Throwing themselves headlong into a space full of hazy lights, bodies crush against each other to the rhythm of loud electronic music. This is not pogoing in the pit of a rock gig. It’s a dance piece. At Vienna’s ImPulsTanz festival, the audience for Slamming, by Greek choreographer Xenia Koghilaki, is seated around a square space, and sensibly provided with earplugs. They observe and are absorbed by three dancers who constantly push and jostle each other with their whole bodies, as if haunted by the energy of a much bigger crowd.
Better together
Koghikali’s interest in this ‘dance’ born in the UK punk scene in 1976 – a precursor of moshing, an even more extreme and chaotic crowd practice where participants, as well as jumping up and down, together also throw themselves in every direction – originates from time spent alone. Paradoxical? For her, not really. ‘It was during Covid,’ she explains, ‘and isolated in the studio, I asked myself: what gestures can bodies access better together than alone? What are the strategies we develop to be together?’
Headbanging – another music gig subculture, consisting of violently shaking one’s head, preferably with long hair – was her first answer. When graduating from a masters programme at the University of Arts in Berlin in 2021, she created her very first piece, Bang Bang Bodies, a duet with the dancer Luisa Fernanda Alfonso, made of coordinated head and hair movements, to techno and heavy metal music. But her initial question was not solved yet, and after headbanging, came a second possibility: moshing, also known as slam dancing or slamming.
Avoiding concussion
‘I tried moshing when I was studying architecture in Patras [Greece],’ says Koghilaki. ‘Though I never see myself as belonging to this practice and community, which is also very masculine, I still feel very connected to this experience in my life.’ She dived into the practice again 10 years later when she began her research for Slamming (premiered at Onassis Dance Days 2024). Together with the dancers Noumissa Sidibé and Irini Georgiou, she also developed strategies to prevent injuries that could arise from such violently repetitive movements – touring with a physiotherapist, following a precise warm-up and cool-down routine. She knows that several cases of spine and neck injuries have indeed been caused by excessive headbanging, and the physical danger in mosh-pits is far from zero. Even without a furious crowd around, to expose professional dancers to such risks was out of the question. But for Koghilaki, this necessary care is part of a deeper, and quite interesting, problematic.
How to allow violence to be gentle
‘There is huge brutality in these social practices,’ she observes, ‘but at the same time a lot of cooperation and responsibility’ – which is perhaps the exact opposite of how these dances are commonly perceived. ‘If someone falls in a pogo during a metal concert, hands will immediately appear to lift her or him up,’ she continues. ‘This is one example of the unwritten rules that frame aggressivity and allow us to be together. No one wants to voluntary hurt anyone. The main goal is to have fun, and feel your belonging to a community.’ Look deeper into hardcore gestures, and you find gentleness within them.
