An open-air performance space uncovers seven dancers warming up in gentle drifts synchronised with the Mediterranean sea in the background.

Just like the waves, solos, duets and trios come and go out of the stage in constant flow. But they all leave something behind like a conch on the shore: currents of multitudes of dance techniques. The piece navigates through virtuous stretching, grotesque walks, tense popping and hip-hop blasts. It is about the movement itself and less about what is behind it. Dancers respond to each other using their own aesthetics, diving into higher speed that unifies the performance flow.

They come all together, but not as one. Alternating through each one’s terminologies, an eye-catching sequence composes an endless sea of detailed salty steps coming from different cultural backgrounds that define what we see.

Movers Platform #3, curated by Hiroki Umeda, dives into a future of contemporary dance without borders, where the multitude of bodies is the fuel for creative processes.

The sealine with the distant mountains in the background frames this modular event performed in different combinations of solos, duos and trios by seven international dancers coming from Japan, Korea and Greece. Cookie-cutter material of spasmodic and sensual movement, distortions of the limbs and pulsations move the elegant young bodies of the dancers, who occupy the performing area in turns. The homogenised movement material deprives the movers of their cultural uniqueness that the dark and deep sonic accompaniment occasionally refers to. The light breeze from the sea, the only environmental element interfering with the choreographic composition that Hiraoki Umeda curated on the occasion of the festival, blows their clothes and hair, creating an additional visual effect that adds resistance to their movements. The movers’ exploding energy pierces and devours the space but saturates the calm landscape and the overall outdoor experience of the quiet warm afternoon under the mediterranean sun.

In the final scene, the movers place all together their dispersed bodies in space in running poses that, after personalised sequences of energetic turns and jumps, freeze dynamically in the process of executing the next movement. Their final suspension implies that this sensorially informed journey will continue again in the future.