My work ranges from the minimalist and repetitive to the transgressive and visceral with hints of the glorious, the camp and the failed.
PERFORMER
Embodying other choreographies and performances by seminal artists - with a great sense of responsibility, respect and curiosity.
CURATOR
Curation not as a practice of taking care, but as exposing endeavours to the unknown, attending to wilderness and animality - approach at your own risk.
AUTHOR
Fervent fan of logical thinking and affect, author of several poems and stories, and also academic articles dealing with psychoanalytic perspectives of the Explicit Body in Performance.
ACADEMIC
Teaching in Higher Education and masterclasses. My role is to mentor the individual's journey into their own elusive and fugitive worlds. In this journey, I am not the travel agent, nor are you the tourist.
Biography
Pavlos Kountouriotis (GR/BE) is a performance artist, choreographer and performance theoretician. He has a PhD from the University of Roehampton and studied at P.A.R.T.S. (research) and LABAN (MA).
He has worked with seminal choreographers and live artists such as Trisha Brown, Ron Athey, Marten Spangberg, Boris Charmatz, Meg Stuart, Mehmet Sanders, Ann Liv Young Kirsten Debrock and many others and he is an artist of the Sweet and Tender Collaborations.
His own performance work has been presented in several countries in Europe and US. He is also the Artistic Director of GNARL fest, the East Midland Platform for International Live Art.
Pavlos is currently the resident artists at K-3, Kampnagel in Hamburg, at the Seoul Dance Center in Korea, a visiting Senior Lecturer in Choreography at the University of Malta and a Professor in Dance and Artistic Director of the Postgraduate Research Studies at SOZO-Vim. In the pastPavlos received twice the prestigious scolarship of DanceWEB Europe, the Onassis Foundation Scholarship, the Asian Europe Foundation Scholarship, the State Scholarship Foundation of Greece, the Fullbright Scholarship a.o. He has also written and directed as the Programme Leader of the MA/MFA Choreographing Live Art at the University of Lincoln, and was the artistic director GNARL Fest, the East Midlands International Live Art and Choreography Festival.
Inspired by Trisha Brown, when performing her solo "Accumulation" during the Documenta Exhibition, I decided to research on the processes of accumulation. I concluded that two main processes exist: addition and enrichment. Shifting the number of repetitions creates a polyrythmical pattern and together with a second person creates a polyphonic orchestration. It's pure maths or pure music.
Performers : Pavlos Kountouriotis, Hajime Fujita
Presented at : Reims (2007, Scene Nationale), Reims (2008, Sweet and Tender Fragments of Experience), Chalon sur Saone (2008, Festival Instances), Greenroom (2009, TURN Festival, Manchester), Live Art Development Agency (2010, Performance Matters)
DANCEWALK are a series of urban infestations, little dance transgressions to the mundane life of the city. The idea is simple: let the music move every cell of your body without any inhibitions and expose new possibilities of walking in the city.
The DANCEWALK has happened so far in:
2012- Documenta Kassel, DE
2013- Kassel, DE
2013- Lincoln City, UK
Performers : Participants:
Pavlos Kountouriotis, Fenia Kotsopoulou, Deborah Smith Wicke, Annette Pflug, Johanna Honkanen, Marianne Linder, Tina Morrison, Irene Atmatzidi, Yanjing Huan, Katerina Michael, Vagia Kapousidou, Melissa Laidlaw, Kristina Becker, Arthur Haas, Jerimia Jerimia, Hanna Lee, Marianne Linder, Tina Machulik, Koeun Park, Oovi Patrao, Alex Polupanow, Swarna Rautiainen, Celine Riat, Caroline Servollek, Viktoria Trow-Poole, Timothee Uehlinger, Serja Vesterinen
Can we just enjoy art with empty minds? Is it always a concept we need to think before we dive into enjoyment? Can we just be superficial? Can we enjoy surface? Materiality?
Can the surface be a way for all of us to find back our childhood? Can we play outdoors ignoring pretentious thoughts? Can the surface of the NYLON be a surface for us to come closer, relate to each other, meet new people in the streets?
Can this surface be my dreams? Can this surface travel all around the world?
Performers : Pavlos Kountouriotis, Montserrat Payro, Nuno Lucas
NB: There are two versions to this project. Version A (Empty Minds) is set in the theatrical context and Version B (Burbuglias) is set outdoors.
Presented at : Reims (2007, Scene Nationale), Reims (2007, Sweet and Tender Fragments of Experience), Porto (2008, FIMP Festival)
Performers : Pavlos Kountouriotis, Hajime Fujita
Presented at : Reims (2007, Scene Nationale), Reims (2008, Sweet and Tender Fragments of Experience), Chalon sur Saone (2008, Festival Instances), Greenroom (2009, TURN Festival, Manchester), Live Art Development Agency (2010, Performance Matters)
The entire length of the action film "Kill Bill Vol. 1" by Quentin Tarantino has been watched and the frames where the viewer blinks are compiled together while the film footage that is seen by the viewer is removed. The entire film is portrayed in 3 minutes and 9 seconds of the unseen parts of the film
This is my research on the somatic responses of a spectator while watching a violent action film. My specific focus of research is to observe whether the spectator blinks less during the moments of violence or, differently said, whether the blinking rate is lower than in other moments. That means that the final movie the one created by the moments he/she missed- should have relatively less violence.
Invited by Costume Designer Gwen van den Eijnde to construct a performance for the showing of his latest creations, Pavlos Kountouriotis worked closely with the idea of performing the costume, as a material with its own phenomenological properties, as a documentation reference and as a personal psychoanalytical achor.
"Im Hischgang" is the spectacular, yet bizarrely distorted catwalk of three costumes made by Gwen van den Eijnde. Pavlos Kountouriotis who worked closely together with Gwen to make this performance, oscillates an atmosphere between after and then, present and surreal, kitsch and serious, fashion show and ritual.
Performers : Gwen van den Eijnde, Pavlos Kountouriotis
Music : Jae- Ho Youn
Costumes: Gwen van den Eijnde
If modern and post modern are belonging to the past where are we now? And what can we do that has never been done before?" These are typical questions students ask me often.
In my choreographic and academic research, I explain how our contemporary era is that of "super- modernity" (a term coined by Marc Augé), of an inclusive period of a thickened past/present and future, of overpopulated ideas, theories and spaces.
Taking the term from anthropology to contemporary performing arts, for me, this "super-modern" seeks to retain its "subjectivity" not by constructing new boundaries with the previous (the post-modern) and excluding or eliminating the Other/ the previous but by redefining its boundaries with the previous with the goal of demolishing these boundaries. It is not only that modernity is our antiquity (the leitmotif of Documenta XII), but modernity can only be our antiquity or else antiquity is the only way that our contemporary modernity finds its identity by recognition and acceptance of the antiquity.
Thus, contemporary art gains its identity not by abjection but by recognition of its subject. And it is exactly this action that complicates its identification and classification. But, this awareness of existing relations (either of oppositional or evolutionary or coincidental character) will allow for a cross fertilization and a subsequent qualitative development of the field.
In "Revisiting Repertory", the students will have the opportunity to practically experience the creative process, study and interpret a repertory piece by seminal choreographers of the 20th and 21st century. The workshop further proposes an examination of the conditions of rewriting and re-authorisation by engaging with Marc Augé's notion of "supermodernity" and Roland Barthes' "death of the author". Furthermore, the module provides a conceptual and practical revisiting of dance history not in a linear chronology but in identifying reoccurring thematics and their development with a focus on late 21st century conceptual aesthetics. The workshop creates an environment where students can investigate how ideas enter, interrupt, disrupt and interlace themselves with the writings/creations of others.
The students will practically experience the process of the (re) creation of a conceptual reapropriation and remaking of a performance evening. In that sense the module builds on the importance of movement articulation and the difference between delivering opinions and reasoning and between confirmation and developing. By Identifying, clarifying, crystallizing and articulating in preciso the concept behind, the module aims at challenging authorship.
This workshop aims to provide opportunities for students to engage with the processes necessary for the realisation of performed events, drawing on and further developing skills. The workshop aims to approximate the demands of professional practice in making and delivering the work created, in order to prepare students for the greater autonomy.
In the past we've worked with the following pieces:
- Turtle Dreams by Meredith Monk
- Musique de Tables by Thierry de Mey
- Both Speaking Duet by Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargeon
- The Quiet Dance by Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargeon
- Speaking Dance Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargeon
- Interior Drama by Lucinda Childs
- Radial Courses by Lucinda Childs
During my residency in Prague for the Identity.Move! project I worked on several practices of endurance and self-inflicting pain and altered states of consciousness in order to assess the viability, pertinence and effects of my preparations in relation to my goal, namely overcoming my fear of being in pain and not being able to do anything about it. The state of being in and enduring self-inflicted pain is on its own a somatic practice that produces ASC that enables me to transcend my own existential anxieties and overcome my fear of powerlessness.
Presented at : Presented at Ponec Theatre, Prague, CZ, 23rd July 2014
We would like to invite you to The First Public Mourning, held at___________________________.
We have no agenda, come and cry together.
We mourn the death of preciousness.
A funeral service of dead live art, morbid karaoke, recitation of failed eulogies and endless chorus lines of keening women. A fucked up commemoration, a graveyard of campiness.
After the death of isms, red flowers won't blossom at the sites of the grey buildings of structuralist architecture. We won't necessarily experience greener or redder days. Nor greyer either.
The days after the Death of isms will inherit the wealth and terrible maladies of isms. It is perhaps not the utopia that some had hoped for, or the arcadia others dreamt of.
We offer The First Public Mourning for the tragic loss of isms. We grieve their death and we enter in a delirium of crying and suffering.
During our funeral services, we pay homage to the never-to come-again heroic period of revolutions, manifestos and ideologies.
We bury them and then we go home...
Instead of dismissing ideologies for their failures and proceeding to desensitization and stupefication, we directly embrace failure and fallibility, and we remember that what is considered as failure is a construction that might serve some purposes.
We don't abide to these politics.
We divert, and we accept failure.
For we agree with Colson Whithead who once mentioned "It is failure that guides evolution; perfection offers no incentive for improvement."
The tentacles of the octopus Vampyrotheutis Infernalis will penetrate my brains. Soon after I will talk about a plastic brain and ... bang!
Learning how to experience pain differently, utilizing our body's inherent capacity to be plastic and continually aiming to become a Body with Organs can function as a mechanism towards discovering self-agency and emancipation from dominant ideologies about the body.
This presentation forms part of Pavlos Kountouriotis doctoral research, which approaches the political ramifications and meaning of self-inflicted pain in contemporary Live Art practices.
Concept:
A quirky dance performance of two haunting ghost bodies and their fragmented parts.
After almost seven years of not having perfomed together, Fenia Kotsopoulou and Pavlos Kountouriotis revive on stage the past that has been lost, the photos that were never taken, the performances that never happened, the music that we never danced to, the something that you wanted to watch desperately but you missed it out.
Ptosis (2013) is the second of minimalist, repetitive choreographies made by Pavlos Kountouriotis. The principle behind the making ofPtosis was- 'Falling, never boring'.
The piece is made up of 3 sets of dancers, 4 acts, 9 scenes, 8 scores and 5 movements. The score for the piece was made using coloured post-its hanged on the wall.
T he first three acts follow the same pattern: original score, 1st development score, 2nd development score. Each these acts is performed by a set of different dancers and each set developed its own deviations from the original score (which is what we call the 1st and second development score).
Act 1:
The original score is performed by 5 dancers. After that, the 1st development worked on augmenting the amount of dancers from five to six. This immediately brought up the question of space, and therefore the 2nd development score explores ways on how to break the spatial patterns.
Act 2:
The original score is performed for a second time by a set of different dancers. Differentiations start occurring. After that, the speed of the metronome is double to 230bpm. This is the 1st development. It occurred to us, that an iconic image of pop culture occurred and in the 2nd development, we explore the possibilities of such associations.
Act 3
The original score is performed by a set of yet 5 different dancers. More differentiations occur. After that, the group transposes the falling movement into facial physicalities. The 2nd development works on using the same physicality to give different meanings.
Act 4
For the last Act, all 16 dancers come on stage. PJ Harvey's song Rid of Me is played three times during which time the dancers find their way to the floor. The principle is to endure and pursue what comes from specific situations and not to go to pathways that allow for easiness or what we are used to doing.
In addition to the formal means of the structure, the performance is also mediated by a series of principles for performance, which include: 'it's just a silly dance', 'insist, persist, assist', 'how we feel is how we behave', 'offer the gift of courage', 'there are no mistakes'.
Choreographic Process & Sound Editing : Pavlos Kountouriotis
Performers : Kristina Becker, Arthur Haas, Johanna Honkanen, Jerimia Jerimia, Hanna Lee, Marianne Linder, Tina Machulik, Koeun Park, Oovi Patrao, Alex Polupanow, Swarna Rautiainen, Celine Riat, Caroline Servollek, Viktoria Trow-Poole, Timothee Uehlinger, Serja Vesterinen, Leslie Henfrey Smith, Jo Blake, Tom Pritchard, Robbie Synge, Noa Zamir, Pavlos Kountouriotis
Assistance to the Choreographic Process & Video : Karl Heinz-Mierke & Fenia Kotsopoulou
Special Thanks for her kind support, sexy and endurance workshops : Deborah Smith-Wicke
Soundbites
Alva Noto- Opiate
PJ Harvey- Rid of Me
Michael Jackson- Thriller
I AM REAL AND YOU WILL LOVE ME AND EVERYONE IN THIS FUCKING ROOM WILL REMEMBER ME.
This work-in- progress in its entirety draws from the theories by Susan Sontag on the reality and performativity of documentation. Although Susan Sontag explicitly speaks about photography I try to enlarge the notion what that document might.
Therefore two parallel universes were created that coexist and complement each other. The one is the choreography of a fictitious past moment breaking the boundaries between now, before and later and the other is the space of a live documentation of time.
I chose for the medium of performance lecture, which, through its selfreflective, mirroring character can serve as a caption to the past, present and future. A thorough investigation on the stereotypes of the mode of a performance lecture has allowed me to give a comment on the authenticity and reality that this reemerging choreographic style builds by framing and staging only what the choreographer has chosen to think about or declares that he has chosen to thing about. The piece is thus constructing a reference not only to itself, documenting itself in museological installation, but also makes references to other performance lectures.
Performer : Pavlos Kountouriotis
Special Thanks to : Aaron Paterson, Martin Hargreaves
For more detailed information about the project you may want to visit the blog where the whole creative process is also documented. Please click here.
Presented at : London (2008, Laban), Porto (2008, Maus Habitos), Porto (2008, Sweet and Tender Fragmens of Experience), Tilburg (2009, Festival Incubator), 2010 (Greenroom, Manchester)
Why we like watching violence [in Hollywood Action films]? Is violence inherently interesting to watch or are there other variables that are confounded with violence making violence look appealing?
The way to transfer the filmic medium into the theatron is the product of engagement in practice with camp aesthetics: by exaggeration, passion, and seriousness in our passion copying Kill Bill. An inherent failure though takes place in the moment where the real identity emerges within and because of the passionate devotion to the character.
Camp is a lie that tells the truth. Camp taste is kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of 'character' ... Camp taste identifies with what is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as 'Camp', they are enjoying it.
This piece is the result of a 2 and a half weeks residence.
Performers : Goncalo Cruzinha, Marta Lopes, Robert Skatulla/ Pavlos Kountouriotis
Lighting : Alao Manuel
Choreographer's Assistant : Vera Santos
This piece was commissioned by Companhia Instavel and Festival Instances in Chalon sur Saone.
Presented at : Porto (2008), Faro (2008, CaPA), Chalon sur Saone (2008, Festival Instances), Porto (2009, Serralves em Festa)
Rhythmic Movements" is a piece about pride and rage of all those social, ethnic or national groups suffering from unjust discrimination and suppression. It tries to identify the complexities of human relationships and the consequent fragility in the movement (both in its political and choreutic meaning) from colonialism to liberation. "Rhythmic movements" serves to manifest "the peoples'" internal need to liberate themselves from the subjugation of their respective self-imposed elite primarily through the means of artistic expression of their corporeality, in other words with dance. The piece represents both the young choreographer's first steps with an amazingly mature vision on artistic composition and contemporary politics but also his encounter with Iranian artists whose words have been the initiating inspiration of this choreography.
"In my country dance is not allowed. So. because people love to dance, we have invented a new word for it; we call it rhythmic movements" S. Reyhani
Presented at : Milan (2005, Arte di Scacco Festival), Athens (2006, International Dance Congress), Thessaloniki (2007, American Extra-Vagant Arts Festival)
After all those manifestos and revolutions, the world cries for solid solutions. Three absurdly heroic characters undertake the responsibility to save the world from more misery. They establish the state of Super Modern Dance. 'Super' is not only the supermarket, superhero, supermodel, supercool, superstar, supergood or superduper. It is a witty take on what contemporary dance is supposed to be based on its histories of piracies, sagas, conspiracies and love affairs. The subtle humor that underlines the performance comments on the ambitions, contributions and vanities that revolutionary and constitutional documents entail. It is a mature manifestation of choreography offering something more profound than bodies in high velocity.
The texts of the performance come from the following sources :
"NO Manifesto" by Yvonne Rainer (1967)
"YES Manifesto" by Mette Ingvartsen (2004)
"Dearest Hanya" - Letters written by Mary Wigman to Hanya Holm '30s-'40s
"By a waterfall" by Guy Lombardo Royal Canadians
"Super List" by Pavlos Kountouriotis and Sarah Spies
The Declaration of Super Modern Dance is a text written by Pavlos Kountouriotis and is inspired by theories of Marc Auge on supermodernity.
Performers : Sarah Spies, Pavlos Kountouriotis, Barbara Banuelos, Lyn Cunningham
Light Design : Steve Curtis,Lyn Cunningham
Scenography : Pavlos Kountouriotis, Sarah Spies
Scenography : Steve Curtis, Andrew Croftie
Produced by:
Greenroon, Manchester (UK)
DeVIR/CAPA, Faro (PT)
VIS MOTRIX, Thessaloniki (GR)
In Vitro Culture Tube, Thessaloniki (GR)
Supported by:
hAb, Manchester (UK)
Greater Manchester Dance Initiative, Manchester (UK)
Credits:
"The Declaration of Super Modern Dance" is written by Pavlos Kountouriotis.
The song of "The Declaration of Super Modern Dance" is composed and directed byPerinne En Morceaux.
"No song" is based on the No Manifesto by Yvonne Rainer.
"Yes song" is based on the Yes Manifesto by Mette Ingvartsen.
"Crazy days" is based on Mary Wigman's letters to Hanya Holm.
"Be a Super" is performed by Lina Spanidou & Oleg Chally.
All drawings are designed by Pavlos Kountouriotis.
One table, six people burdened with the weight of anticpated confessions, seven chairs and an army of white golf balls shine relentlessly. They look at the table.
Shortly a sea of shameful memories will flood the space and we will be submerged in a world of honesty and confession. Confessions not just of secrets but of simple truths. These revelations accidentally become fairy tales of realities that we follow with great intent and curiosity. A splendid light vertigo between reality and imagination. Yet somewhere within the blithe and humorous tales a deep bitterness is lurking. When is it not funny anymore?
The rawness and confessional strength of the movement material alongside the biting humor and pathos of adult reflections on childhood memories bring a high voltage and dynamic fusion of dance and theatre where physicality, speed and golf balls are the rules of poetic interpretations. A fresh approach to the world of sensation, imagination and inspiration.
The piece is inspired by the poetic theatre monologue "Moonlight Sonata" by Yanis Ritsos. "... in the corners of the room the shadows intensify with an intolerable regret, almost fury, not so much for the life, as for the useless confession ..."
Performers : Leslie Henfrey Smith, Jo Blake, Tom Pritchard, Robbie Synge, Noa Zamir, Pavlos Kountouriotis
Presented at : London (2008, The Place for the Resolutions! Festival)
This essay discusses the distinction between nudity and nakedness, perceiving the former as a performative event of the latter. It analyzes the spectatorship difficulties in accepting the naked human body for it externalizes what it is supposed to be hiding with its membrane: the otherness, the sameness; our biggest fear.
This article was commissioned by the Performance Festival of the Thessaloniki Biennale 2011 and I speak about the necessity of the explicit body in performance as an introduction to the catalogue of the festival.
Youtube, the most famous video-sharing website nowadays, has often been assimilated to a "Vaudevillian" stage, because of the variety and the short length of the pieces. Another characteristic that Youtube shares with Vaudeville is that both are a place where issues disturbing identity, gender and sexuality emerge (Young, 2007). Yet it has not received enough attention by the academia.
In this article I would like to approach two videos posted on Youtube by user King Julien. In my analysis of these two videos, I will employ a Camp theory perspective. I do not imply that these videos are necessarily Camp in the strict sense of the term (if such a strict sense really exists), but I believe that such an analysis could help us to discover things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to see.
On the first part of this Thesis, different theories on the appeal of action films containing violence are expounded in three categories: (a) inherently appealing properties of violence; (b) variables confounded with violence; and (c) post- viewing gratifications. Theories advancing the notion that violence is inherently attracting are dismissed as indefensible or unsubstantiated. The second part features an analysis of
Kill Bill Vol. 1 by Quentin Tarantino as a case study.
Different elements of Kill Bill's attractiveness are considered in order to assess the applicability of the aforementioned theories. Chapter Three describes the Practice based Research on the somatic responses and psychophysiological performance of a spectator watching Kill Bill.
This result of this practical research is included in a DVD videoart project called Where did Violence (almost) Go? or the Footage missed by Alejandro while Watching Kill Bill.
Pavlos has mentored many emerging artists towards research and delivery of performances. Recently, he mentored Vagia Kapousidou for her work "My and My Twin" and Astarti Athanasiadou for her work "Placeball" in Malta.
He has an extensive experience of supervising postgraduate and undergraduate students towards their dissertations.
He has also mentored the "No Ordinary Body" (2009) series of performative events in Chester. This mini-festival included exhibitions of live-art, performative magazines, participatory walk around in the public toilets, and disco dancing.
In 2009 he mentored together with Sarah Spies, the performance "Visions, Versions and Perversions" in Chester. This performance was a re-appropriation of Chris Haring's Posing Project B: The Art of Seduction.
In 2006, during his work at the Vis Motrix Dance Company, he mentored the "This year, we were told not to improvise" performances made by the participants of the Lab. The performances were a big success in the Greek Dance scene and have provided with the participants with the necessary choreographic tools and support for making their own individual work.
Dynamic Floorwork is a dance practice that focuses on the release of muscular tension in order to produce softer, better, faster, stronger and safer movement. A thorough understanding of breathing and voice and the dancer's relationship with the floor and the body are experienced deeply through the principles of Alexander Technique and Zambrano's Flying Low. I have enriched these technique with the kinaesthetic values of Ultima Vez Company, Bruno Caverna and Juan Cruz that provide to the course high physicality, speed and alertness together with efficacy and safety.
The class utilizes simple movement patterns that involve breathing, speed and the release of energy throughout the body in order to activate the relationship between the centre and the joints, moving in and out of the ground more efficiently by maintaining a centred state. There is a focus on the skeletal structure that will help improve the dancers' physical perception and alertness.
The class includes partnering work and movement phrases, which explore the primary laws of dynamic physics: cohesion and expansion. Students are urged to connect their entire body with the environment: the air, floor, and the energy of others, forming an interconnection by just standing. This studio practice focuses on the safest but fastest and most efficacious dancer's approaching and getting off the ground. From high voltage to lazylooking forms where energy & imaginary are the rulers of the rhythm. The student is encouraged to appropriate the given material & to 'stage' it in the shortest delay of time.
Pavlos Kountouriotis is the Programme Leader and author of the prestigious MA/MFA Choreographing Live Art at the University of Lincoln, the only advanced postgraduate course dedicated solely to Live Art.
The Master's of Fine Arts in Choreographing Live Art is an intensive, high-level postgraduate programme in Contemporary Performance Practice. The total amount of credits for the completion of the MFA is 240 (MFA Route). Alternatively, students can exit with 60 credits less and receive a regular MA in Choreographing Live Art (MA Route).
The programme offers students the opportunity to acquire an advanced knowledge of theories and practices around the Body in Performance, while at the same time challenges them to engage physically in the development of the body performance in the 21st century.
At the heart of the programme lies the unique combination of contemporary performance practice and cutting-edge somatic investigations where the body is prioritized as the subject, tool and material of the performance event. Informed by critical theory and the latest developments within Live Art, this course locates Choreographing the Body next to Live Art and aims to interrogate their precarious and recently emerging relationship.
Students pursue a rigorous line of contextualization and development of their own practice in order to advance body practices and Live Art. The students engage in critical frameworks of both a practical and theoretical nature in order to digitally archive their practices. By the end of their course the students will have developed a portfolio of project that advance notions and practices of the Body and the making of Live Art.
50 years of dance (a flip book of Merce Cunningham) by Boris Charmatz (2009)
In the scope of the ImPulsTanz research project "Choreographers' Venture 2009", exceptional French choreographer Boris Charmatz shows that a dance piece can be based on a book about a choreographer. Together with the participants - ambitious dancing professionals who are either at the beginning of their career or right in the middle of it - Charmatz works with the photos from David Vaughan's book "Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years" and uses the movements that can be traced from the illustrations. Combining these images, he creates a choreographed "50 years of dance (flip book)". The dancers proceed chronologically, they jump from picture to picture in order to "transform the whole story of a life's work, as it is reflected in a book, into a dance piece within a short time", as Charmatz puts it.
Pavlos Kountouriotis performed for Trisha Brown, her Accumulation (1972) solo during the Documenta 12 Exhibition in Kassel.
Accumulation by Trisha Brown is a mathematical construction of movement where the creative process and concept are transparent and happening in front of the the eyes of the audience.
Pavlos Kountouriotis performed for Ann Liv Young's show during the Gay Shame and Lesbian Weakness (GSLW). GSLW is the Annual Festival of Homosexual Misery makes its grand return on Gay Pride night.
Welcome to the Pleasuredome; a compulsory celebration for the post-queer precariat. There is No Alternative.
A young couple, an old bath tub, love and feathers. What could possibly go wrong?
A video dance by Kamilla Chomicz, featuring Pavlos Kountouriotis and Manon Avermaete.
This video was created during Pointe-to-Point program 2007 of the Asian Europe Foundation in Warsaw, Poland.
Pavlos Kountouriotis performed for Trisha Brown, her Floor of the Forest (1970) during the Documenta 12 Exhibition in Kassel.
Floor of The Forest is a minimalistic performance. This is performed in a twelve-foot by fourteen-foot pipe frame across which are tied ropes densely threaded with clothes - sleeves are woven beneath pant legs forming a solid rectangular surface. The audience is free to move around in the periphery of the grid as the performers dress and undress their way through this structure. A normally vertical activity performed horizontally and reshaped by the vertical pull of gravity.
A performance installation conceived, scored and directed by Ron Athey with automatic composition and music performance by Othon Mataragas. They where accompanied by 16 automatic writers, a piano, 6 typists, 4 editors, 1 reader, and a glossalalia chorus.
Performed by Ron Athey, Othon Mataragas, Sue Fox, Nina Whiteman, Pavlos Kountouriotis, Llewyn Maire, Teemu Metsala, Russell McEwan, Mark Greenwood, Nathan Jones, Roberta Hoffman/D'angelo, Michael Mayhew, Eleanor Byrne, Nick Kilby, Rachel Holmes, Alice Kemp, Luci Fiction, Rachel Parry, Barnes-Wynters Michael, Joey Hateley, Alexander Simmons, Jonathan McGrath, Peter Jacobs, George Arnett, Charlotte Rodgers, Joanna Brown, Agata Alcaniz, Phaedra Shanbaum, Roger Bygott, Olivier Richomme, Lewis Church
Event Crew : Lisa Newman, Rab McNab Martin, Ro Rubin-Mayhew, Jo Gewirtz, Lewis Church, Holly Johnson
In 2006 from the initiative of ASEF (foundation Asia - Europe) Paulina Wycichowska and Pavlos Kountouriotis were invited to the participation in the project "Pointe this Point". This piece is a part of their collaboration.
Mariella Greil revisits her Movement Monochromes for a Sweet and Tender Production in the National Theatre of Portugal. For this piece, she introduces three dancers whose location in time and space colours the monochromatic movements.
In "New Bodies for Invisible People", a group of performers enter an empty space to discover what is already there. Through their passage, they disclose their personal thoughts and motivations, interweaving the private and public spheres in an ever growing process of creation.
This project is a long term process of investigation and production which aims at the creation of different events ranging from installation to site specific performance. I use a set of small coloured cards as a starting point to create group relation in a specific space. Using them as markers, traces and construction/communication units, the performers engage in a complex network of relations, exploring concepts and ideas, such as alienation, property or change, to construct their personal and common space. Starting from this lightweight structure, I work with a group of people for about 5 days to develop the final object, which should always reflect a different approach to the starting materials and challenge its own format of presentation, exploring specific contexts and relations with the audience.
Its latest version was developed during the SKITe/Sweet & Tender Collaborations residency that took place in Porto and performed in the Fragments of Experience showing in Mosteiro de Sao Bento da Vitoria on the 13th of September 2008.
In 1992 Meg Stuart participated in a meeting for emerging choreographers organized by Association SKITe (other artists invited were Koen Augustijnen, Christine de Smedt, Hans Van den Broeck, Hahn Rowe, Caterina et Carlotta Sagna, Vera Mantero, Lila Mestre, Yolande Snaith, LiljanaZagorac, Goury, Thierry de Mey, Jerome Bel, Nuno Bizarro, Joao Fiadeiro, Benoit Lachambre, Cosmin Manolescu,Vera Mantero, Alain Platel, Franz Poelstra, Christian Rizzo, Meg Stuart, MarkTompkins, Hans Van den Broeck).
Association SKITe had also supported the development of Sweet and Tender Collaborations by hosting and co-producing the SKITe /Sweet & Tender Collaborations, PAF 2007. In 2008 SKITe supports again Sweet & Tender Collaborations by co-organizing and co co-curating SKITe/ Sweet and Tender Collaborations, Porto 2008.
In order to celebrate this historical link, Meg Stuart after invitation by Sweet and Tender, decided to revisit a piece she had created during the 1992 meeting. "Run" was remade for all Sweet and Tender artists and was presented at the National Theatre of Portugal.
Sweat The Movie was a production workshop with the intention to produce a film telling the story of a workshop for dancers and choreographers, filmmakers, set designers etc, taking place at ImPulsTanz 2008. All the participants functionned as the film team and as actors in the film and work with all the parameters of film making, thus also with marketing, product placement etc. The workshop addressed dance and choreographic practices through a foreign interface as means to de-territorialise what dance can be today. Can film production teach us something about our understanding of dance?