What a wonderful world, Olga Markari. Photo © Pavlos Vrionides

review, article

Cyprus Choreography Platform 2023

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10 min

What a wonderful world, Olga Markari. Photo © Pavlos Vrionides

Stella Mastorosteriou

12 December 2023

On the background to and the performances in the 23rd edition of the Cyprus Choreography Platform

Cyprus Choreography Platform is an annual choreographic institution established by the Department of Modern and Contemporary Culture of the Deputy Ministry of Culture that has developed in the last couple of decades into the island’s most important celebration of local contemporary dance. It aspires to create opportunities for Cypriot and Cyprus-based choreographers to experiment with new forms of expression and to create new short projects, as well as to promote the works in international festivals and events.

Organised for the first time in 2001 at the Falcon School Theatre in Nicosia under the title ‘Dance Encounters’, since 2002 it has been co-produced with Rialto Theatre in Limassol. Over time, the Platform was evolved and enhanced with parallel events, introduced in 2007, also establishing a collaboration with Limassol Municipality. In 2008, the 1st Dance Throughout the Year edition was organised by Dance House Lemesos, which continues to host this annual event, enriching the programme with talks and educational events, giving voice to the artistic community to express their needs, worries and aspirations. In 2019, an artists’ mentoring programme was initiated for the preparatory stages of the choreographies and more recently the Upcoming Choreographer’s Award was introduced.

Limassol is a city of contradictions, reflecting the turbulent history of the island of Cyprus. Situated on the south coast of Cyprus, it is the second largest city after the capital Nicosia. The contemporary face of the city is an eclectic mix of elements of its long history: the old town and the medieval castle juxtapose the urban cityscape of skyscrapers, built in recent years as part of the city’s extroversion and development (although locals seem sceptical about it). The population is also a mix of ethnicities and cultures, formed through centuries of migration flows due to the island’s focal position between the east and the west, as well as due to said development and economic growth. Amongst all these qualities, Limassol has also developed into the hub for contemporary dance in Cyprus, hosting all the important dance festivals and institutions.

The relatively small and close Cypriot dance community gathered from the Greek part of the island for the 23rd edition of the CCP, 10-12 November 2023, featuring twelve new works, from two categories: seven by more seasoned choreographers (that is, with more than five creations to their name) and five works in the category of ‘new choreographers’, alongside parallel events of talks and videodance screenings.

Bubble Consumer, Ioannis Economides. Photo © Pavlos Vrionides

New Choreographers

The New Choreographers section supports young and upcoming choreographers to creating 15-minute works. This year it featured five pieces dealing with themes of western contemporary culture and the search for personal identity, mentored by creator, researcher and educator Christos Polymenakos.

In Match Point, Melina Ioannidou employs her own background as a professional tennis player, blending the kinesiology and aesthetics of the sport with virtual gaming references and humour into a high-energy choreography. The four performers exert female power, aggression and self-indulgence, rendering the world of competitive sports into a metaphor of an environment that allows women to express intense feelings of rage, joy and disappointment.

Video game and tech references are also in focus in What a perfect world by Olga Markari – who received this year’s New Choreographers award – a solo of a man navigating between virtual and physical reality. Daneil Agudo Gallardo’s fluid physicality and acrobatic movement interacts with the intensity and speed of the virtual world on the background screening, creating fragmented stories and encounters, contradicting the illusion of connection we seek for in our screens and devices with a sense of isolation and loneliness.

Bubble Consumer by Ioannis Economides deals with the artificial need for overconsumption, a duet in an appealing scenography of golden shopping bags all over the stage, that reproduces the gendered stereotypes around consumer culture.

The Burden, Sotirios Panagoulias. Photo © Pavlos Vrionides

In The Burden, Sotirios Panagoulias (CYP/SCT) uses a female historical costume reminiscent of the 16th century as a metaphor for societal burdens that can lead an individual to depression. Playing off his androgynous figure and deadpan face, he comically embodies the character of a damsel in distress, later undressing into a clumsy club dancer.

Annie Khoury, Coming of. Photo © Pavlos Vrionides

Coming of by Annie Khoury is a playful piece that opened up a participatory viewing experience. Starting behind the curtain, we can hear sounds of running, panting and rattling of keys, and a soft female voice reciting a series of random questions and inviting the audience up on stage in a caring, inclusive way. Behind the curtain that remains closed, we partake in a game of throw and catch. A series of random scores and random items onstage – an onion, a ladder, a pair of headphones – are at moments connected through the text that Khoury keeps on reciting into the mic, random recollections of memories and everyday moments. There is a sense of spontaneous joy throughout the piece that ends off in the audience joining her invitation to a pelvic dance.

Established choreographers

This section features new 20-minute creations by more seasoned choreographers. This year, seven pieces were created by Cypriot artists from different generations. The themes they engage with reveal concerns around the instability of the modern world, personal and collective trauma and the human need to rely on each other – which feel very relevant to the turbulent times we live in. Though heavy, I felt that the themes were dealt with a general sense of hopefulness, sensitivity and a prompt for self-compassion.

The opening piece, Chameleon by Elena Christodoulidou (Amfidromo Dancetheater), is a solo on the condition of adaptability in an ever-changing environment that pushes a body to its limits, skilfully performed by Maria Masonou. She appears through the darkness, dressed in a patterned unitard, accompanied by a screening of abstract natural compositions. Elastic limbs, an undulating spine and sharp birdlike accents in the torso and neck, her movement evokes references from the animal kingdom, also reflected in the soundscape of insect-buzzing and bird-chirping. The whole composition intensifies as her body gets distorted in yoga-inspired inversions, and the audiovisual environment becomes a piercing vortex that consumes the body. The references to the natural world transition to sci-fi ones as the body gets multiplied through the screening, but limps and stutters in her struggle to readapt and rebalance herself.

Dead Mouse, Milena Ugren Koulas. Photo © Pavlos Vrionides

In Dead Mouse, Milena Ugren Koulas (Stylish Junkies) (CYP/SRB) explores liminality and the ways we react to fight-or-flight situations. Embarking from the impulsive physical reaction of ‘playing dead’ in order to survive, the piece questions if survival is enough and illuminates the power of love and deep human connection. In a powerful juxtaposition, the muscular, half-naked bodies of dancers Apollo Anastasiades and Christopher Mills play with their own masculinity, conveying vulnerability in their attempt to communicate in inarticulate ways, creating moments of delicate balance as they catch and carry each other in bizarre embraces. Koulas’ distinct choreographic idiom creates an almost grotesque physicality, through convulsive rhythmicality and embodied humour.

A dance for the end of the world, Diamanto Hadjizacharia. Photo © Pavlos Vrionides

A dance for the end of the world by Diamanto Hadjizacharia transfers us to an underground club. The stage is revealed bare and vast, opening up the raw backstage as scenography. The lighting design by Panayiotis Manousis artfully supports the concept, altering the perceived dimensions of the space throughout the piece and giving off an underground aesthetic. Three young women in clubbing outfits and sunglasses – dancers Areti Chourdaki, Elina Karacosta and Julia Charalambidou – perform club dancing motives set in patterns, to loud techno music. Sometimes robotic, sometimes freer, always bouncing left to right, the choreography builds up in complexity and intensity to a finale of physical exhaustion. As ‘the lights in the club turn on’ at the end of the night, they are left only with one another.

A similarly bare stage is also the backdrop for Panos Malactos’ We All Need Therapy. The piece comes with a trigger warning for strobing lights and loud music, but also for sensitive content. Indeed, in a personal, narrational way Malactos addresses issues of violence, sexual assault, panic attacks and PTSD, in a performance that feels raw and unmediated. Accompanied by the live music by Die Arkitekt, he dances an explosive, almost violent dance, which leaves him depleted, making me wonder whether he is really having a panic attack, as he takes real time to recover on stage. Thankfully, the ending is more light-hearted as musician Ody Icons joins him on stage for a sung ode to serotonin.

Mon Otage, Panayiotis Tofi. Photo © Pavlos Vrionides

Mon Otage by Panayiotis Tofi also feels like a personal, autobiographical narration and reveals vulnerability in a more quiet, soft way. Behind the closed curtain a male voice sings a French song. The curtain opens to Tofi lying on the floor in a distorted position, narrating a story about a boy growing up lonely, creating imaginary friends. A mixture of physical theatre and pantomime, the piece is an intimate but somewhat distant portrayal of a male psyche, working through difficult childhood memories in search of sexual identity, companionship and love.

Alexandra Waierstall’s (CYP/GER) Embodied Practice by Twelve is the sole large group piece of the programme. ‘A work about the meeting of 9 dancers and 3 lighting bodies’, it is a series of choreographic scores, creating abstract images of bodily encounters. The bodies are naked, or half-naked, or half-dressed, dimly lit by the three vertical fluorine lamps. There are moments of slow, contemplative movement, moments of tuning together into a collective bounce, moments where individuality is highlighted through personal movement qualities. A focal scene of bodies rolling on the floor, as in a slow treadmill, allows for gratifying observation of details: the way some hair falls, a palm that reaches for the floor, a shoulder blade brought out by the light.

Embodied Practice by Twelve, Alexandra Waierstall, Photo © Pavlos Vrionides

The programme resumes with a duet by Harry Koushos (CYP/GRC) performed alongside dancer Evangelia Randou. Instructions in Italics is set to oriental music with surtitles of stage actions and choreographic instructions that never actually happen onstage. The two performers enter the stage alternately, walking and pausing, and performing gestures and motifs subtly reminiscent of oriental dancing. Relaxed arms, circular pelvic motion and shoulder accents build up through repetition and variation into a trancelike dance. A series of impossible stage instructions give an indefinite but humorous ending to the piece – and the Platform.

The 23rd Cyprus Choreography Platform was a mosaic of distinct voices and varied choreographic approaches, bringing out relatable issues and concerns, with a penchant for more narrational forms. To get an overall thematic feel, imagine compiling their titles into a semblance of a sentence: coming of, in a perfect world full of burden, a world that is ending where we are all hostages and bubble consumers in need of therapy, do we become chameleons or dead mice? ●

Limassol, Cyprus

Cyprus Choreography Platform 2023

New Choreographers

Established choreographers

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