Fellow Field: Dance

When I think of Natasha Sarantopoulou’s performances, the first thing that comes to mind is ambiguity. An ambiguity, however, that has little to do with vagueness or inexactness; in her case―and often of her co-performer, Ioanna Antonarou―is an act of baffling intimacy. But again, this type of intimacy isn’t merely about closeness or proximity. Actually, it feels more like a space of unclassified in-betweenness, where one can fruitfully negotiate identity, movement, embodiment and ultimately choreography. This might be the space of an ‘inoperative’ choreography, of a different economy of the body, of a riddled gaze that is confronted with pre-existing notions of dance performance. Though it might be difficult to classify it, Sarantopoulou’s work often feels like entering a certain (un)familiar zone or atmosphere―I deliberately avoided saying ‘dreamy’ just to keep in mind this unsettled idea of ‘baffling intimacy.’

“Dans l’ascenseur,” a performance created by Natasha Sarantopoulou during her residency at CND CAMPING 2021. Photo: Christophe Berlet.

Indeed, the so-called zone/atmosphere in Sarantopoulou’s performances is more than just about scenery, props or costumes, even though all are constituent parts of her world; be it a gallery, an elevator or a submerged river, space in her work remains laden with something pre-existing, evocative of ‘other’ times, places, beings. It is maybe for this reason that her movement vocabulary proposes a state in which bodies are ‘trapped,’ at times incoherent or in a sort of movement-stuttering―what we above referred to as ‘inoperative,’ because progression doesn’t imply the completion of an action, a climax or a transition, but rather an ‘exhaustion,’ just like André Lepecki suggested in his much-cited work Exhausting Dance¹. In that sense, exhaustion surpasses the act of saturation, goes beyond tiredness and repetition to become an opportunity of examining anew the limits of any given convention. If dance regularly implies a movement-in-flow and, thus, a dancer in total control of her movements, which then underlines the interrelation of dancing as purposeful moving, here dancing is adjacent to failure and to the lack of command, which otherwise is so often exhibited in the discipline of choreography. However, exhaustion isn’t pure negation of choreography or the performative within, but instead a way to reassess the limits of choreography and the bodies captured in it.

“Jamais Vu” a performance created by Natasha Sarantopoulou at the Gallery Ekfrasi — Gianna Grammatopoulou. Photo: Periklis Pravitas.

What kind of bodies do we see anyway? In Jamais Vu² they look like a couple of identical preppy school girls, wondering in the space of a gallery, examining the artefacts from Periklis Pravitas’ exhibition, “Déjà visité.” Anyone could be beguiled by their seemingly mainstream look, the two performers would even pass unnoticed if it hadn’t been for their sloppy, uncontrollable limbs and their exaggerated manner, a bit childish at a first glance, a bit frustrating too―you can’t really tell if they are under some spell or if they have been out partying for the last two days. But maybe it is exactly this ‘undecidability’ that characterizes Sarantopoulou’s work; in It’s better in the Bahamas³ we are introduced into an afterparty ‘zone’―or so it seems― a space once marked by a festive occasion, but still not exactly, since whatever it has taken place there it is now over. The two performers linger over the traces of something that was there, wearing their raincoats and glistening leggings to match the colors of the streamers, scattered now all over the stage. The movement is once again sloppy, hands flickering, feet turned inwards, thighs in a V shape, legs unable to support the torso, hunchbacked but still astonishingly agile. There is endurance and errancy, a paradoxical pairing of qualities one might say, nevertheless an engaging one, if we think of the concept of ‘exhaustion’ and the proposed disruption within the artform of dancing.

“It’s better in the Bahamas”, Natasha Sarantopoulou. Photo: Dimitris Parthimos.

As stated above, ‘exhaustion’ disrupts knowledge in order to invent knowledge. But what does this mean in terms of movement vocabulary and in relation to Sarantopoulou’s work? To answer this question, I would like to propose the concept of the ‘unruly body’―not so much as an accomplished and finite methodology to produce movement, but as a tool to sustain its continued re-examination and to cherish what (sometimes stubbornly) resists knowledge. Moreover, I say unruly to imply a type of dis-orientation that one experiences often in her performances, an invitation to follow her on a trip but without destination, to resist, thus, the very demand of a show, which is exactly to ‘show:’ to exhibit, to make evident, to point at a certain direction. There is no better example than the digital performance ILISSOS / limbo eξótica⁴ which strongly reminded me of Anna Halprin’s Still Dance ―a creative process of “weaving together performance, body art, story, photography and the particularity of a place”⁵ to put it in her exact words. Halprin investigated the impetus of the danced exploration as a form of dialogue between performer and place, rather than a conventional performance that it is often this ‘still point’ documented in pictures. As in Halprin’s captivating images, Sarantopoulou alters the way in which we see herself in relation to the natural/urban surrounds; the digital 3D installation is placed ‘underground’ just like the current of the submerged river Ilissos, emphasizing the sense of entrapment in a dungeon-like environment made of cement. The atmosphere is in sheer contrast with the vivid images, depicting her lean, tall physique in a blue, full-face costume, her figure already in contrast with the surrounding reality―that of the Athenian city-life during the pandemic but also of the many invisible layers of history, still present, unfolding in a parallel universe.

Photo from the digital installation, “ILISSOS / limbo eξótica” by Natasha Sarantopoulou. Photo: Alina Lefa.

I mentioned in the beginning of this text a quality in Sarantopoulou’s work I named ‘baffling intimacy.’ I said baffling because I see in her and her work something that goes beyond the immediacy of ‘movement-exhibition,’ a distortion of the much-worshipped kinaesthesia but also a distortion which nonetheless has a lot to say about intimacy. To consider intimacy within familiarity is to reduce contact with our strangeness or otherness. It is within this logic that I chose the title, “Have we met before? You look strangely familiar,” implying maybe, a lived or imagined experience, an embodied knowledge which is both affirmed and questioned upon meeting the other.

Natasha Sarantopoulou graduated from the Greek National School of Dance in Athens (KSOT 2009–2012). As a performer, she has collaborated with a number of directors and choreographers (Kostas Fillipoglou, Apostolia Papadamaki, Nikos Mastorakis, Sofia Spyratou, Chet Walker, Default Company, Themis Moumoulidis, Dimitris Mylonas and Stathis Athanasiou), performing in various theaters and events across Greece (Athens and Epidaurus Festival, National Opera of Greece, Sani Festival and Badminton theatre, among others). As a movement director, she has worked in theatrical performances presented in venues such as the National Theater of Greece, Municipal Theater of Piraeus, Neos Kosmos Theater, etc. Together with Ioanna Antonarou, they created their choreographic pieces Walk Lola Walk and It’ s Better in the Bahamas. The staging of the latter piece was funded by the Greek Ministry of Culture. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2020.

Anastasio Koukoutas is working in the field of dance theory, dramaturgy and writing. He studied (BA) Communication and Marketing at the Athens University of Economics, (MA) Performing Arts Administration at Accademia Teatro alla Scala (in collaboration with Bocconi University), Ethnomusicology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (within the e-learning course Greek Music Culture and Education). He has worked, in the publishing field, as a contributor and editor, for art institutions and organizations, such as: Athens & Epidaurus Festival, Stegi Onassis, Dimitria Thessaloniki Festival, Megaron — The Athens Concert Hall et.al. He has worked as a dramaturg in theatre and dance performances (Athens Festival, Stegi Onassis, Experimental Stage of National Theatre in Greece, Arc for Dance Festival, Porta Theatre — Athens et.al.). He writes frequently about dance for the websites springbackmagazine.com, artivist.gr, und-athens.com, and teaches Dance History at the dance college ΑΚΤΙΝΑ. Last but not least, he has worked as a performer for Denis Savary (Lagune –National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens — 2016), Virgilio Sieni (Biennale Danza / La Biennale di Venezia — 2016), Pierre Bal Blanc (documenta14–2017), Dora Garcia (Megaron, The Athens Concert Hall — 2018) et. al.

¹ André Lepecki, Exhausitng Dance; Performance and the politics of movement, Routledge, New York and London, 2007.

²Jamais Vu was a pop-up performance by Natasa Sarantopoulou and Ioanna Antonarou in the context of the exhibition “Déjà visité” by the artist Periklis Pravitas at the Gallery Ekfrasi — Gianna Grammatopoulou. It premiered in October 22nd 2021 and it was supported by NEON Organization.

³ The dance performance It is better in the Bahamas premiered in the context of the ARC for Dance Festival (11th edition).

⁴“ILISSOS / limbo eξótica” was presented in the form of a digital installation during the Onassis New Choreographers Festival (8). By means of a pre-recorded 360-degree video journey on YouTube, visitors had the opportunity to wander around a three-dimensional depiction of the installation which consisted of photographs and videos depicting the course of the River Ilissos through modern-day Athens.

⁵ Libby Worth & Helen Poynor, Anna Halprin, Routledge, New York and London, 2004.

Nicolas Vamvouklis (NV): It’s remarkable how our paths crossed back in 2009 during that foundation dance course, just before we embarked on our professional journeys. Life took us in different directions for a while, but now, it’s wonderful to see how we’ve both found ourselves in the exciting realm where the worlds of performing and visual arts converge. How have things evolved since then?

Eleni Ellada Damianou (EED): It’s indeed astonishing! Looking back at 2009 feels like a distant memory; everything has undergone a remarkable transformation following years of significant changes. Personally, I’ve embraced a nomadic lifestyle, taking a pause from performing to delve into the world of fashion design. This period of exploration and growth has not only transformed my career trajectory but has also instilled in me a newfound sense of adulthood.

EED: This constant wandering forms the cornerstones of my practice, infusing it with massive inspiration. My art grows upon the unique experiences gained while traveling between these two cities, but I also love exploring new places for future performances and projects. It’s a way to nourish my senses with diverse images, ideas, and colors distinct from the ones I encounter in my usual surroundings. For instance, my recent journey to Tirana and Sarajevo stands out as a vivid case; I was immersed in a collage of architectural styles and visual landscapes, further fueling my creativity.

NV: Having also experienced life across different European regions, I’ve noticed that fostering collaboration between individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds and fields can be quite challenging in Greece. Could you elaborate on this observation and share your perspective on what collaboration means to you?

EED: Your observation resonates with my own experiences in different European locations. While Greece’s historical and artistic legacy might naturally lend itself to cross-disciplinary synergy, the reality of bringing diverse fields together poses challenges. I think Athens has an intuitive potential for unexpected collaborations. While I’ve encountered more active forms of this coming together / teamwork / collective spirit abroad, it’s not to say that this is absent here. In fact, I believe that each artistic community cultivates its creativity hubs in intriguing ways while reflecting its distinct interests and dynamics. As far as I am concerned, I seek to collaborate with people I admire. I reach out to them, expressing my appreciation for their work, and when the opportunity arises, I endeavor to create meaningful partnerships. It’s honestly a rewarding process.

Collage by Eleni Ellada Damianou consisting of: The performance “De Duivels”. Concept and direction: Krapp vzw (Mats Vandroogenbroeck, Nona Demey Gallagher & Timo Sterckx). Costumes and scenography: Eleni Ellada Damianou. Photographer: Helena Verheye

NV: Would you be willing to recount some anecdotes or experiences from your collaborative endeavors with dance companies?

EED: Rather than a specific story, it’s a person who has truly inspired me. Over six years, I had the privilege of working with Radouan Mriziga on various projects. This experience broadened my perspective by seeing the potential in all the spaces I inhabited. Considering my interior architecture background, Radouan’s impressive blend of architecture and performance resonated deeply with me. He influenced me to explore beyond the surface, going deeper into the meaning of things rather than merely performing a dance routine.

NV: I’ve come across information indicating that you’ve developed your unique approach to choreographic composition and body exploration centered around improvisation. Can you provide more insights into this innovative method you’ve created?

EED: During my final year of studies, I dedicated time to comprehend the fundamental movements of each body part — muscles and bones — and the body’s capacity to bend, twist, and expand. I termed this approach “body engineering.” Its core principle is that movement should emerge as a necessary outcome without extraneous embellishments.

After establishing a vocabulary of tasks, the next step was to infuse a sense of purpose into movement within space. This revelation unfolded after my first year collaborating with Radouan. The initiation of the movement stems from the invisible lines that inherently exist within every environment.

Collage by Eleni Ellada Damianou consisting of: Embroidery from acrylic yarn on elastic mesh. Installation at Galleria Albert IX in Helsinki for the performance “GARNNN”. Choreographer: Karoliina Loimaala. Costumes and textile artworks: Eleni Ellada Damianou

NV: I’d love to learn more about your role in costume and set design. Could you share the journey that led you in this creative direction?

EED: I come from a family of craftsmen, and design was always my sanctuary. After an injury in 2018, I decided to scale back my performances and explore alternative paths in case my body didn’t respond accordingly. This led me to painting, where I rediscovered my appreciation for the human form and its movement. Passion for fashion came naturally, an interest I had harbored for a while.

During the pandemic, I seized the opportunity to study fashion design while actively engaging in costume design projects. Leveraging my existing dance network, more and more people started contacting me to craft their costumes. This sequence of events unfolded organically, leading me to projects across scenography, costume design, prop creation, and construction. Interestingly, this path also guided me to visual arts, as my textile work caught the attention of other professionals and colleagues.

NV: Given your profound understanding of the body’s movement, I’m curious to know how this expertise informs your approach to fashion design. Are there specific materials or techniques that you are currently exploring or experimenting with in your work?

EED: Understanding the intricacies of body movement is a significant advantage in my work. This goes beyond just movement knowledge; it extends to grasping the comfort required during motion. For example, dancers often prefer the ease of their pyjamas during rehearsals. Imagine the challenge of executing these very same movements in jeans or rigid fabrics lacking flexibility… At the moment, I am experimenting with repetition and crafting garments that blur the line between wearable pieces and sculptural art.

Collage by Eleni Ellada Damianou consisting of: The belly piece. Prop and sketch for “The Power of the Fragile”. Choreographer: Mohamed Toukabri. Costumes and props: Eleni Ellada Damianou

NV: Which fashion designers do you particularly admire?

EED: Martin Margiela and Alexander McQueen, along with Daniel Roseberry and Vivienne Westwood.

NV: Eleni Ellada, I’m interested in hearing about your upcoming plans and any new projects you’re currently involved in.

EED: The upcoming months will be pretty exciting. I’m committed to a scenography project and will present a textile piece in a group exhibition in Athens this October. Moreover, I intend to spend some time in Helsinki, launching a new collaboration with an old friend and colleague. Once everything aligns smoothly with our plan, I’ll announce more about the exact locations and dates.

Eleni Ellada Damianou began her dance journey at the National School of Dance in Athens in 2010. After graduating from P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels in 2016 and École des Sables in Senegal, she collaborated with renowned choreographers and international festivals such as Alkantara and Kunstenfestivaldesarts. Residencies at PACT Zollverein, Saaren Kartano, and Les Brigittines also enriched her creative path. Damianou communicates her perception of movement by teaching improvisation, composition, and dramaturgy. As a fashion designer, she creates dance, theater, and stage costumes, as well as set designs. In 2022, she was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS.

Nicolas Vamvouklis is a curator and arts writer. He is the artistic director of K-Gold Temporary Gallery and has curated exhibitions at Mediterranea 19 Biennale, 7th Thessaloniki Biennale, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Since 2016, he has served as senior curator at the Benetton cultural panorama. He has also collaborated with Béjart Ballet Lausanne, Marina Abramovic Institute, Prague Quadrennial, and Triennale Milano. Vamvouklis contributes to art magazines and publications, including The Art Newspaper and MIT Press. In 2021, he was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS.

It is often mentioned that we are lost in translation whenever we try to give an account of dance using words. A kind of persistent torment that accompanies the shift from a sensorially rich experience to something that is believed exclusively cerebral (and maybe too rational). Could we for now debunk this logic and accept the fact that dance has always, somehow, been found in translation? An invitation, thus, to consider dance a rare medium that not only reconciles language and embodied experience, but also becomes an exemplary form of translation? Is it then that because of dance we often find ourselves oscillating between language and body, inventing a langage¹ while at the same time reaching towards the unspeakable?

Of course, one might say that speech is so widespread in dance performances nowadays that we barely see dancers just dancing. What I would like to imply here is something more than just speaking while/and dancing; rather, to suggest an art of translation that could establish a deeper relation between the two mediums, “an art of the flight [‘fugue’] from one to another, in which neither the first nor the second are effaced.”² More than dance and more than speaking words; closer to what Shoshana Felman³ suggests by “speaking an act”―and not simply a speech act―or even an attempt to move (with) words. For this reason, I am bringing into discussion two different performances that challenge the way speech and language are introduced into dance; the one is “Audible Dances” by Georgia Paizi & COCHLEA Res and the other is “Phrases” by Venetsiana Kalampaliki.

“Audible Dances” by Georgia Paizi & COCHLEA Res | Photo by Iasonas Arvanitakis

“Audible Dances” is a series of audio-dance soli and duets⁴, tracks we could conveniently listen to while at home, wearing headphones. Listening, in this case, is not just limited to acoustics, it could also imply various sensory occurrences not registered by vision and a sort of amplified awareness that requires from us to notice stimuli which challenge both our hearing patterns and attention span. These were ²dances developed during the covid pandemic (2020–1) and as we could more or less hesitantly remember, during a period that physical intimacy and gatherings in closed spaces were avoided if not prohibited. With that being said, “Audible Dances” seem to evolve around the following question: How could dance be preserved if broadcasted vocally? Could dance resonate as a voice in our heads and, if so, what would its traces be?

“Phrases” by Venetsiana Kalampaliki, Open rehearsal during the 5th SNF Artist Fellowship Program, M54 | Photo: Giorgos Athanasiou

With the absence of any visual trace of the performer, one is invited to listen to motion, to focus on the miniscule almost imperceptible sounds of the fabrics, the brushing of the limps against the surface of the floor, to experience the body as an affective milieu beyond the visual logic. Also, to examine, in relation to what is being described, the less signifying elements of spoken language, such as the tone of the voice, the rhythm, the breath in-between pauses, the very performance of its (embodied) communicability. In this case, when the performer says “I jump” (run, roll, sit, lie, bend, touch and so forth) none of the actions are performed before our eyes; instead, language does what we assume the body performs, an act is spoken producing, consequently, an act of listening.

Since the truth or falsity of what is being said/done cannot be proven, one might think that their performative aspect is annulled. Language here is on an impossible mission; to register the performed movements but just as in seeing, we soon become aware that our perception of the oral account remains only futile and fragmentary. What stays with us, however, is the voice of the performer, the voice’s resonance in our heads, the way we are placed in language and, thus, somehow placed in the world with/of others. This sort of synesthetic-kinesthetic attributes seem to address the difficult question: how do I move you when I move (with my) words?

“Audible Dances” by Georgia Paizi & COCHLEA Res | Photo by Iasonas Arvanitakis

 

As Jean Luc Nancy has argued, the paradox when listening to someone is “to be at the same time outside and inside, to be open from without and from within, hence from one to the other and from one in the other.”⁵ This coterminous sense of neither here nor there, neither inside nor outside, neither material nor immaterial brings into discussion issues that go beyond self-presence and retackles how the body is often captured, scrutinized and framed upon its appearance in dance. Listening implies communicational contact even when that contact remains elusive; indeed, it is a useful reminder that attention and distraction can exist simultaneously, making hearing a truly threshold experience. As such, not only does it reveal the body’s potential for mediation, but also invests into the further exploration of communication formats, be it somatic and (para)linguistic.

If we could do things to/with dance with/to words, then this form of translatability between spoken language and movement becomes “a beautiful relinquishing,” a reaching towards the unpresentable or the unknowable, a dance so transparent as to see through it, a mouthful with-ness as to perceive something that often eludes our gaze; the Other, the many others that could give shape to an aural (and oral) encounter. However, aural here does not refer so much to hearing but “to a very broad and open state of sensuous/sensory perception” as Gabriele Brandstetter explains. Thus, listening is not primarily of hearing, but constitutes “forms of awareness which embrace both conscious and unconscious ‘subliminal’ perceptions.”⁶ This rare point of entry, considering movement from an aural perspective, might also incite us to consider the moving body differently; less objectified, less materialized, less deprived of its subjectivity.

The economy of the felt body is also addressed in the piece “Phrases” by Venetsiana Kalampaliki.⁷ Again language is a way not only to communicate with the audience, but also to explore other performative, inclusive aspects intertwining speech and movement. As an introduction, the performer gives an account of the things she will be doing, yet she specifies “what is said and what is done will not always agree.” Isn’t this, anyway, the fundamental problem of speech, the act of failing to keep one’s word, the “capacity for misfire” as Felman says, which is the capacity to miss its goal and to fail to be achieved?⁸ Therefore, could one say that things-being-said are not simply, exactly, merely, only, purely things-being-done? And how this slippage could be making any difference for the theatrical gesture and what does it communicate?

“Phrases” by Venetsiana Kalampaliki, Open rehearsal during the 5th SNF Artist Fellowship Program, M54 | Photo: Giorgos Athanasiou

In the open rehearsal of the performance some of the stage elements that were supposed to be there are missing. But still Kalampaliki does “as if” they were there, she sticks to perform what is being communicated, all the same. For those who don’t have a prior staged experience of “Phrases,” this paradox seems to work. Actually, a posteriori, I tend to believe that the paradox is at the heart of this work, at times a linguistic paradox when words become the vessel for a yet unestablished intimacy, at times a paradoxical mise-en-abyme, when an action is spoken, then read as text on the (missing) screen and then re-performed. “There is a line between us” the performer says, but maybe this line is made of words, it speaks of how language inserts itself in reality, constructs it and mediates it. Kalampaliki keeps re-introducing phrases she uttered a moment ago as quotations of herself, rephrasing herself, constantly re-interpreting how her body is perceived, looked at, heard, put into words and into actions.

I think this fragmentary account of what constitutes being-in-language attempts to make evident how bodies are marked by words while their performed actions expand the discursive field of language; becoming-body cannot be foretold, only experienced. As relations are formed on various affective milieus, be it auditory, visual or haptic, they become embodied, which is to say that becoming-body could somehow be equivalent to being-relational. To paraphrase Kalampaliki, “Language is a door. You may use it accordingly.” Yet, sometimes, exiting/entering becomes a matter of perspective; “I am sitting on a chair typing,” this could be my phrase now, this could be me in front of the screen, fingers synchronized on the keyboard, touching letters to form words, to become something else, as I am trying to give an account of the experienced event.

“Audible Dances” by Georgia Paizi & COCHLEA Res | Photo by Iasonas Arvanitakis

I am often reminded in performances like “Phrases” that we ought to return to a poetic language so as to learn to facilitate a different perception of bodies and movement. It is what Glissant names as “writing towards the difficult,” inventing a language to name things, sensations, movements, bodies, that pervert the norm of any formal language from the inside, “generating a langage that weaves together the poetics, maybe the conflicting poetics,”⁹ of bodies and speech, of speaking bodies, of even unspoken bodies. Maybe bodies could show us a poetic way to go behind appearances and introduce us to an infinite variation of sensibilities or even help us claim what Paul Valéry once wrote; the ear “keeps watch, so to speak, at the frontier beyond which the eye does not see.” Could you see/hear/feel me dancing?

 

Georgia Paizi is a dance-artist based in Athens/Greece, where she makes, teaches and writes on dance and the moving body. Georgia’s current dance practice explores the concepts of language, lexicon and vocabulary as common ground between movement and spoken word practices, tracing the dance in the absence of dance, as well as the contemporary rituals of social dancing in the era of social distancing and the shrinking of public space. Georgia works as a choreographer with the collective COCHLEA res, through which she also organises the programme SynAski/14. COCHLEA res has been receiving funding from the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports since 2020. Georgia teaches movement, improvisation strategies and the Alexander technique since 2014 in Greece, London and Berlin. She studied dance in London, Amsterdam and New York (MA Creative Practice — Dance Professional delivered by the organisation Independent Dance at Trinity Laban in London; Alexander technique 3-year training at London Centre for Alexander Technique and Teacher Training), and social sciences and humanities in Greece (MA in Design — Space — Cultural Studies jointly offered by the School of Architecture and the School of Applied Mathematics and Physical Sciences of the National and Technical University of Athens; BA in Theatre Studies, University of Patras). She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).

Venetsiana Kalampaliki (b. 1991, she/her) works in the field of performing arts as a dancer and choreographer. She explores movement through media such as text and video and develops her artistic practice through interdisciplinary collaborations and through her participation in workshops and festivals of contemporary dance, digital and visual arts, performance and disability arts. She is a graduate of the School of Economics and Political Sciences, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2018) and of the National School of Dance in Athens (2016) and is currently studying for a Master in Fine Arts at the Athens School of Fine Arts (2021–22). Her project Recall (2020–21), an Onassis Stegi production developed in the framework of the EU program Europe Beyond Access, was presented at the New Choreographers Festival 7 organized by Onassis Stegi; the Holland Dance Festival in the Hague; the 27th Kalamata International Dance Festival; and at the Oriente Occidente Dance Festival, Skånes Dansteater in Denmark. In 2021, she created the digital group project Besuch at the New Choreographers Festival 8 organized by Onassis Stegi. In 2021–22, she was a resident choreographer at the program K3 — Zentrum für Choreographie | Tanzplan Hamburg, where she conducted research on how she can integrate accessibility services within her artistic practice and presented the piece Phrases at Kampnagel theater. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).

Anastasio Koukoutas is working in the field of dance theory, dramaturgy and writing. He studied (BA) Communication and Marketing at the Athens University of Economics, (MA) Performing Arts Administration at Accademia Teatro alla Scala (in collaboration with Bocconi University), Ethnomusicology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (within the e-learning course Greek Music Culture and Education). He has worked, in the publishing field, as a contributor and editor, for art institutions and organizations, such as: Athens & Epidaurus Festival, Stegi Onassis, Dimitria Thessaloniki Festival, Megaron — The Athens Concert Hall et.al. He has worked as a dramaturg in theatre and dance performances (Athens Festival, Stegi Onassis, Experimental Stage of National Theatre in Greece, Arc for Dance Festival, Porta Theatre — Athens et.al.). He writes frequently about dance for the websites springbackmagazine.com, artivist.gr, und-athens.com, and teaches Dance History at the dance college ΑΚΤΙΝΑ. Last but not least, he has worked as a performer for Denis Savary (Lagune –National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens — 2016), Virgilio Sieni (Biennale Danza / La Biennale di Venezia — 2016), Pierre Bal Blanc (documenta14–2017), Dora Garcia (Megaron, The Athens Concert Hall — 2018) et. al.

¹ Éduard Glissant is using the term “langage” to denote the speaker’s subjective attitude to the “langue” that s/he uses. In the same vein, I am proposing here dance not as a universal language, as it is often quoted, but as “langage” denoting the subjective use of the moving body.
² Éduard Glissant, Introduction to a Poetics of Diversity, Liverpool University Press, p.27
³ Shoshana Felman, The Scandal of the Speaking Body, Stanford University Press, p.5
⁴ Also, a video version of “Audible dances” in collaboration with director Iasonas Arvanitakis was presented in AVDP 2022 but I am focusing only on the audio version, available also here: https://soundcloud.com/georgiapaizi
⁵ As quoted in Lisa Blackman, Immaterial Bodies, SAGE, p.139
⁶ Touching and Being Touched, Kinesthesia and Empathy in Dance and Movement, eds Gabriele Brandstetter, Gerko Egert and Sabine Zubarik, DE GRUYTER, p. 165
⁷ I saw an open rehearsal of the piece, presented within the ARTWORKS Dance Fellows platform at M54 Collective Space (Athens). “Phrases” is a production by Venetsiana Kalampaliki and K3 — Zentrum für Choreographie | Tanzplan Hamburg.
⁸ Felman, ibid.
⁹ Glissant, ibid.

The text that follows is a response to a workshop Alexandra Waierstall assisted in PLYFA — a former industrial park in downtown Athens. The participants, all SNF ARTWORKS Fellows, were introduced to the basic kinetic-sensorial approaches the choreographer has developed in relation to Rita McBride’s monumental modular sculpture, “Arena”¹ (1997): starting from the solo “Sounding Silence” (2013), to the cyclical encounters “Bodies and Structure. Intervention” (2018–2020) and its staged version (2019), to the most recent one, “In the Heart of the Heart of the Moment” (2021/22). Although the word ‘arena’ is mostly related to competition, favouring maybe the excellence of the one instead of a plural co-habitation, here the example is reversed, addressing the intricate relationship of bodies and space, or more accurately, of bodies embodying space, allowing thus different temporal fragments to emerge, crisscrossing each other so that moments purposefully defy the theatrical apparatus to become eventful encounters. In this sense, dancers are called to create a temporary space for its own emergence; a kind of sensible space, which could also resonate with the concept of the public space.

Thinking about the choreographic process as a sensible space, where multiple singularities can emerge, could provide us with a motif to openly redefine the singular, authorial figure of the choreographer, but also engage deeply with the immersive commonality of both performers and audience, so that the space emerges as discursive, proposing different readings of representation and spectatorship. In this sense, the stage is proposed as a highly visible site of encounter, allowing a kind of deleuzian approach to the actualization of ideas; this method of ‘dramatization,’ as Deleuze calls it, enables the emergence of subjects and ideas through the “the agitations of space, pockets of time, pure syntheses of speeds, directions and rhythms.” ² The effect of this quasi-choreographic approach is to emphasize the temporal fragility of space, namely, a space where subjects are called into encounters, but whether these encounters would emerge or disintegrate into obscurity becomes a question of political act. Political, in this case, stresses the possibilities inherent in the theatrical space and the problem of representation itself: possibilities (un)marked by the event of visibility and/or visuality.

As Maaike Bleeker³ suggests in her seminal book, “the adjective theatrical can refer both to a particular quality―its being ‘of the theatre’―and to failure: its failure to convince as authentic and true. Thus, the staged character of the theatrical event makes it by definition antithetic to modernist notions of authenticity and truth, so much so that theatre is marked by anti-theatricality. Her elaboration of the concept of ‘visuality’ is not so much to condemn the theatrical but to expose that the very fact of seeing always consists of seeing more/less than what it is ‘there’ to see. Instead of opposing the two realities―the staged and the real― the question lies exactly in how the real is (already) staged, allowing certain representations while others remain impossible. To bring back the conversation to Waierstall’s workshop, I am suggesting seeing plural/singular not as opposing, as if in ‘many’ we could automatically see a staged version of plurality, but as a way to elaborately perceive negotiated moments and heightened qualities in a choreographic score as moments of ‘dramatization,’ eventful encounters through which subjects (not necessarily singular) emerge. So, during the workshop, one could experience entrances and exits, highly articulated soli, joint intentional actions―such as the group jump―in which individual bodies focused on the same joint goal and through their concentration became one ‘higher-level entity.’

While the score is practiced during the workshop, one could observe how the space ‘breathes’ and how the highly trained dancers bring in different intensities every time; this type of floating concentration demands that every-body listens carefully to the evolving structure of the dance, but most importantly this shared attentive process heightens the relation between moving bodies and space. Actually, it becomes evident how both are already in process, namely, how both bodies and space enact relations that could be defined by physical boundaries (what takes place ‘there,’ on the stage) but also by the capacity to affect and be affected; what happens ‘there’ becomes a moment situated in the ‘here and now,’ speaks of the possibility of an encounter. In reference to the aforementioned, what seems to be in the heart of (of the heart of) this process is not so much the division between solo and group action, as if in a settled, pre-structured choreography, but the affective qualities raised within and during the evolving process, as if both bodies and space co-produce one another through gestures, movements, joint actions and stillness. Even though the monumental modular structure is not there, so as to perceive how bodies interact with it and how they are moulded with it by way of their interaction, one could still grasp in some cases the ‘presence’ of the sculpture, its affective traces imbued in the dancers’ bodies.

Having this in mind and trying to elaborate it in relation to Bleeker’s notion of visuality, one could easily sense that there was something more to perceive in the room but that more was ‘missing,’ it may not have been visible in ordinary terms, but it could somehow resonate with other senses, it could be felt but still not confined or contained within the limits of the dancers’ bodies. Just like the fragments of music that seize us but only momentarily, allowing a re-organization of the space and its felt qualities, movement has been negotiated in thresholds of awareness, momenta of thickening the liveness of the space and the bodies that inhabit it. Therefore, “the heart of the heart of the moment” becomes an invitation to contemplate the eventfulness of movement, to approach experience through this processual ‘opening’ beyond the common self-conscious aesthetic practices of dance.

Open studio with Alexandra Waierstall along with Rita McBride, Scott Jennings, Giorgos Kotsifakis (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021) and Eftychia Stefanou (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019) took place during the 5th SNF Artist Fellowship Program by ARTWORKS at PLYFA in Athens (February 3rd, 2023) with the participation of the following Fellows: Konstantina Barkouli (2022), Stella Dimitrakopoulou (2019), Alexis Fousekis (2021), Myrto Grapsa (2022), Venetsiana Kalampaliki (2022), Christina Karagianni (2019), Xenia Koghilaki (2022), Alexandros Nouskas Varelas (2021), Konstantinos Papanikolaou (2021), Elton Petri (2019), Christina Reihardt (2022), Eliane Roumie (2022), Natasha Sarantopoulou (2020), Marios Stamatis (2022), Maro Stavrinou (2021), Alexandros Stavropoulos (2021), Anastasia Valsamaki (2020), Sophia Danae Vorvila (2022), Andi Xhuma (2019). The open studio culminated in a group discussion moderated by Anastasio Koukoutas around the ideas and values of democracy, the evolution of the arena concept, spaces within spaces, the economy of gaze and the importance of momentum.

Anastasio Koukoutas is working in the field of dance theory, dramaturgy and writing. He studied (BA) Communication and Marketing at the Athens University of Economics, (MA) Performing Arts Administration at Accademia Teatro alla Scala (in collaboration with Bocconi University), Ethnomusicology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (within the e-learning course Greek Music Culture and Education). He has worked, in the publishing field, as a contributor and editor, for art institutions and organizations, such as: Athens & Epidaurus Festival, Stegi Onassis, Dimitria Thessaloniki Festival, Megaron — The Athens Concert Hall et.al. He has worked as a dramaturg in theatre and dance performances (Athens Festival, Stegi Onassis, Experimental Stage of National Theatre in Greece, Arc for Dance Festival, Porta Theatre — Athens et.al.). He writes frequently about dance for the websites springbackmagazine.com, artivist.gr, und-athens.com, and teaches Dance History at the dance college ΑΚΤΙΝΑ. Last but not least, he has worked as a performer for Denis Savary (Lagune –National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens — 2016), Virgilio Sieni (Biennale Danza / La Biennale di Venezia — 2016), Pierre Bal Blanc (documenta14–2017), Dora Garcia (Megaron, The Athens Concert Hall — 2018) et. al.

¹ On the occasion of the recent acquisition of Rita McBride’s “Arena” by Dia Beacon, during the upcoming exhibition (July 2023–September 9, 2024) there will be a series of performances developed in collaboration with the artist, choreographer Alexandra Waierstall. For more info: https://www.diaart.org/exhibition/exhibitions-projects/rita-mcbride-exhibition

² Gilles Deleuze, “The Method of Dramatization”, in Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953–74, Semiotext(e), New York, 2004

³ Maaike Bleeker, “Visuality in the theatre; the locus of looking”, Palgrave McMillan, New York, 2008

Dear Danae,

today I decided to start reading your book ^[i]; I had a mug of coffee and the cat sitting on my lap, some colourful markers and post-it notes to write down things that might develop later into a ‘proper’ text. But from page one, I realised that this was going to take the form of a diary entry, a response to your own writing. I decided, also, that I would try to include as much as I can my own intimate surroundings and thoughts―an aspect not always visible for someone who wears the hat of a dance theorist, which could mean, as well, to propose your methodology as a way to revisit my own writing. It could be a way to understand on a personal level some of the notions you bring up in your book―like ‘discomfort’ and ‘uneasiness’―, to filter them through my own embodied experience and maybe relate more openly to your approach of performance writing ^[ii];

So, let’s say that reading your thoughts navigated me through my own corporeal absence/authorial presence, as these words were leaving my body to enter the page. Unlike the musicality of the words of the infant Kristeva refers to and whom you quote, I am, for now, muted (there’s strength and fear in that; strength just from knowing how close one could get to a reader’s inner ear and fear when facing the risk that you might not ever be able to be heard as a voice). This should somehow shift our awareness to the fact that there might not be (enough) authorial power in every voice, be it written or vocal, and that there might be other forms of political act, we don’t necessarily recognise as such. What are these forms of political act that might not be in the range of our own practice, gaze, knowledge? Not-knowing isn’t always about ignorance; it’s about being open to the radicality of the unknown.

Political (non)sense and sensibility; I relate to your agony to capture this moment of historical absurdity, to stay with your vulnerability―even though, as you mention, during the covid pandemic, vulnerability could not only bring awareness of the human condition but also of the political powers framing the very concept of existence. So, we learned rather explicitly, how politics and our lives are essentially intertwined. It is written on our bodies now, as it has ever been. And the story goes that we will still somehow try to decipher what is being written on them, elusive or permanent, legible or illegible, ours or not (I said I will try to reveal myself and I am already using plural pronouns to hide in a ‘we’ that might sound pretentiously imaginary or unashamedly fake).

I cry listening to music*, most of the times. I cried a lot while running and listening to music, during the pandemic. It was my heart beating wild that couldn’t really make any sense to me, a wildness I couldn’t entirely possess, a matter-reality of its own bringing me to discomfort and unease. Awareness isn’t about achievement or thought settling in our bodies (yet, I would still be reluctant to say what it is about).

*“The Dancer” by PJ Harvey (a song that I like to dance to).

There is (anchoring) stillness in our power only to contradict what Lepecki says about the “power in our stillness”―sometimes I blame us, theoreticians, for using movement metaphorically without questioning what our neutralising, self-reflexivity means, for whom, and on what terms? Since you happen to mention Karen Finley’s fevered ferocity among others, I do find crucial her approach to demystify herself while going through the process of exposure. I treasure her disturbing anger, her passionate nihilism, her unapologetic disgust towards commodity capitalism. She offers though no escape, other than that of being already consumed by the spectacle machine of our consumerist society.

Discomfort; to live with contradictions. Unease; to keep fighting to resolve contradictions. I found love during the pandemic and love became my zone of comfort and ease. More contradictions to come, more temporalities to adjust to, along with this poetic, uncompromising sense of being “briefly gorgeous” on earth. “Not to manifest mourning (or at least to be indifferent to it) but to impose the public right to the loving relation it implies” [Mourning Diary, Roland Barthes]. To read you felt so invigorating; it sustained my diachronic belief that there’s more to learning than teaching, unless we take teaching as a process of unlearning, take this intimate letter as something addressed to myself via you, but not as an act of self-care, more like a diaspora of the self, a call to inter-being, a rhizome in between things, feelings, senses, memories, losses.

I am being archived in your words, thoughts, unfinished sentences, dear Danae. I am now lost in a ‘landscape of gathered emotions’―yet another post-it with one of your fragments―, but maybe ‘-scape’ implies something already organised and taxonomized, a land sliced into recognisable pieces of knowledge, while, quite oppositely, I had no idea where this journey is going to take me. It felt like a dive, an awakening and a free-fall. I took your advice to the letter, turned off the lights and read the rest of the text only with my flashlight on (I cheated a bit; I had also the little flame from the gas heater, it’s winter but the cold still relatively mild). I lie on my back, a woollen carpet softens the surface of the floor, I feel comfortable, I situate the flashlight on my chest when a black page falls off the book. I pick it up and read out loud:

A performer is laying on the floor

AAAAAA

The absence
your voice
my body
the void

Can you hear me now?

Sophia Danae Vorvila is a dance SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2022) based between Athens and Brussels. As a performer, she has collaborated with several collectives and choreographers exhibiting whose practice is firmly rooted in contemporary dance, improvisation and performance. At the moment, she is developing her own choreographic work which oscillates between discomfort and pleasure, gathering fragments of memory and micro-histories and documenting everyday life through movement and text.

Anastasio Koukoutas is working in the field of dance theory, dramaturgy and writing. He studied (BA) Communication and Marketing at the Athens University of Economics, (MA) Performing Arts Administration at Accademia Teatro alla Scala (in collaboration with Bocconi University), Ethnomusicology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (within the e-learning course Greek Music Culture and Education). He has worked, in the publishing field, as a contributor and editor, for art institutions and organizations, such as: Athens & Epidaurus Festival, Stegi Onassis, Dimitria Thessaloniki Festival, Megaron — The Athens Concert Hall et.al. He has worked as a dramaturg in theatre and dance performances (Athens Festival, Stegi Onassis, Experimental Stage of National Theatre in Greece, Arc for Dance Festival, Porta Theatre — Athens et.al.). He writes frequently about dance for the websites springbackmagazine.com, artivist.gr, und-athens.com, and teaches Dance History at the dance college ΑΚΤΙΝΑ. Last but not least, he has worked as a performer for Denis Savary (Lagune –National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens — 2016), Virgilio Sieni (Biennale Danza / La Biennale di Venezia — 2016), Pierre Bal Blanc (documenta14–2017), Dora Garcia (Megaron, The Athens Concert Hall — 2018) et. al.

[i] this_is_a_never_ending_sunday.jpg book is part of Sophia Danae Vorvila’s artistic and theoretical research conducted within the context of the master’s program in Dance Embodied Artistic Research at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (2019–2021). It is closely related to the homonymous performance and it has been carried out and supervised by Katleen Van Langendonck. It was printed in Antwerp, June 2021.

[ii] Danae’s diaries, notebooks, sketchbooks can be accessed via the following link: www.sophiadanaevorvila.space

*“The Dancer” by PJ Harvey (a song that I like to dance to).

Motion capture and the many different domains it has been implemented, such as cinema, game design, but also engineering, proves that the ability to abstract movement is a tool that goes beyond the art of dance. Rather, it demonstrates how abstraction requires to think of movement in a more philosophical sense, i.e., to occasionally think of choreography without a body. In his project hardly virtual [1], Dimitris Mytilinaios created an online interface where users could play with basic compositional tools and thus become potentially (or virtually) choreographers-performers.

Mytilinaios conceives choreography as a three-column table; the centre column contains the anatomical categorisation of movement, from head to ankle, providing the user with an inventory of bodily articulations which can be dragged and dropped to either left or right columns, re-ordered and processed according to one’s imagination, then pulled outside the column to create a choreographic phrase. However, this elemental three-step (input-sequencing-output) approach to choreography is suggesting more than a simplistic device to play with movement. Abstracting movement and attempting composition with(in) a virtual interface, may remind us that abstraction lies at the heart of choreographic thought and that choreography could also be achieved without real bodies. This is not a statement that could raise another ontological threat to dancing bodies or even express a burning debate about the world becoming increasingly flattened on screens; in fact, many philosophical approaches focused on how technological intervention has undermined or manipulated the subjective experience of body, its cultural representations and significations. Overcoming this fear of losing ‘sight’ of the embodied nature of movement demands that we reframe the very phenomenological approach to dancing, which centres the body as the basis of knowledge and experience. It demands actually to approach thought as the most abstract moment of experience and thus consider choreography as movement-thought.

As Stamatia Portanova notes in her book, Moving Without a Body ², the virtual can be thought of as “an incorporeal potential for variation” and “this unlimited potentiality or infinitely multiple condition of experience is not equitable with any sensed or material continuity.” On this trajectory, hardly virtual interface might be considered a choreographic machine, one that approaches the body as a structured map of (some) possible articulations, which could be then organised into a number of combinations (not infinite). As it was the case with Merce Cunningham’s choreographic practice, hardly virtual seems to be about inorganic, non-sequential movement, with random transitions and no evident continuity; head, knee, ribs, elbow, pelvis, hand, ankle, are only points of departure for the many combinations to come. There is even a “chance” button, using an algorithm to create an aleatory composition, for those who are reluctant to participate mentally/actively in the making.

Hardly virtual is a choreographic machine which doesn’t produce a smooth, apparently fluid sequence of bits, but maintains the temporal cut from one movement articulation to the other, so much so that the body disappears in the cut, just like in early cinematography, when there might have been a glitch from one frame to the other. The comparison to cinema is not based on the fact that bodies where filmed before turning into colourful figures; rather, the comparison suggests focusing on the cut/montage technique as a perceptive mechanism. To make things even more peculiar or funny, in some cases the dancing figure is juxtaposed with a GIF background; sometimes it’s a school of sharks, an explosion of colours, or even a flock of birds. To link the above to Portanova’s reading of choreography as virtuality, would require first and foremost to inspect how the dancing body appears in thought: “rather than considering choreography as previous or successive moment of appropriation, forcing the body to adapt itself and its mysterious forces to the structures of thought, it is in thought that a movement, with both its qualitative and quantitative aspects, with its fluidity and extension in space and time, becomes a dance.”

A second feature of hardly virtual is dedicated to a more interactive use of the suggested body partition and the conceived choreographic tools; users are asked to orchestrate their “physical intelligence and kinetic imagination” to interpret the parameters they are given and then record their trials to contribute in the making of a “collective library” of movements. Movements are catalogued with their names/captions ―a modality which already indicates how abstraction and representation through language is a tool that could help the body regenerate or reenact the desired action, thus help the body think choreographically. Some names are indicative and descriptive of the action, like “right goes to the left shoulder”, others are more playful, like “gollum”, “mr. chin” or “i fuck diagonally.” The inventory of different interpretations recorded on video showcases how abstract data could be transformed into empirical, to create an archive of different approaches of the same movement. This imaginative-transformative feature carries also a substantial pedagogical dimension; it underlines how virtual knowledge or rather the virtuality of knowledge is constantly exposed to the instability of its own openness.

To reference once again Portanova, we could think of choreography as the virtuality of movement that materializes itself as it traverses the body. In other words, instead of thinking of the body as a purely mechanical tool for the execution of movement, we could somehow consider it as the technological apparatus through which a choreographic idea is implemented. Hardly virtual, in the above sense, isn’t merely about how (virtual) bodies respond to choreographic bits, but also how ideas might “look like” as they become embodied. It is a playful way to get into other people’s head by exploring their choreographic propositions―a reminder that choreography is not merely about the staged event, but a system of thought proposing its own visual articulations.

Anastasio Koukoutas is working in the field of dance theory, dramaturgy and writing. He studied (BA) Communication and Marketing at the Athens University of Economics, (MA) Performing Arts Administration at Accademia Teatro alla Scala (in collaboration with Bocconi University), Ethnomusicology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (within the e-learning course Greek Music Culture and Education). He has worked, in the publishing field, as a contributor and editor, for art institutions and organizations, such as: Athens & Epidaurus Festival, Stegi Onassis, Dimitria Thessaloniki Festival, Megaron — The Athens Concert Hall et.al. He has worked as a dramaturg in theatre and dance performances (Athens Festival, Stegi Onassis, Experimental Stage of National Theatre in Greece, Arc for Dance Festival, Porta Theatre — Athens et.al.). He writes frequently about dance for the websites springbackmagazine.com, artivist.gr, und-athens.com, and teaches Dance History at the dance college ΑΚΤΙΝΑ. Last but not least, he has worked as a performer for Denis Savary (Lagune –National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens — 2016), Virgilio Sieni (Biennale Danza / La Biennale di Venezia — 2016), Pierre Bal Blanc (documenta14–2017), Dora Garcia (Megaron, The Athens Concert Hall — 2018) et. al.

Dimitris Mytilinaios (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019) has been active in the dance field since 2012. He is a graduate of the State School of Dance (2012–2015) and holds a Μaster exerce-ICI-CCN Université III Paul-Valéry-Montpellier- with a scholarship from Onassis Foundation, a two-year program directed by Christian Rizzo in the field of choreography.

[1] https://hardlyvirtual.dance/index.html The project is a natural ‘outcome’ of the work hardly the same: a dance guide to mess up body&mind, a duo with dancer Nefeli Asteriou, in which Mytilinaios initially researched and catalogued the basic principles of this virtual experiment. The website was programmed and designed by Yiannis Kranidiotis while the video clips with the two dancing figures were realised by Marina Skoutela (SuKu). hardly virtual has been also presented in the Athens Digital Arts Festival.

[2] Stamatia Portanova, Moving Without a Body — Digital Philosophy and Choreographic Thoughts, The MIT Press, 2013

Horse = Coconuts
Air = Rope
Pool of water = (h) Vessels of water
Wings = Umbrella
Waterfall = Bucket of water
Toweling hair = Rubbing feet on front door mat

These absurd equations are excerpts of notes made by Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, a dancer and choreographer who lately deals with the process of Foley in her works. Interwoven with the film industry, but having its origins in the first radio productions, Foley is the technique of producing sounds in a recording studio, by more or less predictable means, so that it corresponds to an on-screen action that lacks natural sound or reinforces the impact of an existing one. By revealing this part of film production which remains invisible to the audience, Paraskevopoulou turns it into a spectacle itself, unearthing the beauty and poetry that is often hidden in the “making of” process. During the COVID-19 pandemic and its ensuing restrictions, the dancer practiced this kinetic research in her domestic space using household items while she was studying remotely in the Department of Audio and Visual Arts of the Ionian University. At the time, this research served as a creative outlet for Paraskevopoulou, proving that making art with few means was still possible, despite the undeniable difficulties in the professions of dance and performance at that time.

This idea born during this period of isolation has been mainly translated into two works — and other pieces in progress — one of which was presented for the online version of the Onassis New Choreographers Festival 8 (All she likes is popping bubble wrap, 2021) and another one on stage for the Onassis New Choreographers Festival 9 (Mos, 2022). In Mos, which is the closest to what the choreographer originally had in mind, the relationship between image, movement and sound is explored in its full complexity, each element in constant interplay with the others. In the first part of the choreography, Foley art is performed by Paraskevopoulou and Giorgos Kotsifakis in its classical form — synchronizing with excerpts of famous films like The Night of the Living Dead (1968) — bringing spectators back to the years when foley artists were recording live in a one off performance and had to perfectly synchronize with the image in real time. As much as this act is a revelation of film production it does not demystify the work itself. On the contrary, isolating this part highlights its qualities as an autonomous process and emphasizes the kinetic interest it manifests individually.

In the second part of Mos the moving image disappears, but the dancers remain on stage becoming sound and image themselves, while dancing to tap dance, a type of dance that was a spectacle itself par excellence, associated with big movie production and a means of entertainment in its own right. The tap dances continues, this time on a special sound-absorbing material that removes any sound — an homage to the scene of one minute’s silence in the film Band of Outsiders (1964) by Jean-Luc Godard, where the sound is completely removed from the image awakening the attention of the viewer. Paraskevopoulou tests the silence on the stage while maintaining the movement, creating an absurd situation. Following the tradition of many artistic experimentations with silence, this one also demonstrates how the attempt to hear the void makes silence richer, focusing on other sounds produced by the condition that defines any kind of performance: the existence of an audience.

As the performance reaches its end, the dancers bring the microphone close to their heart which beats loudly and resembles the sound of running horses, symbolizing in a way the evolution of the performance from a purely technical and controlled process to an emotional and unpredictable one. Instead of blindly adhering to the Foley technique, the performance pushes the boundaries of dance by revisiting some of its fundamental principles through an unmuting of the body, unchaining it from the classical idea that any movement, even the most impressive, must look effortless and be silent. In doing so, it troubles the audience’s expectations, playing with its need for immersion in the illusion of the entertainment industry. Using an old technique to bring current questions to the forefront and challenging the dance milieu and the audience Paraskevopoulou proposes a holistic choreographic approach rather than an experiment; a return to our senses, to our expectations of spectacle and the illusions we allow ourselves to have.

Ioanna Paraskevopoulou is a dancer and a SNF ARTWORKS Dance Fellows (2019).

Eva Vaslamatzi (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019) is an independent curator and writer currently based in Athens, Greece

A conversation between dance artist Aria Boumpaki and curator Eva Vaslamatzi

E.V.

I would like to focus on projects that are entirely yours, that is, that start from your own idea and initiative, such as the Handle with care project that you recently presented at the Snehta space in Kypseli, Compost (2019) and the 162 dance meetings (2017). Let’s start with Compost, which is a special experiment of collaboration between two dancers (Christina Reinhardt, Konstantinos Papanikolaou), a visual artist (Ioanna Plessa), a sound artist (Anouk Arra), a gardener (Athena Geraniou) and a cook (Manolis Pipinis). How did the dialogue between these different fields work?

Α.Β.

Initially, for three months we all coexisted together in the Bluebox studio and each of us gained something from the other’s creative process, without them necessarily being artistic processes. If someone is cooking in the same place where I dance, how can the smell affect my movement? Or vice versa, what changes in the way one cooks when a body is dancing next to them? What interests me is the process of sharing, the participants entering all together into a moving process but not into something very specific, like a choreography. As Konstantinos Papanikolaou, who participated in Compost, told me, it is like trying to bring life into the process. In the same way that life on a given day can be very boring — something which is normal -, the performance itself can sometimes be boring if, for example, you arrived at the studio at a moment where very little was happening. In this project I wanted to take this risk; I avoided pushing myself for a result, trying not to be dragged down by the anxiety of success.

Ε.V.

​​A challenging aspect of your work is that you provide a “stage” for bodies of non-dancers. You also did this in the project 162 dance meetings in the context of the Young Choreographers Festival at the Onassis Foundation.

Α.B.

In the project 162 dance meetings there were also non-dancers and non-professionals, none of whom had anything to do with dance. At Compost some were non-dancers but they were professionals, I mean in their field.

E.V.

Did those who were not dancers in the Compost project dance at the end?

Α.B.

The cook did not dance, the gardener developed a kind of kinetic sensibility. To me, it seems that all bodies have a performative potential. There is beauty in everyone’s personal movement. My role is to create situations so that each participant feels safe to enter the kinetic situation.

How do you create this condition?

Α.B.

For the 162 dance meetings I had individual meetings with the 81 participants in a garage in the neighborhood of Neos Kosmos. I had created artistic worlds, such as an environment and costumes that allowed them to cut themselves off from their daily lives and feel more freedom and comfort to express themselves. Each meeting was followed by a small ritual. I met them outside, holding a carnation so that they could recognize me, and we made our way to the studio together. Once there, we took time to get acquainted with the place, having tea and holding a first discussion about what would follow in the room that I had specially designed. At the end of the process we returned to the table for a closing discussion. The space was very important for the ritual, especially the opening and closing of the garage door — many had difficulty getting out after the process, experiencing it as a return to reality.

E.V.

And finally, after all these meetings, how did you manage to isolate what you were kinetically interested in?

Α.B.

The choreography was an account of what “remained” in my body from these encounters. I had gotten used to meeting four people per day, and the loneliness I felt when these meetings ended was prohibitive. At this point I realized how important the meetings were and how difficult it was to move on to create a choreography out of them.

E.V.

What is the relationship you develop with each space, which in your works so far is not a typical stage?

Α.B.

I’m not attracted to the stage, at least for now. I like the idea that we inhabit spaces with our processes, that we occupy a space and invite the public to enter into this condition. Because the process is very important in my work, I cannot separate the space from it. Through the process, the space itself acquires another weight in relation to the movement, but I also feel that the movement is weakened when it leaves the space where it was created. Yet I do not feel that I do site specific works or public art. I am interested in the vulnerability of the project itself and the people who take part in it. The stage neutralizes this vulnerability.

E.V.

You have taken up classical dance studies in Greece; When did you start to be interested in more experimental and hybrid forms of dance?

Α.B.

My studies in France changed my practice completely. When I was in Athens I always had an instinct that I was missing something. The program I attended at Montpellier did not have one single curriculum; rather it was shaped by a program of visiting dancers and other teachers. It also helped me significantly that not all my classmates were dancers; rather, they came from other fields and understood the body and movement differently. In Greece, we were taught to perceive the body as a selfish center, they teach you to dance alone even when you dance with others.

E.V.

Tell me more about your latest work Handle with care — In Search of Tender Weapons which was created entirely in nature, in Milos and Vamvakou Laconia with a group of women working in the fields of dance and visual arts (Anouk Arra, Katerina Kotsou, Pagona Boulbasakou, Christina Reinhart, Nefeli Sarri). This research focused on the existence of a community in nature through care, which takes us back to a kind of a primordial condition. What did you learn from this experience?

Α.B.

With this project I returned to our first “home”, Nature. Until now, I was used to working in studios but not in white cubes. I was always configuring the studio space in creative ways so that there could be sufficient recruits and information for the participants. This is the first time I worked in a pre-existing space which I had no control over. All my attention was focused on dealing with natural phenomena that were, obviously, happening while we were there but I didn’t expect them, such as the waves in a rocky landscape in Milos that we wanted to use for our performance. So, I decided to focus on the team and the way we worked. We had to make our own score for each day; every day we adjusted our team’s activities. How can care be at the center of our daily lives? There was a delicate balance between leading a team and leaving the process very open to everyone, so that roles within the collective disappear. How can I make sure that there is no hierarchy in our group but at the same time be responsible for its organization? The care was aimed at transforming a group of women into a community.

E.V.

This time, how did you experience the transition from this special condition you collectively experienced to the exhibition space?

Α.B.

The experience we had was presented as an installation with a video that records the movements and actions we performed in the landscapes we visited. I did not want to present something choreographic because our body memory was so connected to these specific places. But I explored other mediums. For the first time I made an installation where I planted weeds in an attempt to bring nature inside. I feel that I am more familiar with the visual arts in my creative practice. Up until now I haven’t made a choreographic work with pure movement, I might say that what I do is that I create kinetic situations.

Aria Boumbaki (SNF ARTWORKS Dance Fellow 2020) is a dance artist whose work engages strongly with the question of community. Exploring dance bodies in different realities, she creates projects that combine a multitude of formats, structures and localities, ranging from conventional stage pieces to exhibitions, site-specific works, community projects, text and video installations.

Eva Vaslamatzi (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019) is an independent curator and writer currently based in Athens, Greece.

The connection between dance and the moving image has been aesthetically and historically documented since the dawn of modernism in the arts. Wedged between the photographic studies of Eadweard J. Muybridge and choreographer Merce Cunningham’s avant-garde experimentations is a century of technological innovation, during which the use of technology in the field of dance has garnered ambivalent reactions. At times, technology is viewed as being diametrically opposed to the physical presence of dancers, as if dance were not already a technology governing the human body’s natural strength and abilities. At others, it acquires an emancipatory dimension, which reinforces the existing narratives on the dancing body —particularly so in relation to that dominant conception that used to link dance to the ‘here and now’ of the dance movement and therefore consolidated the myth of dance’s ‘ephemeral’ nature. Nowadays, we no longer ask ourselves the question whether dance takes place in digital environments but rather seek to discover how technology is embedded in dance (and choreography), suggesting new ways of controlling the body’s materiality while redefining the notion of humanness on the condition that dance, as an expression of the body, as well as the desire to transmit ideas provide a good point of departure from which to contemplate the issue Spinoza raises in his famous quip: no one knows what a body can do.

The domination of the digital does more than merely confirm the omnipotence of the image in contemporary culture; it also demonstrates how the realm of our digital/ digitalised culture extended farther than a simple simulation of ‘reality’ in our screens, evolving into a biopolitical strategy that enabled technology to become incorporated into all aspects of our lives. It is certainly no accident that the technological colonisation of the public and private sphere was accomplished during a period in which human contact came to be considered precarious, a risk factor for transmitting the coronavirus and for accelerating the spread of the pandemic. Paradoxically, the digital world became the main vantage point people stand on to contemplate the ‘outside’: their work, their relationships, leisure and creativity. However, notwithstanding the various ominous scenaria for a technological proliferation or intermediation that will end up capitalising humans and their intrinsic wealth, what is at stake here is not to reintroduce the virtual/real binary, as if to suggest that the latter can fully encapsulate the eternal struggle between illusion and reality. Similarly, the solution would not be to conjure an essentialist understanding of human expression and communication ascribing specific, fixed and universal characteristics to the art of dance and its digital imprint. Dance governs collective representations, cultural values inscribed on the body —and partly also constructing it— the labour of the dancers refracted through the clichés of artistic virtuosity and (self-) expression. More than anything else, however, dance is a medium that can offer insight into how we experience our body, acknowledging it as a locus for personal and collective, imaginary and real experiences.

Hence, the problem is formulated anew, this time focusing less on the aesthetic perception of the digital, that is, on how we evaluate a work created in the digital sphere, and more on the fact that the body emerges as a necessary and sufficient condition for the dance event— in other words, on the fact that dance delineates freedom as the power to not dance and therefore as the choice to move or remain still. Under the present circumstances, the shift towards the digital is also a political decision, as it is portrayed as an aesthetically felicitus solution corresponding aptly to the conditions that rendered it necessary. There is, however, an ontological question to be considered here, namely that of body politics and of the body as a carrier of the political, which becomes even more problematic if we fail to examine the circumstantial convergence of the digital field with the dance field. What, ultimately, can a body do in the digital sphere? Can we comprehend the digital not as an actualisation of the possible, as a substitute solution of the present condition of precarity, but as a virtual expression of a creativity with the potential to defy the productivity syndrome?

Bearing in mind, then, that technology is not neutral as it already carries within it political choices and objectives, how can we invent a new way of co-existing beyond and through the impossibility of touch which has been imposed on us during the pandemic? What I have in mind is not a framework dictating forms of resistance or resorting to the transcendental to help us envisage solutions that would be free of contradictions. Nevertheless, if it is true that the virtual became constrained within the field of the visible and its digital products, are we, then, not perhaps trapped in a dystopia of the visual? Could it be that our digital means are not, in fact, the modern means of artistic production which we envisioned thirty years ago, but rather yet another entrepreneurial tool for the artist, imposing a specific field of action? I will leave the question suspended, as it is too soon to predict the full impact the health measures adopted in order to curtail the spread of Covid-19 will have on the art world.

In the current circumstances, the political does not present itself as a message or a critical commentary on what we have been experiencing during the pandemic. The political within the aesthetic emanates from our specific way of experiencing space and time, a sense of perception that gives rise to ways of being together or apart both inside and outside of the digital world. It reminds us, also, that our artistic practices, especially in the dance field, can fashion forms of visibility that may reconfigure our way of existence and our common sense; become entangled in what one could call our ‘shared’—though not necessarily unanimous— sense of the world; and suggest ways for us to remain active and creative in a non-compulsive way and to unilaterally protect creativity’s intrinsic value even beyond the production of work. In other words, we need to weigh the practical benefits the digital means may offer and examine what can be achieved through them in a time of pandemic. In addition, we need to evaluate the impact they have on our everyday life and bodily experience, which, in a technogenic environment, is constructed in a completely different manner. If dance remains a relational practice, let us wonder what can be salvaged or what is at stake when dance is inscribed in the digital environment, before we sign the eulogy of its universal domination.

*Anastasio Koukoutas is a dance theorist, dramaturg and essayist. Anastasio was part of the ARTWORKS Dance Selection Committee 2019 along with Ermira Goro and Christos Papadopoulos.

**Τhis text was part of  the 2nd publication of ARTWORKS that reflects the SNF Artist Fellowship Program 2019-2020.