W&M PHYSICAL THEATRE is the professional company founded by Wojciech Mochniej and Melissa Monteros in 1994 in Gdansk, Poland, and which changed its home base to Calgary in 2000. The name of the non-profit organization is W&M Dance Projects of Calgary which encompasses all the production initiatives created and supported by the organization. These include the touring, performance, and film work of W&M Physical Theatre, the Artists in Residence program, the WildDogs International Screendance Festival and film production program, WM2 (apprenticeship), and the Surge Co (pre-professional). In the local and international community, W&M are active as artists, educators and facilitators.
Artists’ Statement
As artists, we are interested in remaining open; open to inspiration, to finding a connection between how we live and respond as humans and the political and social currents that surface in our environment, and to exploring the deeper and sometimes darker currents that lurk below the surface. We strive to use an abstract physical form to create a readable language. All of this is informed by our experiences from Poland and from Finland and influenced by European theatrical forms. The feeling is what drives the work. We try to create layers in images that stimulate thought. The artistic vision is hopefully evolving, maturing, deepening. We are trying to find a more precise, distinct voice; so that each work is a culmination of what we are discovering – to take that forward into the next process. We are looking for a sense that we have completed this era or phase, that all these layers and lines have come back to make a complete whole.