choreographic performance for 8 dancers 

CHOREOGRAPHER’S NOTE

4’33” is a composition by John Cage that is performed without playing a single note. The composer’s aim was not to present the silence itself, as much as to sensually mobilize listeners attention for as long as the piece is “performed”. Cage approached music as an art of intaking sounds rather than composing or performing. Similarly, I would say that with, (5)4’33”: a continuous (im)mobility, I am first of all interested in a different idea of contemplating or understanding what we perceive as a dance performance or how we perceive a contemporary choreography. In this work, following a different compositional starting point, I seek to approach contemporary dance and choreography as events, as autonomous experiences and not as means and ways to express emotions or meanings. At the same time, I wanted to define with precision the duration of the performance and use it as its basic kinesiological characteristic. In essence, the time of the performance, 54 minutes and 33 seconds, is the dominant element of the choreography. Τherefore, time is in the forefront and time changes evolve and determine the form of the project. According to the French philosopher/phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty “Vision does not organize the visible or grant it a meaning by making it explainable with words. It simply captures the visible, as it is raised by an invisible, which continues to be within it…” 

ABSTRACT

In a timeless place, where time has frozen and the space functions as an introspective meditation room, eight bodies suspended between action and non-action, seem ready to move one last time. Τhe swan song of human movement or an ode to the end of cosmos ? The music of the performance, which consists of extensive excerpts from Mozart’s Requiem, creates an evocative atmosphere and cultivates, gradually, a subtle circuit of movement that penetrates the eight bodies, creating an almost cellular connection between them. Through a slow kinetic quality the bodies acquire a fragmentary form, time expands, space is magnified and while progressively it seems more “difficult” for the performers to “maintain their place in cosmos”, the physical contact and closeness they develop with each other creates a mound for the upcoming end. At the same time, the moving stage set functions as a kaleidoscope and causes an asymptomatic view, thus submitting a dance suspension between what is visible and what is invisible, which transforms the space from a room where the individual contemplates to a reminiscence of an immobilized present. 

CREDITS

Production: Synthesis 748 Coproduction – Support: Hellenic Ministry of Culture, CND-National Dance Centre of France in Paris Concept, Choreography: Spyros Kouvaras Scenography: Kyriaki Nasioula Music: W.A. Mozart – Requiem in D minor, K. 626 Dancers: Korina Kotsiri, Spyros Kouvaras, Loukiani Papadaki, Angelos Papadopoulos, Alexandra Rogovska, Anastasia Valsamaki, Dimitra Vlachou, Alexandros Zarmakoupis Interactive Designer: Eleni Xynogala Lighting Designer: Thomas Economacos Assistant Choreographer: Thanos Ragousis Assistant Scenographer: Nikos Komiotis Visual Material: Yiorgos Bakalis Production Manager: Chara Petraki Communication Manager: Maria Tsolaki