Dance performances fill Cyprus Choreography Platform

Only a few days are left before the 22nd edition of the Cyprus Choreography Platform lifts the curtain to present eight extraordinary dance performances at Rialto Theatre. Through their presentations on November 11 and 12, the choreographers and organisers aim to highlight the wealth of creation of Cypriot artists by presenting works inspired by existential and social issues.

Additionally, the artists who create the parallel events work systematically to enrich the central programme of the platform. These parallel events are organised by the Limassol Dance House under the title Dance Throughout the Year.

Day One

Lia Haraki’s Channels will open the platform. In her performance, the artist uses the condition of the performance as a frame that allows for the meeting, the interaction, and the coexistence of one’s several bodies. At a time when humanity is going through extreme changes and is under threat of a nuclear war, personal balance seems impossible. The work, therefore, exposes how the post-traumatic body from the pandemic continues to have to cope with new challenges that prevent a greatly desired tranquility. The embodiment of the complexity of the self may be the beginning of its acceptance and at the same time a chance for its survival.

Samantha Moses’ Gray Beats My Soul will be up next, touching on the journey of youth and self-love. Talking about the performance, the creator says: “humans tend to automatically destroy their own creations by sabotaging themselves so that they can rise again from their ashes. I metaphorically use the fact of being young to create the contradiction where we destroy our own portraits, as Dorian Gray did with his. I feel that after the pandemic, we’ve become addicted to our phones, admiring our own reflections, turning it into a narcissistic habit. We seek the source of social media immortality by emphasising our outward appearance instead of focusing on the inner growth of ourselves and our close ones.”

The piece to follow on Friday is conceptualised by Milena Ugren Koulas & Stylish Junkies. The Magical Other is a little choreographic work that belongs to an ongoing bigger research about how trauma affects people and how traumatic experiences shape the way we think, move, communicate and relate to others. The Magical Other is about the desperate search for each other to mend the trauma. Day one will conclude with Chrys@ by Petros Konnaris, a piece which includes nudity performed by Konnaris himself, with text and dramaturgy by Evagoras Vanezis.

Day Two

The second and final day of the platform begins with a piece which requires audience participation. Kripse…na Perasoume is a performance by Maria Charalambous and Giorgos Dimopoulos that will include instructions for the public. “Read the programme you were given. Enter the theatre. Sit in your seat comfortably. Talk to the person next to you. You can turn your head, on the side and back during. Note. Listen. Feel. Tap. Get up from your seat, either to see better or because you were asked. If you are negatively affected by what you see, or it leaves you indifferent and you want to leave the theatre during the performance, do not hesitate… do it,” they say.

Next is The Day After by Harry Koushos, choreographed and performed by himself with music by ECATI, video by Alexandros Papathanasopoulos and sculptures by Katerina Mavridi.

The Awesome Performance, which will follow, is a creation of bytheway productions and Arianna Marcoulides. “I had this vision that I could create a performance so awe-inspiring, so life-changing that it would be the catalyst for positive change, as much on an individual as well as a global scale, to all who would experience it,” says Arianna. “Then I realised that that might be a little too ambitious of me and slightly pretentious. It got me thinking about awe though and the role that it has in our lives. This is the journey I take with co-performer and collaborator Eleana Alexandrou. We float we wonder, and we awe.”

The platform will conclude with Radical Kindness by Julia Anna Brendle addressing the body as the tool where instincts reside and where we fight, flee or freeze, and how it endures the trauma and the memories inflicted by society and personal experience. In this piece, the performers ask the body to remember, share and develop a memory of the present.

Cyprus Choreography Platform

22^nd edition of annual dance event. November 11-12. Rialto Theatre, Limassol. €8. Tel: 7777-7745. E-ticket: www.rialto.com.cy. Info: www.cypruschoreographyplatform.com