Closures and a return to the joy of dancing
Katerina Skiada
10 December 2021ISSUE 3

Rapidly Becoming by Syndesmos Chorou
What has changed since the last interviews?
I read the previous interviews and felt like all this was 30 years ago, as if it was another life. Within the last five years certain important chapters of my life came to an end. One chapter, that at least for now, has come full circle is Syndesmos Chorou (a dance association of choreographers Medi Megas, Maria Koliopoulou, Katerina Skiada, Vasso Giannakopoulou, Jenny Argyriou and later Iris Karayan and Mariela Nestora). In 2016 we had the last interview from stage to page and 2017 was our last production with Syndesmos Chorou, the collective work Rapidly becoming presented at the Athens Festival. Syndesmos Chorou was a chapter that played a very decisive role in our lives; we had common needs and shortcomings that brought us together back then. I find this equally relevant in the present. I realize the importance of this chapter when it came full circle and also as time passes.
I feel grateful for the fact that we met and worked together as a team and for what we learned together (and through the difficulties we faced, I learned a lot). I reflect on all this now and think that in a future collaboration I would have more experience and knowledge of what to do and what not to do and also on how to manage my position as a member of a collective.
In 2017 the Lemurius and Yannis Mandafounis period came to a close also, after many years of collaboration, since 2004. Our last production was when we went to Switzerland where we started Yannis Mandafounis’ dance company (under his name) with which he continues until now. Yiannis, myself, Nikos Dragonas and Olivia Ortega created Twisted Pair. In 2017 the performances of this work were completed after a tour in Brazil, Crete, Patras, a project of total duration 2013- 2017. The Lemurius group and overall my collaboration with Yannis Mandafounis, Nikos Dragonas (who participated in almost all our works) as well as with other remarkable artists with whom we crossed paths (Olia Lydaki, Antonis Palaskas, Anastasis Gouliaris, Tasos Karachalios, Drossos Skotis ) was for me decisive in my way of thinking as a maker and performer.
Upon my return from the last trip, I remember arriving from the airport to the first meeting of Syndesmos Chorou with the director of the Athens Festival (Vangelis Theodoropoulos) on our project Rapidly becoming.
2017 was a difficult year in my personal life, too. In 2018 I collaborated with Antigoni Gyra in Deep Sigh production from the then newly formed ΓΑΒ group, presented at Kinitiras, performing with Nikos Dragonas, Ana Sanchez Colberg, Joe Tornabene, Vicky Adamou, Kostis Daskalakis and Ioanna Kampylafka. With this work, a tour in regional theaters was planned but it was unfortunately cancelled.
And then a pandemic. In 2019-2020 I taught the course “Movement-Dance” at the Athens Art High School. Also in the same year I collaborated with the Public School of Psychiko and the Public Primary School of Agia Paraskevi in the afternoon activities of the parents’ associations, teaching improvisation, dance, movement depending on the ages of the students. I also went back to studying a one-year course on Intercultural education – theoretical and experiential approach at the Kapodistrian University (postgraduate program of lifelong learning) and I am now a student in a programme on special education.

After a decade of successive crises (economic, social, environmental, health) what changes and developments do you notice have happened in the contemporary dance scene in Greece and what do you think is missing?
I have not seen that many performances recently, partly because I have been taking a distance from the dance scene and partly due to the pandemic, yet I can see that the greek contemporary dance scene is very strong and also more recognizable abroad now. The landscape has changed very much, for sure there are more choreographic voices now and it is a diverse polyphonic landscape. I find that the productions have evolved a lot both in the movement vocabulary and on other levels. The performances I see I could see anywhere in Europe. The Greek dance scene has matured a lot.
As for what is missing, there is always the need for the resources and conditions that assist in the flourishing of the dance scene. More funding and exchanges with abroad in order to continue developing what is already happening. You plant a seed and a tree grows. In 2000 I was in Portugal participating in one of Jamie Watton’s choreographies and while discussing with other dancers I remember them telling me that they had never heard of nor met any dancer or choreographer from Greece, back then. A lot has changed since then, for sure.

How could we imagine the landscape of dance in the next ten years?
I think it will continue on an upward trajectory. The body is one step ahead, in the sense of ahead of its time. Sometimes in dance performances you see something you don’t understand and after some time this has already become a new trend.
Perhaps dance itself is already becoming an imperative need. The more difficult things get and the more bleak the situations we live in, the greater the need for creation and expression. Lately, I have a strong desire to comprehend my primary need for dance. To remember where/when I was getting joy through dancing. During the years of my dance career it seems that I lost the joy of dancing, it shifted into a more cerebral process of continuous questioning. Now, my need is to find the love for dance and movement and with a greater respect for the body has returned (maybe the latter comes also comes with aging). I want to pinpoint and acknowledge the moments I have felt joy while dancing in order to fully understand them. To find when is it that I really connect, when it felt good while I was dancing. To find again the state, when you are in a timeless moment, when you become flow and energy, when time and matter disappear. This moves me very deeply in dance, both as a spectator and when I am on stage myself. This union, when boundaries are lost and energy that moves and flows is all there is. That primal feeling of finding that something that unites us all. In that flow, something magical happens, and that’s why we feel time expanding and contracting.
In yoga- under its perspective or the way I understand it- before we are born we are in the one – the cosmic/universal one – and when we are born the boundaries like time etc. come in, in order to understand each other but also work our way through our own path. But the need to come into union again is there, this is what man seeks, this primary need of union, of acceptance, of love. Yet most often we get caught up in our ego and this doesn’t apply exclusively to dancers.
