Actual Wording was an interesting improvisational dance act that took place in the “Academia” Cultural Centre on January 16^th. It showed intelligent choreographic conception and performance by two very promising dancers: Iro Apostolelli and Agni Papadeli-Rossetou. The two artists managed to keep our interest unwavering despite the square rhythmical repetitiousness and the almost machine-like instrumental kinetics they applied, sweeping us through their geometric and cut out movements off into the abstracted bodily shapes and their interaction.

Clearly influenced by the contemporary Belgian dance school (due to their stay and apprenticeship in Brussels) and the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker – who in Rosas Danst Rosas accentuates through repetitiousness and semantic exactitude the in-betweens, the discontinuities and the exits from the kinetic flow – theirs was a performance where the body is modulated and separated from its naturalness. Somehow one could say that the natural body and its flow disappears and on stage appears a body-instrument, a body-machine, even a body-compass, paradoxically without disowning its emotional components. In this body discontinuity and asymmetry antagonize linearity and symmetry, while with regard to the style of movement, uniformity and conformity are transversed by non-identity and heteromorphism. The idiosyncratic kinetics was reinforced by the performance’s main concept, the disjoining of the traditional succession between sound and movement. And so, while the two performers improvised having headphone implants receiving a common sound signal, we spectators were watching them dance in absolute silence, or through some musical intervals. The absence of sound, beside the initial perplexity that was evinced by the strangeness of such a condition regarding dance, also incited a constant questioning for the nature of movement, its cause and the aim of the two performers’ trajectory, which remained constantly open to interpretation.

The performance began with a non-standard mechanical tango and then went on with an impressive – with respect to kinetic originality, linear balance and stage presence – solo by Agni Papadeli-Rossetou. The appearance next by Iro Apostolleli that artfully embodied, tapping each sound wave, along with Agni Papadeli, of the “Night Porter” movie dialogues and its soundscape: the body, here, besides being machine or object, was transformed into word and image. The tuning between them two, especially in their coming together, looked like a puzzle of lawless movements, projecting synchronicity and coexistence, next to solitude and individuality. Bodily succession, which was perhaps the most difficult part to get through, was thoroughly shaped, without serving some straightforward goal. This fluidity  was part of the choreography’s aim. Yet sometimes we felt the lack of furthermore facial expression, mostly during the dancers’ contact; the selective use of expressivity would have contributed to the work’s emotional investment and to the harmonious differentiation of its parts, without distracting us from focusing on the – sterilized from desire – movement and its mechanistic dimension the two dancers/choreographers wanted to emphasize. Some of the most beautiful parts of the performance were the static, abstract formations of the bodies and the reflections of their shadows on the wall.

Although the work’s essential points were crowned with success, the performance’s closure could have upheld us in greater alert. The two dancers were absorbed in each individual improvisation, fairly distancing themselves from each other’s associations; this resulted to our disorienting from the dual movement’s harmony and to our displacement from the center of a potential idea that was on the verge of taking shape, while the relation between them suddenly became more remote. Given this, although this was a performance that focused primarily on movement and its revolutionizing, a more structured conceptual build-up, especially towards the conclusion, would have been of significant assistance. Still, the warm (and not at all mechanical) smiles of the performers and their justifiably being moved, revealed two modest, shining young faces open to the spirit of constructive criticism, presaging their positive further development.

Natalia Koutsougera (Social Anthropologist – Anthropologist of Dance)

Translated by Michalis Varouxakis

“Actual Wording” was performed on January 12, 2013 at the “Academia” Cultural Center on the occasion of the Millennium After Festival.