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DESCRIPTION

A performance for a female dancer and 500 ping-pong balls. A dance piece revolving around the notion of the body as a living archive, a repository of social and political memories.

Requiem – A Choreographed Portrait‘ was conceived as a tribute to a dancer and reflects an effort to choreographically portray and highlight her personal itinerary.  In this piece, choreographer Alex Tsiamoglou, of RoughCut collective, explores how the dancer’s body is marked, socially and politically — the dancer is seen as a living, embodied record. Through personal narrations, the dancer shares her experiences on stage, allowing for the audience to make sense of the traces left upon, and, running through her body. Requiem is an exploration of social and traditional power structures and their underlying hierarchies and examines the subjectification of the dancer herself. It brings to the fore and questions dominant ideas of the present, which subjugate, and, in the case at hand, construct the “dancing body”.

Choreographer’s note

During the makings of REQUIEM, I was reading works and interviews given by Foucault and thinking about how history and education condition the dancing body. How can the body operate as a living record and how can bodily experiences, which have profoundly shaped a dancer, be represented in a performance?  REQUIEM is an attempt to bring forth a choreographed portrait of the dancer. Contrary to the static nature of hand drawn portraits, I perceive a choreographed portrait as a process, a meeting place, a horizon of possibilities. The choreographic gaze works as a system, conceiving and including gestures, movement, moods, intentionality, and body types. The ping-pong balls index a link between what we see on stage and the element of chance, and, along with the dancer, create a live soundscape — this assemblage is what I think REQUIEM is about.”

CONTRIBUTORS 

Concept & Choreography 

Alexis Tsiamoglou

Performed by

Niovi Benou

Music

Sony Touch

Costumes & Visual Design

Stella Gkrekioti

Lighting Design

Eleni Houmou

Press & Publicity

Yorgos Katsonis

Production Managemer

Maria Vasariotou

Production Management

Delta Pi

Produced by

RoughCut