Would you like to introduce yourself?

I’m Evi Souli, I’m 30 years old, I’m a choreographer of  Stereo Nero together with Katerina Foti. Since 2015 we have created 4 productions, Arsi Thesi, Beyond collapse, Dalga and Vocal passions.

What questions are you asking with the current project?

We are in the research for the piece titled 442 or a Game without score, on football, a theme that connects to popularity continuing on from the previous Dalga. Football is a subject that encapsulates the theme of popularity beyond the actual game of football. I want to deal with the dynamics, the systems and the tradition of football. I’m interested in the massiveness of the sport because it is massive and class-less, globally all the classes exist under this umbrella. Then there is a tradition of each team according to where each one is. For example, why does AEK have these specific characteristics and how does it relate to refugees? Olympiacos from Piraeus the port has certain characteristics that differ from Panathinaikos which is a city center team? And what are the differences between the fans of each team? How does a game that is also romantic, such as the image of children playing in favelas with a cloth ball, arrive to become a kind of football stock market where large sums of money are at stake, and related to dirt and violence? There’s a lot of material in this subject, from the purely physical part that also connects with dance and also the extreme physicality that brings you joy and ecstasy which is another common element with dance.

And why?

This idea started after the performances of Dalga and continues on the research of what is popular, what is it that moves the masses, what interests the popular man. We create site specific works, in the sense that we are interested in presenting our productions in non-theatrical spaces. The football stadium as a site and also visually appealing, exerts a strong attraction in me. Maybe because of my personal tradition of  watching football with my dad, maybe he wished he had a son but he had a daughter. We still consider the idea of presenting this production in a stadium but we often do two versions one site specific and one for a theatre stage.

 

 

Do you want your questions to become audience questions?

I don’t know if what I do raises questions. I see my work more as a magnifying glass of society where people can think and reflect on what they see. I’m interested in showing something through my own perspective, what I understand about the world or about each subject I work on. Things are magnified and take on another dimension when you see them on a theatre stage. It’s like having a spotlight to focus on certain things and everyone sees what you want them to see.

Do you think the audience is looking for a meaning, a message?

I think in general the audience’s need is to go see something that they understand. They’re scared to go into something that’s more driven by their unconscious or by feeling rather than thinking. It’s true for all of us, we activate our minds, we rationalise things more out of fear of giving in to emotion and the unconscious. That’s why I think there’s a distance of people towards the arts that are not so – shall we say – descriptive. Both the visual arts and contemporary dance they are not as massive in appeal as other arts. I straddle dancetheatre, the vocabulary is contemporary dance but I also borrow a lot of elements from theatre -without necessarily having text, speech or prose. I’m on the borderline. It is my concern that spectators understand what they see. I want someone who has never seen contemporary dance before to come and see something that is familiar to them and so I connect with tradition. I want someone to see an image that they have somehow seen before, in a different way. I’m far from the idea of doing dance that only works through the body. There are a lot of choreographers who are mainly interested in the body and what the body can say. I’m not in that category, it seems to me that this world is too insular, the body can tell its own stories but I want the body to serve a certain idea.

What does it mean for you to produce work?

Research which takes a lot of time since I can’t do things quickly. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. The way we have to work and constantly chasing grants, residencies, open calls and we do it all ourselves since there is no one to promote us, no manager. The pace has to be fast if you want to be a full time choreographer; I’d like to be there, at some point in the future. You have to be fast at developing, doing research and generating ideas. I usually think of a big project that runs for a year. I have the pleasure of doing one big project a year and I also have smaller projects where I can be more free and experimental for myself. I want to get to a complete picture, to have the materials settled in certain projects while others are in a constant process. Some are workshops and some are complete performances. The research I do for bibliography, references (whether visual or cinematic), costumes, etc. has many layers because I try to create a world that is whole each time. All of this requires a lot of time and discussion with collaborators. I start with an idea and continue with the production and some already regular collaborators: the musician Jan van de Engel , the set designer Marilena Georgantzi, 2plus1 who do the costumes, the graphic designer Giorgos Zartaloudis, the dancers Christiana Kossiari and Katerina Fotis with whom we created the company together. We talk a lot until what we are doing takes shape, there are many of us, as the core group but we are not a collective. We work together to have an overall view on the project every time.

Are you interested in the individual, the identity of the individual?

I’m interested in how from the individual we go to the collective. So far the work that I identified the most with is Vocal passions , a female monologue. Yet even in this, you didn’t only see the specific persona, I was interested in keeping it more open, more human. A female monologue nevertheless but I wasn’t interested in talking only about women. It was the first time we experimented with the use of text, a poetic text by Yorgos Domianos about a woman who starts off with a hostile and belligerent attitude towards the world and through a process reaches a reconciliation with herself and with others. A polemic female monologue; this is how I would describe this work but I don’t know if others would agree with that. Personally, I was going through a period of coming of age, leaving the child behind and entering into something new. This is how the personal meets the artistic, all the works have something of me or something of the period I’m going through but it is not necessarily evident.

Do you have a particular method?

When I think of a subject, I automatically generate images, not movements. I don’t think of the dance, but of where it will be presented, places, locations, hence this site specific element in our work. Maybe a cinematic way of placing a specific story in a specific place. First comes the images, like photographs, maybe what they wear more than what is being done and how. Then I research the literature, looking for what has been written on the specific topic and then do the corresponding research on films. After books, films and lots of discussions we get to the studio and then start the physical work. Often I arrive at the studio with something I know I want to see already, maybe from something I’ve read or seen, something I really want to do but that never happens! Then we discuss, disagree and then thankfully there is the creative process through which things arrive elsewhere and it is good news that they get there.

In Vocal passions Yorgos Domianos was commissioned to write the text. We had the central idea, I knew the artist and admired the way he wrote. I was interested in the fact that it was a man writing a female monologue. The process of this project was different: in the research we focused mainly on the aesthetic part. I studied the movement of front women such as Madonna in the 80s who brought a revolution with erotica and the voguing scene and the aesthetics with extrovert homosexuality, opening up space in the conservative American society, at the time.

For Dalga I watched many Greek films, Tsiolis, This Night Remains, Koundouros’ Dragon which has a whole scene with Iliopoulos’ zeibekiko that inspired a scene in our play and I read texts by Ilias Petropoulos.

Do you consider yourself funny?

Yes, quite. Taking yourself and what you do too seriously, I don’t want to do that. The driving force in what I do is being fun, humorous, joyful; otherwise I’d be doing another line of work.

Are you interested in text or sound in your work?

Yes, I worked with text in Vocal passions and in Dalga with a shorter text maybe a bit too timidly.

Is the text ever improvisational?

In Dalga, the dancers each wrote a text during the first rehearsal on what Dalga means to them and eventually these texts were used in the piece.

Are you an artist?

I think so, I wouldn’t be ashamed to say this.

 Are you a good artist?

What I do is vitally important to me. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. What do we observe in order to speak in those terms, the outcome? I don’t know if to be good is the aim of every creation. For me,  the creative process is important and I want what I do to be fun. It’s vitally important, I can’t help it. Now I’m out of the studio for several months and I miss it, I feel like I’m not creative. Yes, I do research but I could do research even if I was writing my thesis while in the studio I feel different. For me the work stops at the dress rehearsal, performances are about the audience and the performers, that’s why I never edit. After the premiere the creation has left me. I remember the film director Panagiotopoulos saying- “I want to go to the studio every day and do my work” when I don’t have that I feel like I’m unemployed.

Do you like your job?

Yes, I like my job.

Do other people like your work?

Other people like it, otherwise I would stop doing it, I don’t do it just for myself. In this field there is ambition and you can’t be an artist without a certain amount of extroversion. Otherwise we would only create at home or only for friends instead of sharing the work with a wide audience.

Are you happy with the way you do things?

Yes, I’m very happy because I watch the evolution through time, how fermentation happens and the momentum that exists for our ideas to materialise. It’s magical in the end, you work a lot, you get to know people, you collaborate and it all clicks together to become a project every time. Our group has been around for five years. We’ve taken some first steps and I’m very excited about what I feel is coming. I think we are at our best, I feel there is recognition, acceptance, mutual feedback and creative exchange.

 

 

Do you teach seminars?

I teach ballet and I learn a lot from teaching, apart from making a living, it is a constant point of reference for me.  There’s a nice contrast, while in choreography I’m in a creative limbo, floating between different ideas and thoughts (and maybe even getting creatively stressed), in teaching the fact that ballet is something very specific and technical helps me balance.

Do you use the principles of improvisation?

I work with specific instructions (tasks). I usually transmit an image and guide the performers to create it, working on words, visual forms and rhythms. This process is very open and connected to each project. In Dalga one task was on a specific greek popular song- a different one for each dancer to improvise on. Another task was to write down what Dalga is for each one and to watch a specific film scene and imitate it. We start working almost descriptively, then edit and deconstruct the materials and then comes composition. It is a process of selection and critique, you subtract until that material becomes what needs to be to create something.

Do you use improvisation on stage?

It’s absolutely set materials in the show, I’m not a big fan of improvisation.

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

I’m definitely interested in what I am communicating and passing it to the spectators, so that it’s not just for us who made it. What is very important to me, both as a creator and as a viewer is emotion. I’m interested in the viewer being moved, but I don’t want to force this. I’m not interested in the viewer understanding something but that the spectators leaves having felt something. That’s what I’m looking for too; similarly to looking for the greatest love… you go to a performance because you want to be moved.

Do you have a daily practice?

Ballet ballet ballet ballet. Only. I’m a little obsessed with ballet technique. I’m fascinated and intoxicated by the fact that you have to get better every time; to go a little higher; it’s a little bit like utopia. Maybe you’ll never arrive to flawlessness, to perfection, but every time you go into class to do one more pirouette, to twist your en dehors a little more, to get a little taller; to me that’s very magical. Ballet treats the body as if it’s not perishable, as if it’s a statue of classical era, and that contrasts with what I do in choreography. I admire the non-perishability and perfection of the ballet body, but in choreography I don’t want to see that, I want to see the dirt, the human aspect because I’m interested in the familiar. I find that there is no point in the perfect body or perfect beauty because it is not familiar. We are not perfect, we don’t live in a perfect world, the utopic or magic element in art must start from something familiar, which is the human being with its passions and all other aspects.

Have you done a solo?

I haven’t done a solo and I don’t dance either. I want to be in complete control of things, and it seems impossible to me to be both “in” as a dancer and “out” as a choreographer at the same time.  I feel that from “outside” some things I might be missing already. I wouldn’t dance for someone else either; certainly not. Maybe for myself, something small, for physical  joy. I started out with the intention of becoming a dancer but it seems too athletic, gymnastic, ultimately it didn’t suit me.

Do you create scores?

No.

How do you archive your work?

Archive, yes. I’m really bad at all this, but it eventually gets done because luckily I have Katerina who is more organised about these things.

Do you believe in the saying “less is more” less is more?

As I grow older,  I’m starting to believe this, yes. Younger, I was much of a maximalist while now I take away more in order to keep only the essence. Maybe this comes with maturity, anyway.

Would you say your work is dance theatre?

I try to borrow tools from the other arts. I feel closer to theatre in the sense that the idea is communicated clearly. I’m not that interested in the artform of theatre as in communicating an idea in any way that I can. Last year,  when we worked with text, we sat down and read at the table and worked dramaturgically, similar to theatre rehearsals. It was the first time that we worked with text and the truth is that I am not sure if this is a good fit for me. No, I can’t put the label of dancetheatre on our work. I think that what we do is neither dance for dance, nor theatre .

Are you influenced by other art forms or disciplines?

Yes, differently for each project yet there are certain constants that I refer to often, one example is the work of cinema director Roy Anderson. What I would like to do is physical cinema whether it means making a film or a performance. Physical cinema, I feel that Roy Anderson does that. In addition, I could agree with choreographer Konstantinos Michos who says that the most important Greek choreographer is the well known film maker Theodoros Angelopoulos. I also like Aki Kaurismaki and I love Greek cinema (Tornes, Damianos, Papatakis, Tsiolis, Vakalopoulos- Panagiotopoulos, too). I keep returning to Greek cinema because it feels familiar. These filmmakers showed me another view of Greece, of Greekness, of laicism, secularity or popularity. I arrived to what I do from cinema despite  coming from a dance background. When I started I thought I wanted to do something like what Dimitris Papaioannou does (like others have a Bowie poster in their room, I had him) and I owe a lot of gratitude to film maker Triantafyllidis because I understood underground, passion, popularity, perishability meant; what is the new Greece, what is the new Athens, where there is historical continuity and what is contemporary here.

 

 

How do you deal with the body in your work?

The body needs to have clear intention, to be tuned to the idea emotionally. The idea needs to be passed into the body, to be experienced in order to communicate the intention and reach the audience, just like in a role. I’m not so much concerned with correcting technical or coordination details- “clean” movement and all that is necessary of course-but I am more interested in performers being attuned as beings with what they are doing. More like actors than dancers, simply using their bodies as their medium instead of words. That changes the quality of the work coming whole into what they’re doing and then I feel that something is happening.

Some questions about the elements of a performance:

Time?

Regarding duration, 45 minutes. Regarding the concept of time within the performance, I am interested in contrasts between very fast and very slow, useing the medium speed mainly for transitions; performers seem a little bit like caricatures.

Space?

I treat space in a cinematic way, which is why we do site specific work.

Lighting?

Collaborating with lighting designers  serves the overall look of the piece, each time. Some shows might be brighter or darker according to the dramaturgy.

Set?

Props, but I would like to work with scenery. We go to places that already have an identity of their own and we intervene by adding elements so that it looks like they were already there. When we’re in the theatre we bring something from the outside space into the stage, creating the world for the piece. If one has money to build an entire set that resonates with the idea, it would be a happy coincidence.

Costumes?

I research with each collaborator individually and then bring them all together because they can’t be different aesthetics. We are many collaborators, each with their own references and aesthetics and my role is to bring together what each one creates. On the one hand feeling that there is freedom in the creative part, on the other hand to coordinate all this together and also to be practical. In the last project a costume from 2plus1 had a reference to the Bauhaus movement- it was a difficult process that this dress became part of Katerina that wore it. At first it was like a foreign body, the costume changed the whole piece and it is much harder to integrate elements when you don’t have them from the beginning in order to work with them.

Do you feel that sometimes you’ve failed?

I don’t see it as a failure. One project that had the most intense criticism was our second piece Beyond collapse. Working with Pavlos Pavlidis-musician from Xilina Spathia band-who composed music for a dance performance for the first time, I think I overestimated my capacity. I felt that I set out to do something bigger than I could and really felt the responsibility of the maker in the project. This piece travelled to a festival in Denmark, in a shorter version, from 5 dancers and 45 minutes duration, to 3 dancers and 30 minutes duration. For this shorter version we worked on a different basis, more minimal and it was then that I found the essence of this work.

How did that influence you?

It’s a piece that I love very much, the failure lies in the fact that it didn’t get through to the audience as much as I thought it would, I don’t know why.

What do you wish for?

A wish? For contemporary dance to become more extroverted, to gain the momentum and value that I believe it has, and for dance to stop being the “poor relative” of the arts.

 

 

Is your work, your work Greek?

I think it has a part of Greekness, yes. It’s a big question whether what I do can be both international and Greek. It certainly doesn’t concern me that it is only Greek. In the next project on football, we research mainly English football, the history and tradition that the English have in it.

Is there a Greek dance scene? Can you identify its characteristics?

I don’t know if there is a scene. What I understand is that because we are a very small field and many people have worked with each other, everyone takes something from each other and there are some common elements. I’m thinking of Dimitris Papaioannou and then Christos Papadopoulos and Euripides Laskaridis who danced with him, they bring something of him into their work. Maybe there are small groups of people who have something in common or some affinities. I don’t think there is a Greek contemporary dance scene, I don’t know if there is some common characteristic.  I think there are groups like Patricia Apergi who have travelled quite a bit with their work and have made known what is happening here. Ιf we go abroad, me, you and Patricia, I don’t think one can draw any conclusion about what is happening in the dance scene in Greece. Different perspectives and themes, you are more interested in science, others are more conceptual, others are more physical-like Rootless Root and Patricia Apergi who, although both have strong physicality in their work, are very different. It’s not like in Portugal where you see that there is a specific dance scene. I think things start with one, like when Pina Bausch created dancetheatre and then others followed. Here maybe the 80s-90s generation, Oktana and Omada Edafous companies gave an impetus to build a scene. At that time they had more in common, then grants, extroversion and the overall different period socially, made it perhaps easier to develop a scene. Now everyone is trying on their own. There is no collaboration between choreographers, there are some efforts but they are isolated. We don’t really sit at the table to talk. Do we have some common characteristics, do we have a common policy to mobilize the extroversion of Greek dance on our own? All the years I’ve been in Athens this effort of opening the discussion of how Greek contemporary dance can travel further together happens amongst colleagues or through institutions and festivals. If we travelled more, maybe it would be a stimulus to sit down together at a table to discuss this, each with his or her own identity, without absorbing each other in. I find that a scene is formed through collaborations, when the artists come together. I also see the works selected at Aerowaves. Each year, completely different works from Greece go to this festival, for example Papadopoulos, Mavragani- even the programmers can’t see similarities. This is of course a good thing, it’s not only negative as in the example of Greek weird wave cinema, when all the films started to look alike – as if everyone became Lanthimos or wanted to become Efthymis Filippou or Filippou style script; they spoke in a certain way, they had a certain lighting that maybe created a current and festivals started to buy these films. Greek cinema became something exotic that followed the style of Lanthimos, but I don’t know how much freedom each artist had in this. In dance we don’t all want to become Papaioannou and I think that’s a good thing.

And why does your company or companies like yours matter?

I didn’t start out to change the Greek dance scene, I love this space very much and I didn’t want to change anything. When I started I wanted to belong to the Greek choreographers, I thought this a nice field, I would like to belong to it. What’s different about my group is that it moves away from the “body for the body” type of work, that’s the difference. I see such a trend of dance here along with a European trend of conceptual art in bloom. I wish an end will come, I am an opponent of conceptual art. I want to see the effort, I may define my work as not a “body for the body” type but I am interested in seeing the physical effort. I don’t want to see a piece that has 5 pages of manifesto attached to it but then on stage someone moves their fingers for 50 minutes, I am not interested. Society has a lot of problems and needs to be moved, spectators need to take something with them when they watch a dance performance. I’d rather sit and read a philosophical text at home than see a show that is too experimental or exploratory, I think these are better left in the studio. I speak in this absolute manner but it seems so self-referential to me that someone is doing something on stage just for themselves, it is like masturbating instead of making love. And making love I think is a more revolutionary act.