“in spite of freedom where it is”, i.e. “to go where one loves/desires”
The performance is a free reading of the phenomenon of contemporary dance. Through the act of dance itself, the group brings to the stage the constantly “moving” experience of movement. In this process, we dancers change, we experience an existential opening, a “self-suspension”, while our values “move” with us. We go where stability is not necessarily more important than uncertainty, strength than fragility, objects than relationships. Seeking the unexpected and through freedom of choice, we remain adventurous, alive, vulnerable and dynamic. This course is difficult and often perplexes us. But she is also the one who shows us the way to something new and refreshing, opens up crevices of surprise and gives us moments full of meaning. Within this condition we are finally connected to the essence of art.
Note from the choreographer
The performance is the result of a five-month educational and research workshop aimed at training dancers on embodied techniques, in order to understand the importance of embodied in the act of dance itself. With an emphasis on Contact Improvisation and the Axis Syllabus, the workshop was held for the second consecutive year fulfilling a personal vision of mine.
Having experienced amazing moments of connection and presence during the workshop we felt that we wanted to share parts and snapshots of these experiences and create a performance-celebration, a comprehensive look at the performativity of these practices. Through Timos Zeha’s guidance and mine and the active participation of these always available and enthusiastic dancers we experienced the basic components of movement and found ways to move functionally, simply, quietly, and, above all, together.
Observing in particular the course of Contact Improvisation in Greece, one finds that as a practice it is connected to people and circumstances that kept it alive in our country from the late 1980s until today. Also, one can see that in the ways it was implemented it is synchronized with international approaches and is intertwined with practices such as Body Mind Centering, the Feldenkrais method and the Axis syllabus dance dictionary. Contact Improvisation, with its tools of meditation, evolutionary movement, experiential anatomy, fascial connective tissue activation and other techniques that bring us to the here and now of movement, is an important dance practice, a practice that keeps us alive, free, different.
And what makes it special is sharing, exchange, solidarity, its social character.
The performance is a practical approach to my PhD thesis, an “experiential essay” on embodied movement. Important help was provided by the doctoral research itself and especially the interviews with artists who have implemented these practices in Greece and abroad.
Biographical note of Tetis Nikolopoulos
Teti Nikolopoulou is a dancer, choreographer, dance and physical education teacher. She is a graduate of the Professional Dance School of Nikis Kontaxakis and TEFAA Athens (Master and PhD on Somatics practices). He has attended intensive dance seminars on release techniques, improvisation, contact improvisation and practical somatics (Feldenkrais, Body Mind Centering, Axis Syllabus) in Greece, New York and London. In 1992 she was awarded in the Rallous Manou and EOT competitions for the choreography of Prejudice, while in 2005, 2007, 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2022 she was granted a grant for her work by the Ministry of the Interior. He has choreographed over 30 performances and participated in festivals, dance platforms and multi-thematic exhibitions. He has choreographed for children’s musical theaters, for the cinema, for musicians and for theatrical performances. As a dancer she has collaborated with choreographers such as Dorina Kalethrianou, Angela Lyra, Dora Mitropoulou, Maxine Heppner, Christina Kleisiuni, Victoria Noumta, Natassa Avra, etc. He teaches contact improvisation in professional and amateur dance schools, while he gives lectures and conducts workshops and seminars on somatics practices. He has taught contact improvisation at the international practice festival in Freiburg, 2019, at the Jam of Arts in Halkidiki and at the contact improvisation community in Bristol, in 2022. In 2020, he prepared, at EKPA, a doctoral thesis entitled: “Improvisation with contact ( contact improvisation) in Greece as embodied practice: History, ideology and artistic creation”. In 2021, her show Diarkos me tarazes traveled to Istanbul, at the International Dance impro Festival while attending
