Artist, performer, choreographer and dancer: an appreciation

Born: September 18, 1968;

Died: November 24, 2017

THE tragic and untimely death of Anna Krzystek, who was 49, has bewildered and saddened her colleagues, peers and friends not only in Scotland, but across the UK and in the many European cities where her exquisitely minimalist approach to dance-making brought a profound humanity to the realm of experimental art forms.

On Friday, November 24, while Anna was in Brussels, representing Scotland at a plenary for IETM (the International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts), she was hit by a tram while crossing the road, and fatally injured. She was 49 years old, had only been in post, as an interdisciplinary performance officer with Creative Scotland, for just over a year and was currently developing her own next performance project, the Untitled Series which centred on exploring Nothing.

The first part, Untitled #0.5 – subtitled Who, What and Where is Anna? – was shown as a video installation during Dance International Glasgow at Tramway in May of this year. Its trio of simultaneously screened images – close-ups of Anna’s face, panning shots of a domestic interior, Anna moving in and out of a pale, bulky body-suit costume – flagged up areas of future enquiry about the nature of (apparent) emptiness. They are now all the more poignant: there will be nothing more to intrigue and provoke us into musing on our own existence in time and space.

Anna was born in London on September 18, 1968 to an Italian mother and a Polish father. When she was 16, surrounded by yelling hordes in a gym, she watched a dancer performing and knew, in an unexpected instant, that this what she wanted to do. Not ballet (her petite, compact body did not lend itself to Sugar Plum pointe-work) and classically-inclined teacher also brusquely dismissed her aspirations, but Anna’s inner being was determined on a dancing life and when, after training in London, she spent three years of further study with Merce Cunningham in New York, she found her metier in his technique and in the music and ideas of John Cage.

In 1989, she became part of a waywardly creative, London-based group called Dudendance. In 1994, the company came to Glasgow on a commission from Paisley Arts Centre. I recall it involved legs and other parts sprouting out of big cardboard boxes – all very avant-garde in a tongue-in-cheek way. Various performers remained in Scotland. Anna was one, Dudendance founder, Clea Wallis another – they worked together until 1999 and remained firm friends thereafter. Other Dudendance events saw Anna donning a bulbous fat suit and, together with an equally inflated Paul Rous, visiting galleries at GOMA in the humorous guise of two garrulous American tourists. One Sunday afternoon, they descended on Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens, loudly rustling through the foliage in the Kibble Palace to the initial alarm of those who were quietly reading newspapers in the sultry glasshouse – funny, yes, but also a shrewdly observed response to how we regard, and use, public spaces.

From time to time Anna came on-stage in works by other choreographers, but it was in her own solo performances that her physical and intellectual strengths came to the fore. She was fascinated by the elusive paradoxes that surround us: the absence of presence/the presence of absence – intangible atmospheres that can alter how we see, and respond to, different environments. She knew that her distinctive melding of minimalist movement and complex concepts posed many a challenge for her audiences, but compromising was never an option.

A series of interconnected solos saw Anna, always in black – pale face beneath a deep fringe, dark hair otherwise pulled back in a bun – command a space. Latterly, as soundscores crept into her favourite silences, and video screens displayed footage of deserted rooms, her performances led you to contemplate the scope of your own perceptions, your sense of self in a universe beyond your ken. It was a remarkable adventure into metaphysics through one woman’s compelling physicality.

Off-stage, Anna was a beguiling paradox: a private person who was warm-hearted, gregarious and full of impish merriment and laughter. From 2000 to 2013, she shared her energies and imagination, skills and performance flair with the Finnish performance group, Oblivia - Annika Tudeer, its artistic director, credits her as “the central genius with her love and care, amazing skill, humour and fierce intelligence, rigour and relentlessness ...Without her Oblivia would not exist.”

Those qualities, coupled with a conviction that the independent dance sector lacked a supportive infrastructure led her into founding and becoming a board member of the Work Room, an artist-led organisation based at Glasgow’s Tramway. This spirit of altruism and advocacy persuaded her that working for Creative Scotland would provide more than a (rare for her) steady income. She knew, as an independent artist how draining the constant chasing after funding could be, and how dispiriting a refusal was, with cherished future plans turning to dust. For emerging artists, especially, Anna’s breadth of understanding was an unparalleled boon.

There are so many ways to miss Anna in our daily lives. As a small, black-clad figure coming on-stage with solo performances that explored the span of time from the minutiae of passing seconds to the vast trajectories of light years in space. As a small, black-clad figure in foyers, turning up to watch other people’s work, even if it was at the opposite end of the spectrum from her own tastes and style. She even watched ballet, on occasion - giggling afterwards “I still don’t get its appeal, but I am curious about the audiences!” And as a small, black-clad figure filling her supermarket basket with baking ingredients, keen to try out new patisserie recipes but still finding time to stop and chat, breaking into those characteristic giggles as she spoke about her next adventure – joining Creative Scotland.

Creative Scotland was the first ever "real job" she had ever had, and if it amused her greatly that she had reached her late forties before joining the salaried ranks, she was as serious and passionate about facilitating other people’s work as she always was when making her own.

On a personal note, I feel truly privileged to have known Anna off-stage, and to have watched, and written about, her remarkable creative journey from that Paisley performance in 1994 to her final installation this year.

Anna is survived by her mother, Grazia.

MARY BRENNAN