Iro Vasalou, Becoming with Animal. Photo © Andreas Simopoulos

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New Choreographers Festival Athens

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Iro Vasalou, Becoming with Animal. Photo © Andreas Simopoulos
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In the heart of the economic crisis in Greece, in 2013, when everyone marvelled at the cultural-creative inventiveness in the face of harshening of sociopolitical conditions, Stegi-Onassis Foundation took the initiative to support young choreographers and create a showcase which would function as a springboard for upcoming and promising dance creators. Seven years later, the initial questions around the productivity of the ‘young’ and the future of the Greek dance scene remain valid – given that for years subsidies or any kind of financial support from the state were cut, leading to what for many seemed, paradoxically, a ‘proliferation of ideas’. Dancers/choreographers who were exposed to the dead-end of economic stagnation, found in this institutional framework a way to preserve hope and experiment with their own craft.

The choreographers who are selected to participate in this densely organised two-day festival don’t fit easily distinguishable criteria. Some are experienced dancers who attempt to choreograph for the first time. Others, already wearing the choreographer’s hat, search for ways to become more institutionally recognised: the Festival often works as an opening to further visibility, working opportunities and financial support. Despite the vagueness of ‘young’ or ‘upcoming’ and any limitations applied to the label ‘Greek’, the Festival has retained the ‘casualness’ of an open studio presentation, where the dance community gathers and explores or maybe seeks to question trends, find new references, accustom itself to the widening spectrum of choreography and dance. However, it is evident that sometimes in the process of ‘talent scouting’, the battle between institutions to name the ‘next big thing’ in the art business works against the very core idea behind the processual dissemination of practices that need time to flourish and evolve properly.

For this seventh edition, an open call for dance-writers was held, taking the whole initiative a step further; how do we talk about dance and how writing about/with dance can help acquaint ourselves with the particularities of the local scene and the ever-expanding horizon of dance experimentation. The writing programme was led by our Athens-based Springback contributors Anastasio Koukoutas and Betina Panagiotara, and by editor Sanjoy Roy; below are their reviews of five selected works from the eight presented at the New Choreographers Festival.

Anastasio Koukoutas


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Katerina Andreou: Zeppelin Bend. Photo © Andreas Simopoulos
Katerina Andreou: Zeppelin Bend. Photo © Andreas Simopoulos

Katerina Andreou: Zeppelin Bend

Herself as Another

Claiming her own uncompromising stage vocabulary, Katerina Andreou ventures to her first take on a dance duet. Zeppelin Bend is imbued with ambiguity referring to both space – a playground or maybe a fitness bootcamp – and the very relationship between two female performers. Dressed in identical outfits – as if teammates in a sports squad – the two play constantly with the indistinct limits that lie between them; each of them seems in dialogue with the other half of herself. However, despite their seeming resemblance, this game of replication is not aimed at identifying/simulating one with the other – thus, making us perceive them as one – but rather at a comparison that complexifies their simultaneous actions.

In this type of coexistence, emphasised either through wrestling grips of the Greco-Roman style or by means of jumpstyle movement that draws from techno culture, the ‘competitive other’ is not just an excuse to duplicate actions, but to explore potential limits of freedom in shared body practices and techniques (sport, dance and so on). Movement material isn’t consistent; on the contrary, like the platforms or islets on stage, movement variations underline spatial and temporal inconsistencies as the foundation for new ways of inhabiting the stage. Suspension from the ropes, or head-banging to music of Pink Floyd serve as a reminder of the obsessive ways in which children occupy themselves with play, their unanticipated pleasure in and attachment to actions to which they give themselves with every fibre of their beings. While dance craft in Zeppelin Bend might at times seem ‘unnatural’ – the sing-song of birds, or the layer of smoke that shrouds the entire stage at some point heightens further this impression – this is only because it indicates an ‘outside’ or ‘elsewhere’, countering our experience of the stage with an unfamiliar lightness. Such versatility doesn’t only encompass the relationship between the two performers but also gives a differing meaning to it, constantly stepping beyond the horizon of the expected.

Anastasio Koukoutas


Anastasis Valsamaki, DisJoint. Photo © Andreas Simopoulos
Anastasia Valsamaki, DisJoint. Photo © Andreas Simopoulos

Anastasia Valsamaki: DisJoint

Register the elements: a piano fugue resounding around an empty stage, its perimeters demarcated by floor-level strip lights; the back one, lit. For Anastasia Valsamaki’s DisJoint is a piece that plays with elements: sounds, light, space, colours. And, of course, the dancers – Gavriela Antonopoulou, Nefeli Asteriou and Tasos Karachandis – with their steppy phrases, made of folds, hinges, lunges, tilts and quivers. Everything is as articulated as that fugue.

The piece unfolds as a sequence of separate episodes, each with its own lighting and colour – the strip lights flush from warm orange to midnight blue – and its own sound, whether the crackling of a distance recording (a scratchy, gappy repeat of that first fugue), or the dry grate of pebbles. In each episode, implicit cues between the dancers spark flurries of action and interaction. After a while, you notice that while the poetics change – here, it’s all about fleetness; there, it’s about touch and weight; elsewhere, it’s about interweaving – many of the same elements recur, like words used in different sentences.

Like several pieces on the programme, DisJoint feels unfinished, still in its creation rather than its refining phase. But it holds much promise: it’s fascinating to watch, always clean, considered and – I’ll say it again – articulate.

Sanjoy Roy


Iro Vasalou: Becoming with Animal

Riveting and atmospheric, the work Becoming with Animal seems to have sprung from the writings of Haruki Murakami. From the very start, it constructs a state of dark realism where the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, the human and the bestial, are blurred. Choreographer Iro Vasalou is a compelling performer in this solo piece that brings a woman’s transformation into an animal to the stage, tracing its various phases. But is it a transformation? Or is it a dive into existing animal instincts? Alone, set inside a circle of spectators, she manages to create an agonising atmosphere that begins with a ritual act, moves on to her taking the place of becoming a hunter, inviting audience members to take part in her experiment, and ends with her returning to the here and now, as if she has just extricated herself from ecstasy, empowered and transformed.

It is a powerful solo in which the performer experiments with her body in an exploration of identities that cast doubt on social norms. Its bestial energy, repetitive nature and physically exhausting demands highlight not only the gruelling process that is transformation, but also the difficulties that every change entails.

Betina Panagiotara


Dafin Antoniadou, Alexandros Vardaxoglou: Vanishing Point. Photo © Andreas Simopoulos
Dafin Antoniadou, Alexandros Vardaxoglou: Vanishing Point. Photo © Andreas Simopoulos

Dafin Antoniadou & Alexandros Vardaxoglou: Vanishing Point

Point of No Return

Two bodies in a suffocating embrace. The blaring music at times accentuates the pair’s desire to peel off from one another, and at others creates an agonising pause – almost as if the loosening of this corporeal knot would surrender these two bodies to complete stillness. In Vanishing Point, symbolism and references drawn from something otherworldly truly fuel and shape the performance’s material: whether they are fallen from some nightmarish future, or forgotten beings of a distant past is of no real import. The pair cling to one another as if the body of the other were the last plank of salvation. Inescapably, this duet – which cannot in fact be considered a duet in typical choreographic terms – is expressively charged with outbursts, micro-movements that maximise both muscle tone and an undertow of physical violence, indicative of that ambiguous struggle to which the two performers have submitted themselves on an equal footing. And there really is no victor here; any victory is signified by their desire to remain conjoined, so that even when these bodies ‘come off the rails’, swept up in a chaotic maelstrom of movements, their contact continues to delineate the bare minimum of space, until it is transubstantiated into another form of life.

Dafin Antoniadou and Alexandros Vardaxoglou present a duet of high physical intensity. Their first joint attempt at choreography is characterised by experimentations with familiar movement materials, judging at least by the fact that both remain active as contemporary dancers. The music in the main accompanies the piece organically, colouring the action with cognate tones, and there’s no lack of moments that go a step beyond to create a more cinematically tinged and imposing atmosphere. The costumes – an indirect reference to Léon Bakst? – complete the aesthetic whole, accentuating the alluring plasticity of the bodies. It’s unfortunate that a lack of stage depth forces the action into the foreground, when one is left with the dominant impression that a little distance and perspective are essential for ensuring the aesthetic coherence of all the elements into a cohesive whole.

Anastasio Koukoutas


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Candy Karra and Chara Kotsali: manouevre. Photo © Andreas Simopoulos
Candy Karra and Chara Kotsali: manouevre. Photo © Andreas Simopoulos

Candy Karra & Chara Kotsali: ‘manoeuvre’

Have you ever been felled by a flatpack? Lying corpsed beneath a plank of wood, almost as if it were a coffin lid, Candy Karra and Chara Kotsali appear to have been there, and done that.

The remainder of this sparse piece – for two bodies, one plank and the occasional thud or crackle of sound – plays out almost like a replay of the moves that might have brought them to this impassive juncture. With faces either hidden or determinedly blank, Karra and Kotsali variously slide, place, carry and rotate the plank.

The work pivots on an understated ambiguity. On one side, the women – arms folding, hands gripping, spines leaning, feet anchoring – are parts of a material, mechanical world. On the other, the plank comes closer to a human world in which the women, in their studiously neutral way, variously try it out as seesaw, lever, compass or climbing frame.

Mostly, you watch the moves without being moved by them, but there are glimpses of more poetic significance. Using the plank as a ladder to reach upwards, for example, as if towards some higher purpose. Or the closing scene, the plank repeatedly toppling only for the women to set it upright again – counterbalancing the work’s static, deadpan opening with a Sisyphean image of life, continuing.

Sanjoy Roy


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Athens, Greece
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Inspired by Springback Academy, the writers’ programme at the 2020 New Choreographers Festival was hosted by Onassis Stegi, with twelve participants mentored by Anastasio Koukoutas, Betina Panagiotara and Sanjoy Roy. To see all their reviews on all eight works at the festival, visit the link below and scroll down to ‘New texts on dance’:
www.onassis.org/whats-on/onassis-new-choreographers-festival-7
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