Cantos, the latest creation by Polish choreographer Maciej Kuźmiński, is a visceral dance work set to Simeon ten Holt’s minimalist masterpiece Canto Ostinato. Composed between 1976 and 1979, Canto Ostinato is renowned for its open structure, allowing performers freedom in duration and dynamics—an echo of the choreographic universe Kuźmiński creates on stage. Performed live by pianists, the music becomes an active force driving the dancers through repetition, transformation, and revelation.

Drawing from the surrealism of our current world—marked by conflict, paradox, and absurdity—Cantos journeys through strikingly different states: from rigid regimes of beauty and power to raw vulnerability, from ritualistic animal spirits to human fragility stripped bare. The work navigates humor, tension, and haunting poetics, as dancers oscillate between collective machinery and deeply personal moments. Bodies become symbols, vessels of instinct, memory, and folly.

Developed in artistic collaboration with dramaturg Paul Bargetto and designer Gabriela Neubauer, with whom Kuźmiński created Memoryhouse for Landestheater Linz in 2024, Cantos continues the powerful line of their works, following the widely acclaimed Every Minute Motherland (Tanzfestival Rhein-Main 2024). What emerges is a hypnotic, physical meditation on being human amid chaos—where each movement feels both inevitable and alive.