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research, a project exploring improvisation and choreography from the perspectives of neurobiology and cognitive science. Together with Andrzej Józefczyk, she received an award at the Hessische Theatertage in Wiesbaden, Germany, for the performance SPEECHLESS.

Andrzej Józefczyk
A sound artist working at the intersection of traditional and electronic music, with research experience in the field of Music Information Retrieval. Winner of the Polish Radio competition ‘Nowa Tradycja’ competition and winner of the special prize at the Tournament of True Musicians at the Philharmonic in Szczecin. He has performed at festivals such as Avant Art, KODY Festival of Tradition and Musical Avant-Garde, EtnoKraków/Rozstaje and Rough Proposals 2025 at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen.