Jarzynówna-Sobczak, Janina (EN)

Jarzynówna-Sobczak Janina, née Jarzyna, *28 January 1915 Vienna, †14 September 2004 Gdańsk, Polish dancer, choreographer, and teacher. She studied in Krakow under, among others, pre-war representatives of free dance such as Rita Sacchetto, Vera Zahradnik, Wanda Haburzanki and Ruth Sorell, and after the war with L. Wójcikowski. From 1938 to 1939, she led a dance group at the J. Słowacki Municipal Theatre and ran a private School of Artistic Dance, which she continued to manage briefly after the war. During the occupation, she became involved in Krakow with Brunon Sobczak (1913–51), who was of Kashubian origin, and under his influence, she moved to Gdańsk in 1946, where he supported Kashubian culture and she laid the foundations for ballet in the city.  She founded a new School of Artistic Dance, and then initiated and directed large-scale ballet activities as the organiser and director of the Opera Studio ballet company (1949–53), artistic director and principal lecturer at the State Ballet School (1950–74) and ballet director and choreographer of the Baltic Opera (1953–76). Due to her great contribution to establishing the local ballet tradition, she is referred to as the “mother of Gdańsk ballet”. Between 1952 and 1974, she created over 40 choreographic works for the local opera stage. She also collaborated with other theatres as a choreographer and director (the Warsaw State Opera, 1962, the Bydgoszcz Opera, 1969; and the Grand Theatre in Łódź, 1970) as well as with Polish Television (TVP), for which she created several ballet films and two educational series, Ballet and Polish Ballet (the latter receiving an award from the Committee for Radio and Television in 1973). After leaving the Baltic Opera, she withdrew from choreography and devoted herself to teaching, including running choreography workshops for ballet students in Gdynia. In 1973, she chaired the jury of the 1st National Choreography Competition in Łódź, and in 1979–93, she served as vice-chair of the jury of the National Dance and Choreography Competition in Gdańsk. She was a recipient of the Ministry of Culture and Art Awards, Second and First Class (1962, 1975), and the First-Class Award of the Minister of Education (1973). She was also awarded the Silver and Gold Crosses of Merit (1952, 1954) and the Knight’s (1955), Officer’s (1959), and Commander’s (1985) Crosses of the Order of Polonia Restituta. She was the mother of the stage designer Bruno Sobczak. In 2015, on the centenary of her birth, the General Ballet School in Gdańsk was named in her honour.

The artist’s choreographic work was pioneering in Poland and unconventional in character. She practiced thoroughly contemporary dance theatre, favouring Polish music in her creations. She usually created small choreographic forms, which is why most of her works are one-act ballets. Her inspirations gave rise to new musical works for ballet (Niobe and Battleship Potemkin by Łuciuk, Tytania i osioł by Turski), but she also created choreographies to the music of other contemporary Polish composers. She employed the techniques of classical dance, enriching its forms and expressive possibilities; in her ballets, she highlighted the artistic personalities of the soloists, especially her muse, the outstanding dancer A. Boniuszko, for whom she created many of her choreographies. As she recalled, “It began with neoclassicism, where classical forms underwent free modification, shaped by the character of the music and the theme. Then I sought increasingly radical formal means. Classical forms became distorted. The difficulty was that there were no models to follow. A unique alphabet emerged, born from a deep conviction of the need for the full humanisation of ballet, expressed in every gesture and every sign of the dancer.” Under her guidance, an entire generation of Gdańsk dancer-choreographers emerged: A. Boniuszko, Z. Kamiński, G. Klauzner, P. Schulz, J. Sidorowicz, and J. Wojciechowski. Her protégés also included the exceptional organiser B. Prądzyński, who, as the long-time director of the Gdańsk General Ballet School, modernised and expanded its facilities, continuing the pedagogical work of its founder and preserving her legacy as the school’s namesake.

Literature: J. Pudełek Janina Jarzynówna-Sobczak, “Teatr” 1976 no. 1; W. Obniska and M. Komorowska Janina Jarzynówna-Sobczak, “Taniec”, Poznań 1976; J. Jarzynówna-Sobczak and B. Kanold, Rozmowy o tańcu, Gdańsk 2003; B. Kanold, W stulecie urodzin Janiny Jarzynówny-Sobczak, Gdańsk 2015; M. Abramowicz, Saga rodu Sobczaków, Gdańsk 2016.