Tiki-Taka
Choreography and performance: Marcin Miętus
Tickets: free entry
Marcin Miętus takes the audience onto the sports field. Using choreography, he tells the story of the evolution of football tactics, exploring the phenomenon of football – a sport that has fired the mass imagination for over one hundred and fifty years. Through gesture, rhythm and repetition, he brings out what is distinctive about football and team sports – from team settings to playing techniques – accentuating the experience of community and belonging.
‘Football is a simple game, you don’t need a philosophy for it,’ said Kazimierz Górski, considered the leading coach in the history of Polish football. The history of football tactics, as described by Jonathan Wilson in The Inverted Pyramid, proves otherwise – it is a system made up of many elements, forming an intricate jigsaw puzzle, discussed among both café intellectuals and coaches in love with analysis.
Tiki-taka is a tactical premise based on quick, precise passes, controlling the pace of the game and maintaining possession of the ball. Derived from total football, the strategy also involves the elimination of chance. However, in Marcin Miętus’ choreographic practice, which is based primarily on improvisation, chance becomes one of the key elements of action on stage. The assumption that it will not go beyond the planned trajectory is as unrealistic as the course of any match. The treatment of football as a test of tactics – a discipline not so much of the body as of the mind – is combined in “Tiki-taka” with the story of the performer himself, who came to practice through theory.
Premiere
5 July 2025
Team
choreography, performance, text: Marcin Miętus
text and dramaturgical collaboration: Ala Kobielarz
voice: Andrzej Konopka / Piotr Polak [English version]
music: Agata Zemla
costume: Paweł Włodarski
curator: Tomasz Plata
Bios
Marcin Miętus is a playwright and performer. He has cooperated with TR Warszawa, Teatr Studio in Warsaw, Teatr Współczesny in Szczecin, Teatr ROZBARK in Bytom and Scena Robocza in Poznań. He created dramaturgy for solo performances by Dominika Wiak, Michał Przybyła, Ana Szopa and two interdisciplinary projects by Rob Wasiewicz. In 2023, at Komuna Warszawa Theatre, he created the choreographic performance Your Majesty in duet with Katarzyna Sikora.
Agata Zemla is a composer, sound artist, performer and biologist. Her creative practice, located at the intersection of contemporary music, electroacoustic music and natural sciences (in particular biology, ecology and psychoacoustics), is sometimes defined as engaged art – deeply reflective, aimed at exploring the relationship between humans and their environment and critically addressing contemporary social and environmental problems. Her works have been presented at numerous contemporary music festivals, including Warsaw Autumn, Musica Electronica Nova, Begehungen Festival, Klang Festival, Survival of Art and World Music Days. Performances have been undertaken by ensembles such as the Cooperative Music Contemporary Ensemble, NeoQuartet, Kompopolex and Sinfonietta Cracovia.
Paweł Włodarski – costume designer, fashion designer and academic lecturer at the University of the Commission of National Education in Cracow. Creator of the Body Holes brand recognised by Vogue Poland and Make Me! 2023. His costumes have been shown at, among others, the Zachęta National Art Gallery, the Teatr Studio and the Central Museum of Textiles. He is a graduate and scholarship holder of the prestigious Central Saint Martins University in London. His MA collection of clothing was named one of the best by Dazed Digital magazine. Finalist of the Designers’ Nest competition in Copenhagen and the Łódź Young Fashion Award. In 2024 he was awarded the Artistic Scholarship of the City of Łódź and participated in the Fashion Residency organised by Academia Costume & Moda in Milan. His work is characterised by bold colours, sensuality and a sense of humour.
Ala Kobielarz – playwright, dramaturg, lyricist. For her playwriting debut in 2016, she received an award in the Competition for the Staging of Polish Contemporary Art. She has been a participant in playwriting programmes, which have included performance readings, plays and drama publications. For several years, she has been collaborating with visual artist and performer Daniel Kotowski, with whom she addresses in theatre the issues of communication, language barriers and the situation of deaf people in Poland. As a playwright, she co-created ‘Love Ritual’ (Komuna Warszawa, 2022) and ‘Scenography of Voices’ (Studio Theatre, 2024), she also acted as second director in ‘Sign with Language’ (Contemporary Theatre in Szczecin, 2024).
Co-financing
The activities of Komuna Warszawa Theatre are subsidised by the City of Warsaw as part of the project Komuna Warszawa – Social Institution of Culture.
