“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.”
Albert Einstein
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| photo credits: Marcelo Finco |
I was born in 1984 in Pau, France. In 2009 I graduated from the Polytechnic Engineering School in Patras, Greece, while in 2011 I was admitted to the two-year MA program of Biomaterials and Biomechanics Department of Unicamp University in Campinas city in Brazil. Alongside my research on construction of Biomaterials for hip prostheses, I also attended the postgraduate program of the Department of Dance and Somatic Institute of Performing Arts (Instituto de Artes Cênicas e Corporais) of the same university. In 2012, in Guaratinguetá city in Brazil I was awarded with the title of teacher of Capoeira (Instrutora de Capoeira).
I work as a dance and Capoeira instructor since 2010.
In 2014, after my daughter was born, I took the big decision. My path was a dancing one.
First thoughts
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| photo credits Erifyli Drakopoulou |
"People
go to a dance performance expecting to be
entertained,
but people go to an art museum expecting to put
thought
and time into what they're seeing." -DIANE MADDEN [1]
The
idea of performing inside the Benaki Museum fascinated me. A site
creative process, a site-specific dance performance. We will have the
opportunity to interact with the site and the audience in areas of
our choice inside the museum. I already know that this is a
difficult task to carry through, as museums are not places
designed for dance performances. This project will demand some
sacrifices of us in order to transform the concept of proximity into
something interesting for the audience and not ending up as an
awkward interaction, where people are just staring at you, expecting
to see something, that is not there.
We
have limited rehearsals, but as a matter a fact this is the point of
being an adaptable performer to space and time.
Our
first task is to visit the Benaki´s exposition OUTOPIAS and select
one piece of the exposition that inspires us. In addition, we have to
find the site of our performance, and transform our inspiration into
a dancing dialogue between us as dancers and choreographers, the site
and the audience. This is certainly a collaborative dance practice!
1st day at Benaki Museum
When I entered the room that [OUT]TOPIAS exhibition was hosted, I realized that we had a lot of work to do! All four walls of the room where all covered with big screens. We then realized that these screens were projecting some video-dance works of recognized artists. The center of the room was occupied by a -curious-temporary black construction, a room without windows. We had two hours to select an entire piece that was inspiring us, or perhaps an element, an idea, an object, a word, etc. of a video. First video that caught my attention was Rootless Root´s "Dogman". The repetitive movement of the performer and the lyrics made me feel limited, suffocated.
Dogman
I' m a dogman
I'm running man
running to my place
to preserve illusion
Of knowing who I am
I can get mad
'cause no one understand
The way I really am
Nor that I would expect that anyway
As I was walking through space, another piece stimulated my interest, and it was Apostolia Papadamaki´s piece, with the title "Death Series #3, Uninhabited". She was simulating the process of labor, walking all across the Delos Island, following the path all the way up to the hill, until the altar of Zeus. The fact that she was carrying 9 kgs of salt, the real weight of a baby, also the wind and the topography of the path, seemed to turn the performance into a great challenge.
Recalling the process of labor was very challenging for me, and I have to admit that it was a difficult decision to take! As I have already experienced all the pain of the natural birth of my daughter, and however beautiful moment may this be, the pain is intolerable. As I walked back home after Benaki´s visit, I kept unconsciously reproducing all the moments of the birth of my daughter.Then, I wrote down three words that came up in my mind:
pain
wind
path.
So I ended up believing that it was all about investigating the path. How could I explore this concept inside a museum? Or how could I exploit Benaki's inaccessible sites in order that I engage with the space while going through my path?
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| photo credits Marcelo Finco |
Creative process
The next step was my investigation in the studio. It seems that like a dancer, I have more interesting results working first on theoretical level, remaining on thoughts and reflections rather than practical body investigation. I thought a lot about the concept of labor. Before starting rehearsing I already knew that I should follow a repetitive circle of movements, exactly like the contraction during labor. Then I had to practice this theoretical structure in order to confirm that was the right way to follow. In the first place, I put a metronome and through improvisation, I started to play with little movement, initiated from the pelvis, trying to create an inside body pulse. I ended up that the repetitive structure was certainly corresponding to the repetitive process of birth, but what was missing was the effort, the pain. As I had decided that my principle key-word for this task was "the path" so, I should put the effort into the path.
Eventually, I came up with the idea of walking the path with cross-legged position after trying a lot of weird positions. This position, was blocking pelvis and legs, letting just feet, center and torso free to move. The initiator of the movement was the center and then the torso.
After the second visit at the Benaki Museum, prior to any studio rehearsal, I chose the skin space, at the third floor of the museum, as the site of my performance. That would be a more or less 25 meter corridor made of iron mesh plates.
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| photo credits: Erifyli Drakopoulou |
The term ‘embodiment’ is
used to refer to the performer and the dance
as the medium of expression and their capacity
to embody the site’s essences in a phenomenological
sense.[2]
By embodying the site I would have the answer I was looking for. The space just gave me one more condition in order to internalize even more this experience. After some discussion I had with my colleagues, I concluded that I had to face this performance like an actual real-time lived experience of the site. All this project was all about the tiredness, was about the applied effort in order to reach the end, was about the fear of the height, the fear of not handling the weight and the pain of the body towards the end, literally and metaphorically. Also, it was about engaging with the space and explore all the possibilities in it.
Choreographic creation of place can serve as a lens through which to view aspects of the larger world that are embedded in the site, while witnessing potentialities of and for the site created through the vehicle of performance.[3]
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| photo credits: Korina Leva |
video: Korina Leva
References
[1] Jackson Pollock meat Trisha Brown. Site dance museum, January 2014
[2] Victoria Hunter Embodying the Site: the Here and Now in Site-Specific Dance Performance
[3] Tara Munjee. Embodied Place: Variations of Spatial Engagement in Site-Specific Contemporary Dance Choreography. Spaces and Flows: An International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies Volume 1, Issue 4, 2012
