the founder
Małgorzata Potocka, In Brief
The dancer and choreographer behind Sabat, from a 1972 stage debut to a theatre that still carries her name.
Check availability ↗A few dates
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1972 | Stage debut at the Grand Theatre, Warsaw, in Ecce Homo |
| 1970s | Founded the Naya-Naya modern-dance ensemble, later renamed the Sabat ballet group |
| 1994-c.1999 | Ran Klub Tango, Warsaw |
| Early 2000s | Opened Teatr Sabat on Foksal Street |
A ballet training, then a debut
Małgorzata Potocka is a dancer and choreographer, trained at the Warsaw Ballet School, who also held a scholarship at a Broadway dance school. She made her stage debut in 1972 at the Grand Theatre in Warsaw, in a production called Ecce Homo — a conventional enough start for a career that would later move well outside conventional ballet.
Naya-Naya and an international touring company
In the 1970s Potocka founded Naya-Naya, described as one of the first modern-dance groups in Poland; it was later renamed the Sabat ballet group. The company toured internationally — Vienna, Berlin, New York, Las Vegas, London, Bangkok, Rome and Stockholm are the cities on record — a considerable itinerary for a Polish dance company working through the later Cold War decades.
A formative voyage
In October 1985, Potocka was aboard the cruise ship MS Achille Lauro during its hijacking by militants — a well-documented event in its own right, and one her own accounts describe as personally formative. We mention it here only because it's independently verifiable history, not a detail we're dramatising.
Klub Tango, before the theatre
Before opening her own theatre, Potocka founded and ran Klub Tango in Warsaw for roughly five years through the 1990s — a venue distinct from Sabat, but a step on the same path from performer to venue-runner.
Opening Sabat
Potocka opened Teatr Sabat in the early 2000s, in the former premises of the Chamber Theatre on Foksal Street. (Sources differ on the exact year — most put it at 2001, though the theatre's own anniversary references suggest it may have opened slightly earlier — so we're deliberately not stating a single year as fact.) The theatre was built around the revue format she'd spent decades performing and touring, rather than adapting to an existing house style.
Recognition since
Potocka has been awarded Poland's Golden Cross of Merit and the Gloria Artis medal for cultural achievement, among other honours, over a career that now spans more than five decades from that 1972 debut to a theatre that still runs nightly under her name.