Dance Workshops in Poznań- Dancing FairPlayce Poznań 2026

The workshops started on Saturday. We arrived on Friday. We were there by the evening, so we basically went straight to bed.

The first day! The first workshop was Martha Graham technique. I dressed so I’d be comfortable in all the classes, and we arrived at 9:50. I was registered, given a badge, and then the woman at reception showed me the room. You had to go through the gym to get to Room 1.

The teacher probably hadn’t arrived yet. There was a girl waiting in the room, practising pirouettes in front of the mirror. She came over to me and introduced herself. I went in and started warming up. About fifteen minutes later, Ms Paulina Wycichowska arrived, along with a few other participants. There were three teenage girls who seemed to know each other already, some bloke, a fifty-year-old woman and a short girl who sat down by the wall. The class began.

‘How are you feeling today?’ Those were Ms Paulina’s first words to the group. Everyone said they were fine, and then the teacher’s phone rang. She checked who was calling. It was her boss at work, not the head of the workshops ( the head of the workshops was Ms Paulina’s mother, Ewa Wycichowska ).

Suddenly, one of the three teenagers spoke up:

“Well, since Ms Paulina is still talking, let’s get to know each other.”

Her name was Ania. One of her friends was called Natalia, and the other, I think, was Zosia. The one who greeted me was Zoey; the short girl was called Alicja.
I didn’t remember any more names.

The class began. The whole technique was based on contraction and release.

We did a few exercises and finished with triplets. A kind of three-count step.

And that's the end of the lesson.

Then there was a fifteen-minute break, followed by Lyrical Jazz.

The teacher hadn’t arrived yet either. But there were people there. So I just went in and started warming up.

And then, about five minutes later, Iwo arrived. The boy who was at the Mazovian Dance Festival, Projekt Balet, in February! He wasn’t competing against me in my category, but I remembered him because he always wore his hair in a bun. It looks like I’m the only one here for the first time, because Iwo already knew everyone.

The class began. First, the usual warm-up. Then Jean-Claude put together a training routine for us. It turned out quite well. But it’s only a practice routine.

There were definitely far too many people in the room.

I just had the impression that Jean-Claude was only correcting the other participants and wasn’t paying any attention to me.

At the end, Iwo and some other girl were supposed to dance the whole routine together. For the photographer. At first, I thought she was Iwo’s mum or someone like that. It wasn’t until she came to the release class the next day that I realised she was a photographer.

The fact that Jean-Claude seemed not to notice me really put me off. When I told Mum about it in the car, she promised that if he didn’t pay me any attention at the next class, she’d ask him how I was getting on. She also suggested that if the teacher set an exercise and picked out individual people, I should say, “Me too!” And if that didn’t work, she’d talk to him.

Dad and Ida found a great bakery with incredibly good sweet buns, and it was a lovely afternoon.

And at the end of the day, I was supposed to have a release technique class as well. With the Greek guy!

When I went into the studio, most of the participants were already there. But the class hadn’t started yet. It only started a little while later, when Iwo and a woman who looked about 20 came into the studio.

There was the classic floorwork warm-up and my favourite rolling around on the floor. Then things got funny. Nikos said we were now going to roll much faster. He demonstrated with Iwo. He said: Lie down on the floor and roll faster and faster. Iwo lay down and started rolling, while Nikos ran after him, barking and shouting every so often: Faster, faster! A vicious dog is chasing you! He kept barking until Iwo had rolled all the way to the other end of the room.

-You have to imagine a vicious dog is chasing you and that it’ll bite you if you don’t get away. And it got better!

After we’d finished that round of rolling, the same girl, who looked about twenty, smiled at me. I think it was the first gesture of any kind from another participant!

Then we had a practice routine.

And I think I forgot to tell my parents that evening how funny it was at the release, because when I mentioned Nikos barking just now, Dad had no idea what I was talking about.

On the first day, I didn’t talk to Iwo. I think I was too focused on getting to know the teachers.

So, you already know the introduction. I won’t describe the days when nothing happened. There were only two of those all week anyway. I’ll stick to the funny things that happened.

On the second day, nothing interesting happened apart from the fact that I didn’t go to Jean-Claude’s class. There was an intermediate modern dance workshop on at the same time. Unfortunately, it was too easy.

So on the third day of the workshops, I went to Lyrical Jazz again. The warm-up had changed a bit. Then we had to get up off the floor as creatively as we could. Jean-Claude pointed to almost everyone in the room again, except me. I took Mum’s advice, put my hand up and said, “Me too!” And guess what? He said yes! I got up in the most creative way I could. Then he said, “Very good!” And as he walked away to put the music on again, I heard him say to himself, “Me too! Brave kid, and she did well.”

The next funny thing happened on the fourth day of the workshops, in Nikos’s class. We started putting together a routine for the show, which was three days away, at 21:00. He said that those who weren’t performing should stand at the back. I couldn’t perform because we had to check out first thing on Saturday morning and head home. Besides me, there were another couple of girls who weren’t dancing.

For the first half of the routine, we just walked around. Only Iwo and a dancer from Warsaw (I can’t remember her name) danced. At one point, Iwo was supposed to carry her on his shoulders, and then they were both meant to faint. The rest of the group was supposed to faint at the same time, too. Iwo and the girl fainted slowly and carefully. Nikos went over to them and told Iwo to squat down and stand back up with the girl on his back. Iwo eventually got so tired that they fainted properly.

-Thank you Nikos...

That was Iwo being sarcastic as he did the squats. Once he’d recovered his strength, they started falling down carefully again.

-Just fall! the instructor said.
And everyone remembered what would happen if Iwo didn’t “just fall!”

The next day in Jean-Claude’s class, during the warm-up, two days before the show, when the routine was practically ready and we were completely exhausted, he told us to copy his movements. First he started dancing salsa, then hip-hop, rumba, Zumba, cha-cha and other such oddities. We laughed so much.

On the day of the festival, there was a change to the Lyrical Jazz routine. Just like at the release, Iwo and a dancer from Warsaw were meant to do a duet in the routine! And so we wouldn’t get bored (by “we”, I mean me and two other teenagers), Jean-Claude said that while they were doing their duet, we should do the same as them. As it happened, their duet included a lift. So I said:

We’re doing a triple lift. You’ll lift Oliwia, and Oliwia will lift me. And that’s what we did. Everyone found it hilarious, even us, because it didn’t work at all. I was just tossed a little way off the ground and fell over when I landed.

Then the teacher had an idea. When the group gathered together at the end, they could throw someone into the air. When the girl was tossed up ever so lightly, Jean-Claude said:

-Just throw her! You’ll catch her afterwards.

Nikos finished the routine before Jean-Claude.

That evening, as I was getting into bed, I thought that foreign dancers sing and are laid-back. Oops. I forgot to tell you that towards the end of the workshops, I dropped out of Martha Graham and started taking ballet classes.

A Cuban taught the ballet class. And he sang too!

My verdict on the workshops: They were worth it, end of story!