petek, 23. 11. 2018 // Friday, 23rd November 2018
8 pm, Kino Šiška, Katedrala Hall – festival opening
Vstopnice/Tickets: 7 EUR (Predprodaja/Pre-sales), 9 EUR (Regular)
Koreografija/Choreography by: Christos Papadopoulos
Glasba/Music: Johan Sebastian Bach
Glasbena obdelava/Music Editing: Kornilios Selamsis
Oblikovanje svetlobe/Lighting Design: Miltiadis Athanasiou
Izvedba/Dancers: Amalia Kosma, Maria Bregianni, Georgios Kotsifakis and Ioanna Paraskevopoulou
Tehnična izvedba/Technician: Konstantina Papadopoulou
Produkcija/Production: Leon and Wolf Dance Company
Last year CoFestival hosted the Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos with his performance Elvedon (2015). His artistic provenance is tightly linked to Greek theatre and contemporary dance. He worked with the famous Greek choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou, who is known on the international dance scene and to the internet public for his work Nowhere (2009), dedicated to Pina Bausch. Following the completion of his studies at the Amsterdam SNDO (School for The New Dance Development) he also worked with a series of eminent Dutch choreography residents.
Christos Papadopoulos has lately been establishing himself with formalistically pure and gradually developing choreographic organisms, which are – due to their elementary yet complex agility and specific bodily materiality – always sticky dumping grounds for meanings. Even though his choreographic production focuses on formal processes, which were nurtured by choreographers in the times of avant-gardes and late American dance minimalism, it seems (individually and collectively) that the body of Papadopoulos’s choreographies is always beyond abstraction. Organic processes always take place within an unfinished disembodiment. Because of this his group constructs are not only open to chorographical, but also to various social compositions.
Opus (2016) addresses the relationship between classical music and dance. Even though it seems at first glance that it is almost impossible to create something more general than this in contemporary dance, Papadopoulos’s work can be viewed from numerous aspects. The Latin word ‘classicus’ and the Greek word ‘κλασικός’ relate to the composition (metric and compositional relations), which is produced in accordance with the principles, rules and ideals of Classic Greek and Roman aesthetics. The Opus shows exceptional kinetic skill from which all recognisable stylistic marks have been removed, which results in classic choreographic obedience to a ‘classical’ music partiture (Bach modified with contemporary approaches) and a series of basic elements of ‘classical’ compositional techniques (counterpoint, interval, rhythm, harmony, etc.) visualised through the form of choreography, all of which is dictated by the explicit muscular tone of the dancers. The music is transposed into a chorographical notation, while the dancers follow individual instruments. This is more than enough for us to let go and enjoy the art.
However, we could address another aspect in Papadopoulos’s choreographic work. Music, literature, painting, sculpting, and other artistic practices were of course not ‘classical’ from their beginning, for this connotation is linked to historicising and the reception of Classic Greek and Latin thoughts and art in the modern period, especially during the age of Enlightenment. Classical music in connection to artistic ‘taste’, which entered philosophy through a wide-open door during the age of Enlightenment, carries the social class meaning of artistic reception. Classical art belongs to those who have ‘taste’, and they belong to a certain social class. We could paraphrase Büchner’s Woyzeck and say: ‘I could have taste if only I were rich enough.’. The Latin word ‘opus’ means work and nothing else. The beauty that erupts from Papadopoulos’s choreographic constructivism is conditioned by work, dance production and operatic choreography which starts on the floor – where else could it possibly start?