National Folk Song and Ensemble Mazowsze https://www.mazowsze.waw.pl/en/news/518,Mazowsze-at-the-Boguslaw-Kaczynski-Festival-of-National-Heritage-i n-Biala-Podlas.html 2021-09-30, 04:35

Mazowsze at the Bogusław Kaczyński Festival of National Heritage in Biała Podlaska

The first edition of the Bogusław Kaczyński Festival of National Heritage has just come to an end. Bogusław Kaczyński was one of the most remarkable music journalists, the creator of cultural programs, a music critic, and an expert on opera and operetta. The city of Biała Podlaska, led by President Dariusz Stefaniuk, decided to honor him by making him the patron of a newly created music festival. During the event, between September 23 and 30, the audiences could listen to novice opera and operetta singers, who took part in a vocal contest named after Bogusław Kaczyński. There were also performances by Polish community ensembles from Minsk, Brest, and Vilnius. The last event of the festival was the performance by the National Folk Song and Dance Ensemble Mazowsze.

There were several musical loves in Bogusław Kaczyński’s life, the most valued being classical music, especially opera, but he equally appreciated Mazowsze. That is why, today the ensemble supports all ideas cultivating his memory. Mazowsze’s soloists, , choir, and orchestra performed in the concert “The Kaleidoscope of Polish Colors”, a show presenting several ethnographic regions of Poland. Through music, dance, and song, the ensemble shows all the colors and the richness of Polish folk culture. During the concert, the audience could see the most captivating choreographies of Mazowsze’s repertoire, hear their most popular songs, and admire costumes, which come from twenty ethnographic regions of Poland and are original works of folk art. In the whirlpool of colors there were national such as polonaise, krakowiak, oberek, mazur, and kujawiak, as well as regional dances accompanied by the characteristic, original chants, for example dances from the Highlands, Kaszuby, or the Sieradz region. The concert also included - mazurka, a kind of dance combining the rhythm of mazurka with polka’s dancing figures, to music by Leopold Lewandowski and by Mazowsze’s former legendary choreographer, Witold Zapała. Dancers performed in the costumes of Old Warsaw.

The audience applauded the ensemble for a very long time. The whole of Mazowsze – the artists, the conductor Jacek Boniecki, the ballet director Wioletta Milczuk, and the choir director Mirosław Ziomek – invest a lot of their passion and energy in each of the performances. That is why the ensemble is always able to enchant the viewers with what is most characteristic of them – the lightness and precision of the dance and song elements, intricate and complex choreographic routines, and the music by Mazowsze’s orchestra.

photo: Jan Drzewiecki

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