ABOUT
DO Festival is an international contemporary dance festival taking place in Poland.
Two weeks of dance, packed with workshops & classes led by experienced international teachers, performance nights with diverse dance works by artists from all across Europe as well as a range of activities & interaction frameworks.
It is our honest wish to provide active dance professionals with high level contemporary dance classes, giving new inputs for personal practices and offering insights to the broad variety of physical contemporary dance styles. DO Festival is a project by Collective Nest Association whose goal is the diversification, promotion and support of contemporary dance in Poland and Europe.
The fifth edition of DO Festival will happen on the beautiful premises of Puszcza - Przestrzeń Kreatywna in the southeast of Poland from 21st of July until 1st of August 2025. Stay tuned, more infos coming soon!
TEAM
Paulina Będkowska
Creative Director
Paulina is a young artist with a focus on contemporary dance. She imagines a perfect world with only 3 colours and soon will need a pair of glasses from writing too many applications. She is a member of Collective Nest, where she develops some important life skills, for example how to pay taxes, how to not pay taxes, how to sell your soul and how to screw the system.
Since September 2022 she is a dancer in the Company Unusual Symptoms, Bremen.
Paulina is in charge of the Festival's visual appearance. This includes the conception, creation and implementation of all graphic and motion content. Paulina also looks after the communication with festival participants.
Paulina Będkowska
Creative Director
Paulina is a young artist with a focus on contemporary dance. She is a member of Collective Nest, where she develops some important life skills, for example how to pay taxes, how to not pay taxes, how to sell your soul and how to screw the system. Since September 2022 she is a dancer with Unusual Symptoms, Bremen. Paulina is in charge of the Festival's visual appearance: conception & creation of all graphic content. Paulina also looks after the communication with festival participants.
Katarzyna Paluch
Head of Association
Performer, dancer, creator, choreographer, teacher, Pilates instructor, facilitator, initiator, student of life, and currently enrolled in the Performing Arts master program at Gothenburg University. With her head above the clouds, Kasia brings joy and laughter to all those least expected situations in life. As the Prezes of Collective Nest association, Kasia takes care of all administrative issues, communicates with partners and sponsors and makes sure the Festival's legal structure is resilient.
Leon Stille
Strategy & Operations Leader
Born in Cologne in 1994, Leon has lived, worked and studied in Cologne & Berlin (GER), Söderhamn (SE), Ho Chi Minh City (VN), Constanta (RO) and Torres Vedras (PT). With a B.Sc. in Engineering and a graduation from the Performact dance program he assumes being ready for life! Leon is responsible for the communication with the invited teachers and artists, he keeps track of the Festival's finances and ensures a smooth production flow. Find out more about Leon on his Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn account.
Paulina Będkowska
Creative Director
Paulina is a young artist with a focus on contemporary dance. She imagines a perfect world with only 3 colours and soon will need a pair of glasses from writing too many applications. She is a member of Collective Nest, where she develops some important life skills, for example how to pay taxes, how to not pay taxes, how to sell your soul and how to screw the system. Since September 2022 she is a dancer in the Company Unusual Symptoms, Bremen.
Paulina is in charge of the Festival's visual appearance. This includes the conception, creation and implementation of all graphic and motion content. Paulina also looks after the communication with festival participants.
Katarzyna Paluch
Head of Association
Performer, dancer, creator, choreographer, teacher, Pilates instructor, facilitator, initiator, student of life, and currently enrolled in the Performing Arts master program at Gothenburg University. With her head above the clouds, Kasia brings joy and laughter to all those least expected situations in life.
As the Prezes of Collective Nest association, Kasia takes care of all administrative issues, communicates with partners and sponsors and makes sure the Festival's legal structure is resilient.
Leon Stille
Strategy & Operations Leader
Born in Cologne in 1994, Leon has lived, worked and studied in Cologne & Berlin (GER), Söderhamn (SE), Ho Chi Minh City (VN), Constanta (RO) and Torres Vedras (PT). With a B.Sc. in Engineering and a graduation from the Performact dance program he assumes being ready for life!
Leon is responsible for the communication with the invited teachers and artists, he keeps track of the Festivals' finances and ensures a smooth production flow. Find out more about Leon on his Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn account.
Katarzyna Paluch
Head of Association
Performer, dancer, creator, choreographer, teacher, Pilates instructor, facilitator, initiator, student of life, and currently enrolled in the Performing Arts master program at Gothenburg University. With her head above the clouds, Kasia brings joy and laughter to all those least expected situations in life.
As the Prezes of Collective Nest association, Kasia takes care of all administrative issues, communicates with partners and sponsors and makes sure the Festival's legal structure is resilient.
Leon Stille
Strategy & Operations Leader
Born in Cologne in 1994, Leon has lived, worked and studied in Cologne & Berlin (GER), Söderhamn (SE), Ho Chi Minh City (VN), Constanta (RO) and Torres Vedras (PT). With a B.Sc. in Engineering and a graduation from the Performact dance program he assumes being ready for life!
Leon is responsible for the communication with the invited teachers and artists, he keeps track of the Festivals' finances and ensures a smooth production flow.
Find out more about Leon on his Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn account.
LOCATION
In 2025 DO Festival will take place at Puszcza - Przestrzeń Kreatywna. Puszcza is a space for all arts, created to bring together different communities. A beautifully refurbished former primary school building, surrounded by apple trees and fields. A big wooden barn that turns into a spacious dance studio, flooded with natural daylight.
Puszcza offers a set of shared bedrooms accommodating a total of 12 people. The big yard, lined with tall trees, offers plenty of space for setting up a tent in a secluded corner. There is space to park your own car or camper on site. In the nearby villages plenty of private rooms can be reserved.
The nearest city, Chełm, can be reached with direct trains from Warsaw, Lublin and other cities, allowing easy access to the nearest airports. Via bus it can be reached from many other cities in Poland and nearby countries. We will set up a shuttle service between the city of Chełm and the DO Festival location of Puszcza for the arrival and departure days.
SUPPORT
DO Festival 2023 was co-financed by the city of Gdansk.
The 2023 Open Call collaboration between ZUKUNFT TANZT & DO Festival was co-financed by the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation.
PARTNERS
Are you curious about potential collaborations?
Are you interested in becoming a partner, sponsor or associate of DO Festival?
SUSTAINABILITY
Everybody is busy mentioning Sustainability in their Portfolio. It's about time, we say!
Incorporating the idea of circular economy we offer DO Festival apparel that goes like this: We select and buy 2nd hand t-shirts, then we silk-screen print our logo with water-based colors onto those t-shirts and bring them to the festival. Voilà !
During DO Festival you can get a freshly cooked, vegan, gluten-free lunch at an affordable price. We cook the food right at the festival locations' facilities, buy the veggies at the green market around the corner and try to stick to seasonal dishes. In order to avoid any unnecessary trash we ask all participants to come with their own lunch boxes and cutlery. Works just fine!
Do you have ideas for more sustainability?
PAST WORKSHOPS
DO Festival hosted the following teachers:
Laja Field, Guy Nader, Lucija Romanova, Jarkko Mandelin, Suvi Nieminen, Pieter Desmet, Sandra Egido, Helder Seabra, Diane Gossiome, João Cardoso, Vasko Nasonov, Julio Cesar Iglesias Ungo, Natalia Iwaniec, Mizuki Kori, Florian Astraudo, Tanja Saban, Katarzyna Paluch, Manuel Kisters, Máté Mészáros, Marion Sparber, Alan Fuentes-Guerra, Paulina Będkowska, Ilan Gratini, Leon Stille
DO Festival is a contemporary dance festival.
2023 edition: More info coming soon!
DO Festival is a project of Collective Nest Association.