Dressed in the colours of ice and silver, Eftychia Stefanou rests on the white floor as if suspended inside an unknown universe intersected by a thin stream of light. She stands, her gestures and steps staying close to her body, like incomplete but always precise movements rehearsing the future. Occasional familiar gestures – a greeting wave, arms that swim or dive – emerge like memories of a forgotten life on earth. She tests the gravity on her planet by jumping and cutting the space vertically, the sound of every landing turning into a steady metronome. Every now and then she collapses and the movement lingers in her head, wobbling like a toy with a run-down battery.
Speaking through a microphone, she proposes the central theme of the work around the exploration of the nature of repetition: is it ever possible to repeat a gesture or word in exactly the same way? The spoken words get recorded and blend into the soundscape by Yannis Tsirikoglou, live voice and its reproduction swirling in time. Lying on the floor, Stefanou returns to where she started, though this time in darkness; the ray of light shines even brighter, like the trail of a comet. Is the revisiting of the beginning an ‘end’ or an ‘and’ (to echo her own wordplay)? A pause or an accumulation? This hermetic planet gradually dilates and cracks under the crackling and effervescent sounds of an exploding candy that melts in her mouth.
With Blue Beyond, Greek choreographer Eleonora Siarava continues her exploration of time by building an atmospheric world of superimposed temporalities. Sounds, gestures and blue hues require our continuous attention as they overlap, preparing an end that never comes. Providing a new context for every iteration, their deliberate precision proves the impossibility of exact repetition. With its immersive elaboration of cyclicality and its distinct formalism, Siarava’s work moulds an introverted emotional landscape that straddles minimal futurism and abstract nostalgia.
