For the season 2023-2024 I was invited as a guest mentor at the Onassis Stegi, by the Stegi dramaturg, Iliana Dimadi. This involved new productions in the frame of Onassis Dance Days (ODD24) along with Damien Jalet and Christian Rizzo, and in theatre. It has been a great honour to be invited to offer dramaturgical input employing body/word Performance Writing.
Υiannis Panagopoulos‘ Heatwave was a theatre production based on short stories by Vivian Stergiou. Yiannis is a very inspired and caring theatre director, with amazing collaborators and most interesting working processes. Our meetings expanded throughout the initial stages up to the dress rehearsal, focusing on multimediality, hybridity, transmediation and collective creation processes. A rare combination of artistic and collaborative value.
All of my love, was Ioanna Paraskevopoulou‘s new choreographic work. We share a profound interest in sound, its practicalities and nuances. On such a sonic trajectory, we explored how sound constitutes a language itself, how this medium carries corporealities and movement through space and time, and the dramaturgical processes it opens up. A delicate and subtly fierce piece, I am so happy I was part of its universe.
Panos Malactos‘ We All Need Therapy is a raw and extremely sensitive solo blurring the boundaries of “dance, performance, theater, rave, confession, and group therapy”. While I had met the creative team briefly in the past in Cyprus, we had never collaborated, let alone for such a piece. I hold a special place for the clarity, care and artistic exploration during the process, and how Panos and his team made me part of their journey.
Mentoring is a widely used term. To me it is about the non hierarchical, caring exchange of practices and abundance of viewpoints. Collaboration with established and emerging artists in such demanding frames is a very rewarding challenge when it goes as it went with these specific people. I am thankful to Stegi for inviting me as a guest mentor, and the artists and their groups for their generosity in opening up their creative processes, careful clarity and mutual respect of our practices.
Thank you EveryBody * ~
photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou, Onassis Dance Days 2024, Panos Malactos’ “WE_ALL_NEED_THERAPY” courtesy of the choreographer