Ioannis Mandafounis enters my laptop screen with his jaunty athletic manner, coming from a studio rehearsal with Rambert School in London (Join will be presented in Sadler’s Wells Theatre this spring, but the show tours in other cities as well, involving local dance students each time). He wears his hair in a bun, smiles wholeheartedly and puts his earphones just so we give this conversation a more private tone. I have known him for many years, from when he was still a dancer with The Forsythe Company, but also followed him when he ventured into developing his choreographic style and creating his own pieces. Now, as the artistic director of Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company since 2023, he is expected to take his explorations a step further, leading the company into new territories. Without a doubt, his signature style, a highly energetic yet liberating response to choreography, is aimed at restoring agency to dancers, allowing their performativity to expand beyond codes, established by dance training.
article
Ioannis Mandafounis: Taking improvisation centre stage
Read
5 min
Mandafounis is straightforward when asked about his vision for the DFDC, as it was clear for him that he would pursue ‘to lead a company, within an institutionalised environment, to work with improvisational tools.’ If improvisation is a mode to explore interagency and relational awareness, then his goal is to work with open and flexible formats which could bring new possibilities for creativity and expression. ‘I wanted to follow that path with the company, given that its name has been built upon a cutting-edge approach throughout the years, starting from William Forsythe.’ He has a sense of responsibility in terms of what the company has achieved so far, therefore in order to maintain its legacy he invites choreographers to work on the same principle: improvisation. In fact, the company has finished the first cycle of rehearsals with Forsythe and Thomas Hauert, who are creating two new pieces that will premiere in a double bill this May. Also, given the company’s extensive tour in theatres and festivals, the challenge is to take improvisation beyond the boundaries of a secluded studio process, in which dancers are asked to generate material, into a performative action which is shared publicly.
It is about how we give ourselves, our bodies and our dancing to the audience
Here, Mandafounis is after a very specific quality in the dancers’ performativity: the outward theatricality of directly addressing the audience, an aspect he considers contemporary dancers to have lost (unlike actors – he refers to his 2018 project about Mayakovsky with the National Theatre of Greece – who always have their audience in mind while performing on stage). This is not about solely breaking the proscenium arch or interacting with audience members as experienced in some of the company’s shows, he clarifies, ‘it is about how we give ourselves, our bodies and our dancing to the audience.’ The aspect of ‘projecting clearly to the audience’ could be also seen as a way of re-establishing a primary trope in dancing: a rigorous mode of making yourself available for instantaneous stage decisions while remaining focused on reaching out (usually seen in ballet dancers), thus, communicating something via your bodily presence. Communication in that sense is an ‘amalgam of the dancer’s personality – or maybe individual agency – with this process.’ For proof of that take Scarbo, a collaborative project Mandafounis did as an independent choreographer in 2021, for which performer Manon Parent won the Danza&Danza prize for interpretation.
There has already been much debate about the ‘neutral gaze’ in contemporary dance, but I read in Mandafounis’s words a genuine concern to bring back a relational aspect to the dancing. This is usually confined to notions of intimacy and the particular spatial conditions in which the performance is taking place – but what would it mean to take relationality to another scale, one that allows people in larger theatres to connect with the performers as if they were sharing an intimate space? For space need not be treated merely as a background or a container for the dancing; indeed, in Mandafounis’s new project A Land Within, space is considered an element to actively engage with in order to bring forward its architectural, historical and performative specificities. The show is conceived as a walk-through, with several stations for the visitor to explore during the first part, before being actually seated to watch the second part of the performance. Again, the idea of a participatory spectatorship is implied, with the two-part show working around concepts of conflict and forgiveness. Mandafounis is particularly interested in the pragmatics of the space, for example working in the historical Bauhaus building of Festspielhaus Hellerau, which is the birthplace of the expressionist modern dance but its history could also reveal situations of conflict and resolution.
Talking about reconciliation, Mandafounis takes the opportunity to discuss yet another important issue before we hang up. As the project with Rambert School brings together students with professionals, he notes how beautiful it is to witness these different phases of a dancer’s life on stage, and ‘instead of seeing it as a clash or a gap’, to showcase the plurality of nuances and movement expressions. Exactly this broad spectrum of potentialities is celebrated on stage in Join, especially on the third part of the show when all performers unite in a party mood. Thus, it honours the individual within the group, while searching for that balance between the two; most importantly though, it allows one’s fragility to step in, a fragility that might be often neglected in a professional dancer’s life. It’s inspiring to hear Mandafounis, as director of a company, saying, ‘we are not interested in how good you are at doing something, but how focused you are in wanting to do it.’ ●
22–23.03.25 Join. Sadler’s Wells East, London, as part of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
