Founded in 1991 by artistic director Jerzy Starzynski and based in and around Legnica in southwestern Poland, Kyczera is one of the few dedicated promoters of Lemko folklore performing today, with a company made up largely of 15-to-25-year-olds. Its repertoire spans both authentic reconstructed forms — including a staged version of a full Lemko wedding — and stylized arrangements of regional dances drawn from around Dukla, Gorlice and Grybow, performed in costumes accurate to specific Lemko villages from Krynica to Svidnik in Slovakia.
The group’s reach is genuinely international: performances across Mexico, Iraq, Georgia, China, Peru, Indonesia, India, Israel, Portugal, France, Germany and more than a dozen other countries, an appearance at the European Parliament in Brussels, and recordings for Polish national radio and television. That work has earned Kyczera a Lifetime Achievement Award named for Oskar Kolberg, the Pro Publico Bono Prize, and recognition as one of Lower Silesia’s leading cultural institutions.
Beyond performance, Kyczera runs the only dedicated Regional Center of Lemko Culture in Lower Silesia, maintaining a library of Lemko publications and hosting exhibitions, lectures and academic conferences — work that positions the group as much as a cultural preservation society as a dance ensemble, keeping a genuinely at-risk culture’s language, history and dance in active circulation.
