In Heavy Weight Holding Body, performer Karol Tymiński does the opposite of what you might expect from a solo: he rests against a pavement post, rolls and smokes a cigarette, does the bare minimum in order to fade into his surroundings. Attention is diverted to what lies outside of him. Performance turned inside out. 

Tymiński places himself on a traffic island beneath Warsaw’s Poniatowski Bridge. He’s trapped between cars rushing past, guardrails and the towering pillars of the bridge. Even with dozens of audience members observing his every small gesture from the sidewalk, passersby seem visibly confused. Dressed in a shabby jacket and grey trainers, the dancer could easily be mistaken for a vagabond who has wandered into an urban no-man’s-land.

We step into the performer’s mind through headphones, listening to intimate thoughts that both fascinate and unsettle. He recalls a budding romance during the pandemic, alongside sexual fantasies of being penetrated by a bridge. His monologue turns the ordinary into poetry, though its stream of consciousness occasionally struggles to hold attention, blending into the symphony of engines, footsteps, birdsong…

While Tymiński’s movements increasingly express his inner world, culminating in surreal and sensual interplay between man and bridge, it is his stillness that evokes something truly unique. By becoming invisible, he switches on an awareness within us: the staccato strut of a pigeon, wheels gliding over asphalt, clouds and shadows slowly shifting; they all become part of a larger-than-life choreography, in which the city itself begins to dance.