Until a thousand roses bloom (with Warsaw in the background) by Alex Bacyzsńki-Jenkins is a performance of three hours that engages with eroticism, longing, pleasure, and touch.It was first performed on 2018 at the Foksal Foundation, between two floors.

On the first floor samples of Urszula Sipińska’s romantic ballad Nim Zakwitnie Tysiąc Róż (Until a Thousand Roses Bloom, 1971) are delivered in various loops, for example the lyrics “this is not about silly fabrics or ribbons”. A billowing red fabric, a prop for drag performances, brings to the foreground sensuality and reflects on the ephemerality of queer gestures and safe spaces for queer pleasure.

On the second floor, a choreography composed of moments and gestures of erotic charge and pleasure, that might recall situations alternately between friends, lovers, strangers. The set brings to attention topographies of desire and a reminder that the site –Foksal Gallery– takes its name from the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, a historically significant site for queer cruising.

By gathering these moments, the potential of longing and eroticism in queer relationality is reflected upon. Cruising is taken as a mode of close attention to the modulations and gestures of longing, through repetition and temporal suspension. What is being cruised here is desire and eroticism itself.