“This resting, patience” is a choreographic performance that blurs the boundary between dance and installation. Since its premiere at Sophiensæle in Berlin in 2024, it has been presented dozens of times at leading European festivals, including Kunstenfestivaldesarts and ImPulsTanz, and immediately before its Warsaw performances at Festival d’Automne in Paris.

Rather than following a conventional narrative, This resting, patience invites audiences to dwell in time. For three hours, Ewa Dziarnowska and Leah Marojević dance on a blue carpet covering the entire performance space, accompanied by the looping refrain of Dionne Warwick’s What the World Needs Now. Moving between solos and duets, their choreography unfolds through gestures of attraction and distance, tenderness and tension, playfulness of form and feeling. The proximity between the performers and the audience transforms the act of watching into a form of participation.

For Dziarnowska, improvisation and embodied knowledge matter more than virtuosity. Her artistic practice emerged from a resistance to rigid institutional frameworks and a fascination with what takes place in the body in the here and now. What she describes as an “erotics of attention” is not about being looked at, but about being fully present – with another dancing body and with the audience.

This resting, patience is an invitation to slow down and pay attention, proposing dance as a practice of closeness rather than spectacle.

Choreography, Performance: Ewa Dziarnowska
with: Leah Marojević
Sound: Krzysztof Bagiński
Lighting: Jacqueline Sobiszewski
Costumes/Styling: Nico Navarro Rueda, Franziska Acksel
Dramaturgical Support: Jette Büchsenschütz
Artistic Dialogue: Suvi Kemppainen
Photography: Spyros Rennt
Video Documentation: Margarita Maximova
Special Thanks: Maciej Sado

Premiere: 13 January 2024, as part of Tanztage Berlin, Sophiensæle, Berlin

Production: Ewa Dziarnowska, co-produced by Sophiensæle.

The 33rd edition of Tanztage Berlin is a production of Sophiensæle. The project is co-funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF), with the kind support of Tanzfabrik Berlin e. V. and Theaterhaus Berlin Mitte.

This event is presented as part of Mateusz Szymanówka’s curatorial programme, “How to Tune the Body.”

Ewa Dziarnowska is an artist, choreographer, and performer based in Berlin. Working at the intersection of dance, performance, and artistic research, she develops improvisation as both a creative method and a way of thinking about embodied practice. Her work focuses on relation, rhythm, attentiveness, and the experience of time, while exploring the social and aesthetic frameworks within which dance is created and experienced.

Her work has been presented at festivals and art institutions across Europe, including Sophiensæle (Berlin), Tanzquartier Wien (Vienna), Santarcangelo Festival, MDT Moderna Dansteatern (Stockholm), and Mind Eater Festival (Oslo). As a performer, she has collaborated with Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Michele Rizzo, Enad Marouf, and Elena Francalanci.

She is the creator of several choreographic and performance works, including This resting, patience, which, since its premiere at Sophiensæle in Berlin, has established her as a distinctive voice on the international contemporary dance scene.