People of Slava

Mateusz Flak from Poland. Born in 1977,

I spent some years in Krakow where studied Japanese language, worked as journalist/translator and searched. I found workshops of traditional and experimental singing, I guess it was kind of personal breakthrough experience. Last year I've started to deepen my interest for Polish traditional music, began to practice singing more constantly, took part in performing traditional carols on Polish village.

In Februray 2009 I started physical theatre course under guidance of Magnus Errboe in Performers House (Silkeborg, Denmark), great hojskole. This place, multinational, opened, stimulating, changed my view on group work. Accross our school lines we created "Slava" and later my physical theatre line turned into "Zamok International Theatre". The second group toured in October this year through Western Jutland in Kulturkaravanen "Moerket" (Darkness), reaching smallest villages in this part of country.

I would like to continue my work with voice - treated not only as way of artist expression but also as a tool to express our humanity - and acting, the common passion of creating new worlds, enabling us to get into lively contact with audience, during sometimes very accidental but profound and honest meetings.

The working process in Slava is wonderfully unpredictable and quite fruitful. We are so different and similar at the same time; I think we have lot to give.