Could you briefly introduce yourselves?

I am a choreographer and dancer. I started studying graphic design- applied arts and art history before getting involved with dance. In Athens I studied graphic design-applied arts and in France I studied dance, choreography and then went to a physical theatre school. I lived in France for twelve years (2004-16) and now I am based in Athens.

What do you want to question with your current project?

I have two projects I am currently working on. The first is a project that draws material from the myth of Sisyphus. It’s not a re-enactment of the myth, but around the concept of absurdity in a broad sense. The myth functions as a tool for social analysis, focusing on the present and the future. It is about the heroism found in modern man and the absurdity found in present times. It is an anthropocentric work, in the sense that it focuses on individuality despite the crush of morals and values that one might say we are experiencing today. We observe subjectivities standing up and still hoping, even though everything seems black and grim, and here is the allusion to the myth of Sisyphus, which is a martyrdom, a damnation, something that seems to go on and on through the ages with no resolution. Still, my approach is based on an essay by Albert Camus on the myth of Sisyphus, who says that we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Do you want this question to become the audience’s question?

First of all, we have to clarify that this creation is at an early stage, it is not yet finished, so the questions have to be clarified for me first. What I mentioned above is my starting point. My projects are starting from everywhere and nowhere, it’s more of an instinctive process for me.

 

 

How did you start this research?

I start by working on form: on movement or with materials. Mostly in the past I started with space; and I don’t mean the place of presentation of the work (gallery museum or theatre); I mean how I imagine the space. I can’t imagine myself starting with just five bodies and an empty space. That approach doesn’t work for me; I like the interaction of the body even with a beam of light. I work in a painterly way I would say, maybe because of my studies in applied arts. I am a person who believes a lot in form, in shape. I will rarely start working from an idea, I believe that the process of working with form will lead me to the content. I might be in the studio and start with the choice of materials. For example I decide I want to make a project with natural materials, wood, earth and stone. I start to “drip” elements gradually onto the stage – which I approach as a canvas, as an abstract surface – and start to move and interact. In the studio, as solo research, I interact with materials, with objects, with space, with sound, and slowly through what emerges, what begins to form what we call an intra-context or idea begins to appear. The processing happens from this point onwards. In the work I described above, I arrived there after working for a while with ascent and descent as kinetic material. I didn’t know at the time that I was going to be dealing with the myth of Sisyphus, but I had already read Albert Camus’ essay. I also had a desire to work on the absurd, the absurdity between man’s desire and the silence of the world. Sisyphus interested me, I identified, not so much with the notion of martyrdom as with his anarchic personality. For it can be said that Sisyphus and Prometheus were the first conscientious objectors, they went against the ruling class, which were the gods. Both, characters with a passion for life and freedom without considering any cost. Camus says that we should imagine Sisyphus happy because every time he climbs the rock, beyond subject and ego, he transcends even his own condemnation. Every destiny is defeated by contempt. It is as if Sisyphus has reached a level where he does not care. The moment of descent is a moment of victory over the gods; he does not give up, again and again. I like that as an attitude.

Do you think audiences are looking for a message?

Yes, unfortunately audiences are looking for a message. I think dance and theatre still exist under the dictatorship of narrative. This has not yet been completely overcome. I don’t believe in the role of the artist-messenger. I do believe that art is born out of doubts and produces doubts. I am interested in creating emotional and mental vibrations between the performers and the audience, without these being accompanied necessarily by a message. My works appeal more to the unconscious and the senses and less to logic. In this way an experiential identification between audience and creator is achieved. It’s a sharing, these 60-70 minutes, that’s the beauty of it. What I want to say or what I don’t want to say may or may not identify with what the audience wants to say or hear. I’m interested in having that vibration in the audience, that emotional stirring. I don’t believe in art as entertainment. Art is one thing and mass culture is another. Some audiences have associated theatre with something that will lighten your soul and that’s why they come looking for a message. That’s why I think some spectators are not open enough.

What does it mean to produce work?

For me, it is about the wandering and the creative process, knowing of course that it will arrive to something in the end. In recent years I’ve come to like the process more than the result. I don’t separate the two. A work of art can be the creative process itself presented as a work, not necessarily in the form of a product or as something completely predetermined. For me, producing means creative process, interaction with collaborators, with dancers, with a whole world that in the end takes a form of completion, if one can say that something is complete at some point.

Do you have a specific method?

Usually everything starts from the kinetic phase I’m in. In recent years I’ve been interested in the postmodern techno-body, a mechanistic approach to movement. I went through a period when I was interested in lost animality. I like to enter in the studio and experiment with movement by myslef. I always have an instinct for where I want to go kinetically, although I subvert that sometimes. I can’t say I have a specific method. I remain open to influences, knowing where what I’m working on kinetically and choreographically will go, even if it eventually transforms. I went through a period where I only wanted to move in slow motion. All of my performances in 2013-14 were in slow motion. I was reacting to the speed at which things were happening, and I found it very appealing that there is a dance show where dancers are moving in slow motion for 60 minutes. At the time I was interested in slowness and created two pieces (one solo and one group), now I’m interested in something else.

Are you interested in the individual?

I’ve done ten works so far, ten productions, eight or nine of them could even be described as anthropocentric. They are quite autobiographical works, I can’t avoid that, it happens to me. I’m interested in the individual who can function as a subject detached from a whole or within society.

 

 

Do you consider yourself funny?

I hope not. I don’t like the identification of art with an alleviation of our emotional and mental state. I prefer feeling punches in the stomach when watching a show.

Are you interested in text or sound in your work?

 

I have worked with text in various forms. Also in this work as it seems for now. I’ve worked with text recited by performers, with recorded text and with sound words: with the use of words as beats on music. I am interested in fragmented, deconstructed text that rhythmically composes and decomposes itself. Text not as a carrier of meaning but as an element interacting with the bodies.

Is the text improvised?

The texts come from the intimate world of the composer or choreographer, a world connected to the work. With the composer we work with, we isolate words that we think have an essential impact on the work; of conceptual or semantic interest. The viewer may not be able to make the connection directly; it may be an adjective, an exclamation, an adverb that begins to exist with all the other elements. For us it is directly connected, but we do not seek to make it evidently connected for the spectator. For us a word is another movement or sound in the whole, empowering it. I have also worked with texts by others, as in the previous piece in which we used a passage from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. We’re also experimenting with voicing since the composer, George, my younger brother, works a lot with voice. For George, the voice is the ultimate instrument.

 

 

Are you an artist?

100%.

Are you a good artist?

Yes, I’ll say, in all modesty.

Do you like your work?

Yes, I like it, and I especially like the latest works the most. Looking back into past works it’s the last one that I like the most, every time.

Do others like your work?

Some people definitely do and some people definitely don’t. I even find it encouraging that some people don’t like it.

Are you happy with how you do things?

For the three years that I’ve been back in Greece, I would say it takes more effort than in France, but I am ok with that. I do what I can. I would like to be less centralist but that’s like going against my nature. I want everything to go through my control in a way. I can’t imagine how everything can not go through the choreographer since he is the matrix of the work. With the composer I work with, there is a cellular connection in addition to the aesthetic one and I carefully choose the dancers with which I have an aesthetic and artistic identification. For the first time after so many years I will not be creating the set design myself. I will be working with Antonis Volanakis. In the past I couldn’t distinguish between choreography and set design, I couldn’t imagine someone else doing it, but now I’m happy that in this project someone I trust will be creating the set design.

How would you be happy?

Along with the difficulties, I’m happy. But I would be interested in things being more flexible. For example, I would like to have more working time in the studio with the dancers, to be able to support something like that financially. Working together for 4 months, 5 times a week, 6 hours a day. That’s what I would like. Without feeling scattered or the dancers scattering their energy to multiple productions at the same time.

 

 

Do you use the principles of improvisation? Is the movement in your performances improvised or set?

I use improvisation in the process, a lot. As structured improvisation in a significant part of the choreography and in the performance also- the material is not 100% set. There is always a structure with room for improvisation from performance to performance and certain points of absolute composition.

Do you set precise goals? Do you have specific expectations?

There is a goal which is the distillation or the result. But I’m happy with the rehearsal process, I’m as interested in the rehearsals as I am in the performances. One ever present goal is that after forms and ideas have been clarified, to put a stop somewhere, for production purposes and to view the work as complete. I used to want my performances to be my rehearsals, not to be confined within the framework of a product. Yet I’ve been lucky and have worked in some residencies in centres and institutes where we worked untethered. We did pure research and experimentation; and we created our own expectations.

Do you have a daily practice?

I do cross-fit and run in nature. And in the studio I do dance lessons alone.

Are you also performing in your work?

I am. 10/10 projects. I’m always a performer in my projects. I get so much out of it and it overcomes any difficulties that come with it, of being both inside and outside of the work. I love performing and I can’t separate the roles of dancer- choreographer. It comes at a cost, even to the outcome, but I like it, I can endure it and I feel I can more powerfully convey what I want as a choreographer along with the other dancers.

 

 

What do you think about solos?

I love solos both as a dancer and as a maker. My first funded performance in France “L’isolement dans un espace infini” was a 60 minute solo that felt like an eternity. I have done five solos so far ranging from 45 minutes to 3 hours in museums, galleries and theatres. In solos you enter into a conversation with your own being it is very introspective. The moment a choreographer chooses to do a solo, either by themselves or working with one performer, it is a very powerful moment in that phase of their life. It may not be clear why, but it is very powerful. I’ve seen very few solo works that didn’t move me or captivate me, and I love seeing a maker’s world as a spectator.

Do you create scores?

I do some drawings, coded kinetography (kinetography) that’s what they call it in France. I use my own shapes, primarily towards the end of the production when the work is already shaped. An informal order exists but not in the sense of a score.

How do you archive your work?

Videos and each creation’s notebook sorted.

Do you believe in less is more?

Yes, I do, but until proven otherwise. Yes, but I’m not an absolute.

Would you say your work is dance theater?

Not at all. Never. And I wasn’t concerned with it as a form. My work is much more abstract, there is no narrative, no linear development of kinetic or dramaturgical material. My work is timeless, place-less, it has no theatricality.

Are you influenced by other art forms or sciences?

Yes, mostly from different sciences. I have a collaboration with scientists. I was involved in a project that drew its material from mathematics and physics at CERN in France. I am also influenced by anthropology and fine arts, not so much by the performing arts.

Do you use technology in your work?

Yes, with the CERN project in France that I mentioned before. In this project they look for connections between artists and scientists. After an invitation we a entered into a quite high-tech project. A choreographer, a composer and a media artist  worked on the Higgs field, with data given to us by the CERN accelerators. Our task was to translating this data into movement, sound and images respectively. This kind of work is not my style, it was just a commission. I prefer to work with more tangible materials.

 

 

How do you treat the body in your work?

It depends on the project. In some projects I approached the body as an exposed object or as an extension of the objects and materials present in the space. I am interested in the spatial coexistence of the individual elements of the composition: with a beam of light, with a sound, with a sculpture, with another body. The body with an exhibitory rather than a performative character. I am interested in the idea of the performance as an exhibit and the viewer as a visitor, this reversal of roles. When I work in galleries I am interested in this inversion. I would also like to make a performance that would be visited all the time, but in a theatre, not in a museum, so that it would not lose its theatrical character. Sometimes I treat the body more like an exhibit, sometimes more performatively. I certainly don’t approach bodies as carriers of narratives or emotions, I have a more geometric, abstract approach.

Time?

My works don’t have a clear temporality, they oscillate between memory, history, present, future yet always wink at the future. I am interested in this oscillation between past, present and future. I am more interested in the future and many of my works have a futuristic dimension, despite drawing from memory, past and present; they actually trace the future. Moreover I don’t have a good relationship with realism artistically, I have almost renounced it.

Space?

For me, space is principal. Space and set design is the starting point. It has happened to me in the past that I had already created the stage design, the installation was ready and I didn’t know what I was going to do with the work. I might start with 100 pieces of wood and not know what I’m going to do with the bodies. In my work I have more the logic of an installation and less of a performance. The space is directly connected to the body, it’s the matrix.  The set design is not necessarily maximalist, it can be 100 logs or a white black box.

 

 

Lighting?

I don’t give as much of a structural role to the lighting as I do to space or costumes.

Costumes?

Costumes are just as important, whether nude or casual clothes but what you performers wear is important. At one point someone who had seen four or my pieces told me that in my work you never see the performers’ faces. I hadn’t noticed it and I started analyzing it afterwards, psychoanalytically. Human features are only visible in two of my works so far. They were hooded or painted, maybe it helped me to hide the human features to focus only on the body as a subject, or maybe I could more easily make the body an object, because it is mainly our facial features that transmit the human element. I was operating instinctively, perhaps because I like strange worlds, allegorical approaches and mystery. I like enigma as an atmosphere in my work.

Do you favor / create a technique?

I don’t use a technique, I’ve departed from all this and I don’t say that with conceit or arrogance. I think that every choreographer at a certain point in their work departs from known techniques and constructs something of their own. I certainly don’t characterize my work in technical terms, that for example it is a release based work.

Do you teach workshops?

I don’t teach technique, I only teach choreographic composition workshops, focusing on the relationship between contemporary dance and the visual arts. In the workshop I have developed in the last few years, the presentation of the workshop is a promenade between solos. Everyone works on solo performances which coexist. As a spectator you are wandering around the space and seeing all these solos together. I prefer to teach movement to actors rather than teach technique classes.

 

 

When you started your company, were you dissatisfied with the kind of dance that was on offer at the time?

Exactly. There were, of course, people whose work I appreciated. When I started, I did my first choreography when I was 31 years old. An age at which others are in the prime of their careers as dancers in other people’s companies. But I wasn’t interested in that, I had the creative bug already as a student of design even. When I decided that I was going to do something artistic in my life, this is what I imagined; being a maker; I wanted to get my own ideas out there. I wasn’t interested in pursuing a career as a dancer, which I could, especially in France. I wanted to make my own works, it was my need, to share these with some people and with collaborators. I wanted to create my own world, my own universe. That’s why I have a hard time when I work as movement director in theatre, I do it for a living but I have a hard time communicating with the director’s world.

So why does company, why do companies such as yours matter? Why does your work matter?

I don’t know. It matters to me, I don’t know if it matters beyond. I would be very happy if that happened, maybe it does, I don’t know, maybe I’ll find out in twenty years. I’ve always been attracted to artists of dance, music and fine arts whose work has remained as a reference point. For example, there may have been one hundred choreographers, but only twenty of them matter, made a mark on their art that may have been more significant than another. I would like my work to exist as a (small) reference point, in the future. I have been influenced as a choreographer by philosophers, visual artists whose work I consider choreographic also, even in the way they wrote. I like to look outside of the box, and to not to join an order of choreographers. I see myself first as an artist and then as a choreographer. I’ve always wanted my influences to be multifaceted.  I propose to my students to see exhibitions, not dance performances, to musicians I propose seeing contemporary dance instead of going to a concert, and to actors I suggest listening to music. I feel that they are all locked into their art, dancers see dance, actors see theatre. If you want to be a maker it’s important to go to the other arts also. Some names of my influences are Anna Halprin and Yiannis Kounelis, whose work I feel is a choreography in the space. I would like to do a dance show, without dancers, without bodies maybe, yet as a dance show, that would be an aim to go for. I perceive my work more as performances that dance rather than dance performances.

Is your work Greek?

Absolutely not. It is not, it is not identified in terms of nationality, it is universal. There can be something Greek in the universal, of course. I was shaped artistically in another country that is multicultural. Some people who have seen my work and written articles see a French identity in my work, I don’t see that either. I wouldn’t want my work to be identified in terms of ethnicity, but there are definitely French and Greek elements. I studied dance, choreography, mime and physical theatre in France; and they have a great tradition in the latter. When I left Greece I only had the visual arts background, I took dance classes but I didn’t want to enter a professional dance school in Greece. I was then doing acrobatics, circus, street theatre, things like that. It is only when I went to France that I became certain of wanting to go to a professional school and luckily I did at an older age. I think it’s important to enter dance school older than 23 if possible, because you are not as un-formed in you. As an older student, you’ve already shaped things as an artist, as a human being; you’ve filtered, you have experiences and more life. The stronger all of that is, the more defenses you can have to shield yourself against academia. Otherwise your education is more sterile, though of course it depends on the individual. Academia is academia everywhere. Maybe it varies school by school, academy by academy but you always get into a specific framework. The more formed you are as an artist and as an individual, the better you can function in the ills that at least for me, whatever school I was in, manifested. Maybe it’s because of the dissenting element that I have as a person, and with this profile, I had to deal with various issues in all the schools.

Is there a Greek contemporary dance scene that you can identify?

From the little I’ve seen, there is. I don’t watch dance performances, only very selectively, I am not refering to Greek dance companies exclusively, I just prefer to watch exhibitions or concerts; these are my influences. I was aware of a Greek contemporary dance scene when I lived here too, but it is certainly more prominent now. Maybe it was not as formed in the past, I feel that the first big break of the Greek contemporary dance scene was around 2000. It is then that there were suddenly 10-15 productions a year, that more dance was produced. I can discern certain characteristics of a Greek dance work, even though my work is quite far from it. I think there is a strong narrative element and extreme emotionalism. It is as if we are still in romanticism. We talk about a contemporary dance scene in Greece, but I don’t see the contemporary particularly, it is as we are missing a bit the first part of the term. At the same time, I am glad that there are certain Greek choreographers who are not easily identified as such.

Yet, it has made a negative impression on me that- in the last three years that I have been based here- both times that I announced an audition, for which I requested a minimum of two videos of the performer in ensemble or alone, the videos I received, especially the ones of improvisations seemed almost identical. They were so similar that I began to wonder if there is a factory of Greek dancers. This is something that is being cultivated by the schools and now that Greeks are in fashion, a specific mannerism is being cultivated. I received videos of ten different dancers, my collaborators and I would watch them and we would get confused whether we had already seen this video before. In auditioning I wanted to map or check out the available Greek dancers since I knew that some of my productions would be based here. For this year’s production, I observed the same yet I also discovered some diamond dancers. You receive forty videos, twenty-five are very similar, maybe because the dancers are trying to impress the choreographer with their technique. I’m not interested in that at all. Technique is important, but I’m mostly interested in presence, even when they’re still on stage. I look for intelligent bodies that have experience, and even when I auditioned in France I was looking for dancers over 26 years old.

Do you feel you have sometimes failed?

Many times, not only with productions. Ideologically I don’t comply to these terms, neither failure nor success. I can’t understand how one defines success or failure in art. These terms bring to mind finance, accounting or statistical analyses that have nothing to do with art. I define failure as something I did, but wasn’t in the end what I wanted to do. It happened to me many times, in a nice way though. I have no problem with this, I’m used to it.

How has that affected you?

At first it affected me emotionally but it didn’t last long. I’ve never failed at anything serious, it’s little things, little failures. As I said before I reject the term.

What do you wish for?

I would wish for my son and future generations to live in a better world, which I am sure of.

 

What has changed, what are the developments in your work, since our last talk two years ago?

What has undoubtedly changed and transformed things is that, for the past two years, I m called upon to exist and to work in the midst of a pandemic -as all of us- with whatever this implies on a personal, social and artistic level. I didn’t enter a process of producing digital projects, at all, I’m not attracted to that kind of thing. On the contrary, I could say that, driven perhaps by a subconscious reaction to the “disembodiment and distancing” we are experiencing, my last two works are characterised, among other things, by a maximization of physical contact between the dancers. And of course I am not talking in terms of dance and contact dance but more in anthropological terms. I would say that both “Rizoma [Requiem for the non-place]”, which I created at the Archaeological Site of Delphi, and my latest production “(5)4’33”: a continuous (im)mobility”, are two works that came to remind me that embodied experience and human proximity are vital elements for the preservation of our humanity.

After a decade of successive crises (economic, social, environmental, health) what changes and developments do you notice have occurred in the contemporary dance scene in Greece and what do you think is missing?

First of all, what I have noticed with interest and I am particularly pleased about the greater extroversion that the domestic dance scene has acquired. An extroversion that now also governs choreographers, dancers and students of this art. This is all very fruitful and I think it has parallel side-effects, for example, that the audience for contemporary dance works in Greece has now broadened considerably.

Further than that, in the purely artistic part, I would say that the great challenge for a contemporary dance choreographer or a contemporary dance group today is to be what the first constituent of this status defines. To be contemporary… That’s what I feel is still missing a little bit. That is, to see more research, working and rubbing with new forms, a willingness to experiment with kinetic and choreographic language, more dramatic risk-taking and less mannerism and performative academicism. On the other hand, in a broader supportive context of the domestic choreographic and dance scene, many things are certainly missing, the most important of all being the existence of a holistic plan for contemporary cultural politics. And I mention this because that is where it all starts and it is what could take on multifold implications.

How might we imagine the landscape of dance in the next ten years?

I will close my eyes and imagine that there will be a Dance House in Athens, greater programming of dance projects by the supervised bodies and the Municipal Theatres and people with vision in the central cultural management of contemporary creation. Also, with my eyes closed, I would imagine that in terms of state budgets, culture, environment, education and health (not necessarily in that order) would be the top priorities. And then I will open my eyes, and if I perhaps see that this is probably not yet the case, I will stoically bring Arthur Rimbaud back to my mind, who used to say: “The great thing is not to change the world, but to try to change it…”