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FESTIVALS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORTS |
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One manifestation of Poland's intense commitment to Roman
Catholicism is that all the great feast days of the Church calendar are
celebrated with wholehearted devotion, many of the participants donning
the colourful traditional costumes for which the country is celebrated.
This is most notable in the mountain areas in the south of the country,
where the annual festivities play a key role in maintaining a vital
sense of community. As a supplement to these, Poland has many more
recently established cultural festivals , particularly in the fields of
music and drama. As well as a strong ethnic/folk music scene,
contemporary music in Poland is intriguing, if a little inaccessible to
outsiders.
Religious and traditional festivals
The highlight of the Catholic year is Easter (Wielkanoc), which is
heralded by a glut of spring fairs, offering the best of the early
livestock and agricultural produce. Holy Week (Wielki Tydzien) kicks off
in earnest on Palm Sunday (Niedziela Palmowa), when palms are brought to
church and paraded in processions. Often the painted and decorated "palms"
are handmade, sometimes with competitions for the largest or most
beautiful. The most famous procession takes place at Kalwaria
Zebrzydowska near Kraków, inaugurating a spectacular week-long series of
mystery plays, re-enacting Christ's Passion.
On Maundy Thursday (Wielki Czwartek) many communities take symbolic
revenge on Judas Iscariot: his effigy is hanged, dragged outside the
village, flogged, burned or thrown into a river. Good Friday (Wielki
Piatek) sees visits to mock-ups of the Holy Sepulchre - whether
permanent structures such as at Kalwaria Zebrzydowska and Wambierzyce in
Silesia, or ad hoc creations, as is traditional in Warsaw. In some
places, notably the Rzeszów region, this is fused with a celebration of
King Jan Sobieski's victory in the Siege of Vienna, with "Turks" placed
in charge of the tomb. Holy Saturday (Wielka Sobota) is when baskets of
painted eggs, sausages, bread and salt are taken along to church to be
blessed and sprinkled with holy water. The consecrated food is eaten at
breakfast on Easter Day (Niedziela Wielkanocna), when the most solemn
Masses of the year are celebrated. On Easter Monday (Lany Poniedzialek),
girls are doused with water by boys to "make them fertile" (a marginally
better procedure than in the neighbouring Czech Republic where they're
beaten with sticks). Even in the cosmopolitan cities you'll see gangs of
boys waiting in the streets or leaning out of first-floor windows
waiting to throw water bombs at passing girls.
Seven weeks later, at Pentecost , irises are traditionally laid out on
the floors of the house, while in the Kraków region bonfires are lit on
hilltop sites. A further eleven days on comes the most Catholic of
festivals, Corpus Christi (Boze Cialo), marked by colourful processions
everywhere and elaborate floral displays, notably in Lowicz. Exactly a
week later, the story of the Tartar siege is re-enacted as the starting
point of one of the country's few notable festivals of secular folklore,
the Days of Kraków .
St John's Day on June 24 is celebrated with particular gusto in Warsaw,
Kraków and Poznan; on the night of June 23/24 at around midnight,
wreaths with burning candles are cast into the river, and there are also
boat parades, dancing and fireworks. July 26, St Anne's Day , is the
time of the main annual pilgrimage to Góra Swietej Anny in Silesia.
The first of two major Marian festivals on consecutive weeks comes with
the Feast of the Holy Virgin of Sowing on August 8 in farming areas,
particularly in the southeast of the country. By then, many of the great
pilgrimages to the Jasna Góra shrine in Czestochowa have already set
out, arriving for the Feast of the Assumption (Swieto Wniebowziecia NMP)
on August 15. This is also the occasion for the enactment of a mystery
play at Kalwaria Paclawska near Przemysl.
All Saints' Day (Dzien Wszystkich Swietych), November 1, is the day of
national remembrance, with flowers, wreaths and candles laid on
tombstones. In contrast, St Andrew's Day , November 30, is a time for
fortune-telling, with dancing to accompany superstitious practices such
as the pouring of melted wax or lead on paper. St Barbara's Day ,
December 4, is the traditional holiday of the miners, with special
Masses held for their safety as a counterweight to the jollity of their
galas.
During Advent (Adwent), the nation's handicraft tradition comes to the
fore, with the making of cribs to adorn every church. In Kraków, a
competition is held on a Sunday between December 3 and 10, the winning
entries being displayed in the city's Historical Museum. On Christmas
Eve (Wigilia) families gather for an evening banquet, traditionally of
twelve courses to symbolize the number of the Apostles; this is also the
time when children receive their gifts. Christmas Day (Boze Narodzenie)
begins with the midnight Mass; later, small round breads decorated with
the silhouettes of domestic animals are consumed. New Year's Eve (Sylwester)
is the time for magnificent formal balls, particularly in Warsaw, while
in country areas of southern Poland it's the day for practical jokes -
which must go unpunished. The Christmas period winds up with Epiphany (Dzien
Trzech Króli) on January 6, when groups of carol singers move from house
to house, chalking the letters K, M and B (symbolizing the Three Kings
Kaspar, Melchior and Balthazar) on each doorway as a record of their
visit. The chalk marks are usually left untouched throughout the coming
year, thereby ensuring good fortune for the household.
Arts festivals
The list below is not exhaustive, so contact the Polish National Tourist
Office for a list of upcoming events before you leave home. The listings
in Gazeta Wyborcza or the Warsaw Insider will provide an idea of what's
on once you arrive.
JANUARY
Warsaw Traditional jazz
Wroclaw Solo plays
FEBRUARY
Poznan Boys' choirs
Wroclaw Polish contemporary music
MARCH
Czestochowa Violin music
Lódz Opera; student theatre
APRIL
Kraków Organ music
Kraków Student song
MAY
Bielsko-Biala International puppet theatre (every even-numbered year)
Gdansk "Neptunalia" (student festival)
Hajónwka Orthodox choirs
Kraków "Juvenalia" (student festival)
Lacko (near Nowy Sacz) Regional folk festival
Lancut Chamber music
Warsaw Festival of Sacred Songs
Wroclaw Contemporary Polish plays (May/June)
Wroclaw Jazz on the Odra
JUNE
Brzeg Classical music
Kamien Pomorski Organ and chamber music (June/July)
Kazimierz Dolny Folk bands and singers (June/July)
Krynica Arias and songs
Kudowa-Zdrój Music of Stanislaw Moniuszko
Opole Polish pop songs
Poznan Festival of contemporary theatre
Plock Folk ensembles
Torun Contact festival of modern drama
Warsaw Summer Jazz Days
JULY
Gdansk-Oliwa Organ music (July/Aug)
Gdynia Summer Jazz Days
Jelenia Góra Street theatre (July/Aug)
Koszalin World Polonia Festival of Polish Songs (every 5 years - next
2006)
Kraków Jewish culture
Miedzyzdroje Choral music
Miedzyzdroje "Stars on Holiday" Film Festival
Mragrowo Country Picnic (Country and Western music)
Nowy Sacz Festival of ethnic/electronic crossover music
Rzeszów Festival of Polonia Music and Dance Ensembles Groups (every 3
years - next 2005)
Sanok Festival of Alternative and Art Films
Swinoujscie Fama Student Artistic Festival
AUGUST
Duszniki-Zdrój Music of Frédéric Chopin
Gdansk Dominican fair
Jarocin Rock festival
Kazimierz Dolny Film Festival
Kraków Classical music
Sopot International songs
Zakopane Highland folklore
Zielona Góra International song and dance troupes
Zywiec Beskid culture
SEPTEMBER
Bydgoszcz Classical music
Gdansk Polish feature films
Slupsk Polish Piano Competition
Torun International Old Music Festival
Warsaw Contemporary music
Wroclaw "Wratislavia Cantans" (choral music)
Zamosc Jazz Festival
OCTOBER
Kraków Jazz music
Warsaw Baroque Opera Festival
Warsaw Chopin Piano Competition (every 5 years)
Warsaw International Film Festival
Warsaw Jazz Jamboree
NOVEMBER
Gdynia Film festival
Poznan International Violin Competition (every 5 years - next 2006)
Warsaw Ancient Music Festival
DECEMBER
Torun Camerimage International Film Festival (specializing in camerawork)
Warsaw Theatre festival
Wroclaw Old music
Folk music
Though less dynamic than some of its eastern European neighbours, Polish
folk music nevertheless plays a noteworthy role in national cultural
life. Traditional folk comes in (at least) two varieties: a bland,
sanitized version promoted by successive communist governments and still
peddled, with varying degrees of success, principally for foreign
consumption: and a rootsier, rural vein of genuine and vibrant folk
culture, which you chiefly find among the country's minorities and in
the southern and eastern parts of the country. Thanks in part to Chopin,
who was profoundly influenced by the music of his native Mazovia (Mazowsze),
Mazovian folk music is probably the best known in the country,
traditional forms like the mazurka and polonaise offering a rich vein of
tuneful melodies and vibrant dance rhythms. Other regions with strong
traditional folk music cultures include Silesia , the Tatras , whose
music-loving górale (highlanders) have developed a rousing
polyphonically inclined song tradition over the centuries, and the Lemks
of the Beskid Niski , whose music bears a tangled imprint of Ukrainian,
Slovak and Hungarian influences. Among the notable showcases for Polish
folk music of all descriptions are the triennial Festival of Polonia
Music and Dance in Rzeszów , which draws a welter of emigracja ensembles
from the worldwide Polish diaspora, and the annual summer folk festival
bash in Kazimierz Dolny .
In the north of the country along the Baltic coast the popularity of sea
shanties is a surprising discovery, with annual festivals during the
summer in many towns.
Classical music
The nation's wealth of folk tunes have found their way into some of the
best of the country's classical music, of which Poles are justifiably
proud, the roster of Polish composers containing a number of world-ranking
figures, including Chopin, Moniuszko, Szymanowski, Penderecki, Panufnik,
Lutoslawski and the 1990s runaway best-seller Henryk Górecki. The
country has also produced a wealth of classical musicians, mostly in the
first half of the twentieth century when pianists Artur Rubinstein and
musician-premier Ignacy Paderewski gained worldwide prominence. A
cluster of Polish orchestras , notably the Polish Chamber Orchestra, the
Warsaw and Kraków Philharmonics, and the Katowice-based Radio and TV
Symphony Orchestra, have made it into the world league and are regularly
in demand on the international touring circuit.
All the big cities have music festivals of one sort or another, which
generally give plenty of space to national composers, the international
Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw (held every five years) being the
best known and most prestigious of the events. Throughout the year it's
easy to catch works by Polish composers since the repertoires of many
regional companies tend to be oriented towards national music.
Jazz
Jazz has a well-established pedigree in Poland ever since the 1950s,
when bebop broke through in a country hungry for Western forms of free
expression. This explosion of interest in jazz brought forth a wealth of
local talent, most notably Krzystof Komeda , who wrote edgy,
experimental scores for Roman Polanski's early movies during the sixties.
Other home-grown musicians who made it into the international big league
include tenorist Zbigniew Namyslowski , singer Urszula Dudziak ,
violinist Michal Urbaniak and trumpeter Tomas Stanko . Namyslowski and
Stanko are still very much around on the gig circuit, and CD reissues
featuring all the above names can be picked up in Polish record shops.
The annual Warsaw Jazz Jamboree in October is well established as a
major international event that always attracts a roster of big names.
There's a reasonably healthy jazz club scene in the major cities -
especially Kraków, which regards itself as the spiritual home of Polish
jazz.
Rock and pop
There was a time when Poland was the Liverpool of Europe, producing a
stream of guitar-wielding mop-tops and warbling starlets whose music was
then exported all over the Soviet bloc. It started in the early Sixties,
when a whole raft of groups emerged to cover the skiffle, rock-and-roll
and rhythm-and-blues hits that had entered the country via the long-wave
radio transmissions of Radio Luxembourg. Aided by the emergence of a
nightclub scene in Gdansk and Sopot, and the inauguration of the
Festival of Polish Song in Opole, Poland developed a home-grown version
of western pop which went under the name of Bigbeat - with groups like
Czerwone Gitary and Skaldowie providing the local answer to the Beatles
and the Rolling Stones. However the biggest name to emerge from the
sixties was Czeslaw Niemen , a national institution who is still
regularly voted the best Polish singer-songwriter of all time. Moving
from saccharine pop to earthy rhythm-and-blues, psychedelia, then prog-rock,
Niemen introduced a new breadth of vision to Polish pop, although his
voice - a cross between Otis Redding and a castrated wildebeest - is
very much an acquired taste. In the 1970s intellectual art-rock held
sway ( Marek Grechuta and his group Anawa are the names to look out for
if you're shopping for CDs), while in the 1980s punk and reggae came to
the fore, the popularity of both due in part to their latent espousal of
political protest - anything gobbing at authority or chanting down
Babylon went down particularly well in post-martial-law Poland. Nowadays
the Polish pop scene resembles that of any other European country, with
hardcore, rap, reggae and death-metal subcultures coexisting with a
mainstream diet of techno - the Polish version of which, leavened with a
few folksy influences, rejoices in the name of Disco-Polo . In a music
industry that's so vibrant and varied it's difficult to pick out acts
for specific attention, although Kazik Staszewski (a veteran of punk
group Kult, his latest project has been to cover the songs of Kurt Weil)
is probably the one big-selling album artist who gets bags of respect
from the critics. The most striking development in recent years has been
the eagerness to mix traditional folk music with pop and rock styles,
with albums by crossover specialists Brathanki and Golec uOrkestra
selling by the bucketload. Another peculiarly Polish phenomenon is the
emergence of a new brand of church-sanctioned pop: you'll find Arka
Noego , a massively successful group of children singing Catholic
nursery rhymes, hard to avoid.
There's a regular gig circuit in the major cities, and an underground
scene in most places with a large student population. Clubs that host
regular live music are listed in the relevant sections of the guide. Fly
posters, or the Friday edition of Gazeta Wyborcza , are the best sources
of information about up-and-coming events. In summer, open-air concerts
(often featuring Western acts) take place in parks or sports grounds -
again, posters advertising these events are plastered up just about
everywhere. These summer stadium gigs are beginning to eclipse the
importance of the annual festival in Jarocin, 75km southeast of Poznan
(late July or early Aug) which, despite being the main annual showcase
for Polish rock bands since the mid-1980s, has been cancelled at least
once in recent years due to poor ticket sales.
Cinema
Cinemas ( kino ) are cheapish (£2-3/US$4) and generally comfortable.
They can be found in almost every town in Poland, however small, showing
major international films (especially anything American) as well as the
home-produced ones. Only foreign films for children are dubbed into
Polish (since they may have problems reading subtitles), otherwise films
will be subtitled. The month's listings are usually fly-posted up around
town or outside each cinema with the titles translated into Polish (the
Warsaw Insider has a useful, regularly updated list of the original
titles next to the Polish translations). The film's country of origin is
usually shown - WB means British, USA American.
Based around the famous Lódz film school, postwar Polish cinema has
produced a string of important directors, the best known being Andrzej
Wajda , whose powerful Czlowiek z zelaza (" Man of Iron ") did much to
popularize the cause of Solidarity abroad in the early 1980s. As in all
the ex-communist countries the key issue for Polish film-makers used to
be getting their work past the censors: for years they responded to the
task of "saying without saying" with an imaginative blend of satire,
metaphor and historically based parallelism whose subtle twists tend to
leave even the informed Western viewer feeling a little perplexed. In
the case of Wajda and other notables like Agnieszka Holland, Krzysztof
Zanussi and Krzysztof Kieslowski , though, a combination of strong
scripting, characterization and a subtle dramatic sense carries the day,
and all these directors enjoy high prestige in international film
circles.
In the 1990s, the picture looked a little different, concerns over the
censor now replaced by the more conventional film-maker's headache of
securing funding (whatever else the communists did wrong, they did, as
some directors ruefully recall now, guarantee a level of film financing)
and responding to a profoundly changed political and social reality.
Post-communist efforts like Krzysztow Kieslowski 's award-winning The
Double Life of Véronique , his masterful Red, White and Blue trilogy,
and Wajda's Korczak pointed towards an artistically productive future
for Polish cinema, although the local public showed more enthusiasm for
the kind of home-grown historical blockbusters that rarely won
international prizes. The outstanding example of this was Jerzy Hoffman
's 1999 adaptation of Henryk Sienkiewicz's patriotic novel With Fire and
Sword , an extravagant costume drama that soon became the most succesful
Polish film of all time - but sank without trace outside the country.
Theatre
Theatre in Poland is popular and cheap (£4/US$6), and most towns with a
decent-sized population have at least one permanent venue with the
month's programme pinned up outside and elsewhere in the town. The
serious stuff tends to go on in the often sumptuous fin-de-sičcle
creations established by the country's trio of Partition-era rulers -
Habsburg opulence if you're in Kraków, Russian-tolerated classicism in
Warsaw, Prussian austerity in Gdansk. Aside from the odd British or US
touring company, there's little in English, though the generally high
quality of Polish acting combined with the interest of the venues
themselves - Poles go as much for the interval promenade as the show
itself - usually makes for an enjoyable experience.
Theatre's special role in Polish cultural life dates from the Partition-era,
when it played a significant role in the maintenance of both the
language and national consciousness. In recent decades Jerzy Grotowski
's experimental Laboratory Theatre in Wroclaw (disbanded in 1982 when he
emigrated to Italy) gained an international reputation as one of the
most exciting and innovative trends in theatrical theory and practice to
emerge since Stanislavski's work in Moscow in the early part of this
century. Theatre companies like the excellent Teatr Ósmego Dnia (Theatre
of the Eighth Day) from Poznan, who also moved to Italy subsequently,
carried the torch through the trials of martial law in the early 1980s,
developing a probing, politically engaged theatre that closely reflected
the struggles of the period. Till his death in 1992, Tadeusz Kantor , an
experimental director and performance artist of international stature
and long based in Kraków, was another figure at the creative forefront
of contemporary Polish theatre. Among a handful of companies currently
in demand internationally is Gardziennice , a consistently innovative
experimental group based in a village near Lublin of the same name who
specialize in field trips to villages throughout eastern Europe where
oral cultural traditions are kept alive. The resulting productions, led
by the company's founder and director Wlodzimierz Staniewski , a close
collaborator with Grotowski in the 1970s, are inspirational part-improvised,
part-scripted happenings drawing on a wealth of dramatic resources.
In the late 1990s Polish experimental theatre companies like the
Wierszalin group from Bialystok became internationally renowned,
carrying off prizes at the Edinburgh Festival, for instance.
Sport
The Polish media devote a vast amount of coverage to team games as
diverse as basketball ( koszykówka ), handball ( handy-ballski ) and
volleyball ( siatkówka ). One sport that enjoys major popularity in
Poland is speedway ( zuzel ), which basically involves motorbikes
repeatedly racing each other around an oval track. Most major cities
boast a team and a stadium, although it's in the industrial conurbations
of the southwest that the sport arouses the greatest passions. Events
usually take place on Saturdays; street posters advertise times and
venues.
Football ( pilka nózna ) remains the only sport that commands a genuine
mass following nationwide. Franz Beckenbauer described the Polish
national side as "the best team in the world" in 1974's World Cup, when
they were unlucky to finish only in third place. The Poles remained a
major force in the world game for the next decade, with players such as
Grzegorz Lato, Kazimierz Deyna and Zbigniew Boniek becoming household
names. Since then it's mostly been downhill, although the national
team's impressive performance in qualifying for the 2002 World Cup
suggested a turn in fortunes.
Despite receiving blanket coverage from the country's private TV
stations, Polish league football is currently in the doldrums: few clubs
are rich enough to pay the wages of top players, and the country's best
talents ply their trade in Germany, Italy or elsewhere. Warsaw club
Legia enjoys the biggest countrywide following, although they've been
edged out of the league title in recent years by capital-city rivals
Polonia, and the Kraków team Wisla. Other teams with proud historical
pedigrees are the Silesian trio of GKS Katowice, Ruch Chorzów and Górnik
Zabrze; and the two Lódz sides, LKS and Widzew. The season lasts from
August to November, then resumes in March until June. Some of the top
teams have equipped their stadia with plastic seating in order to comply
with UEFA safety guidelines; elsewhere wooden benches, or uncovered
concrete terraces, remain the rule. Inside, grilled sausages and beer
are the order of the day. Regular league fixtures suffer from pitifully
low attendance figures, not least because the emergence of a serious
hooligan problem has scared many stadium-goers away. Unsurprisingly, you
shouldn't have trouble buying tickets (£4/US$6) on the gate for most
games, although you may be asked to show ID before being subjected to a
spot of vigorous security frisking. For details of results and fixtures,
check out the Polish Football Federation's website , .
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