In the world of centaurs and the legendary Minotaur. Dance Prague introduced a novelty by the Greek Papaioannou
It was an unforgettable show of imagination and creative fantasy. At the opening of the Summer Olympic Games in Greece in 2004 in Athens, in which puppet stylizations triumphantly paralyzed animated figures from local mythology, a fiery Olympic symbol ignited on a longer surface on the water surface.
It was then that the general public first encountered the work of the Greek choreographer and artist Dimitris Papaioannou, who directed the opening. Today, the 56-year-old native of Athens, who belongs to the top of contemporary dance theater, this Tuesday presented his new production Transverse Orientation to Dance Prague. This is the culmination of the first part of the festival, which is taking place this year due to a pandemic in a separate block in June and September.
The fascination with the elements and references to ancient Greek myths intertwine throughout Papaioannou’s work. It is difficult to define the art form with which it comes. He draws on his experience as an artist and comic book author, but works with excellent dancers and performers. He refined his extraordinary sense of stylization as an intern with the famous director Robert Wilson. His work can be included in the strong current of so-called physical theater or simply perceived it as surreal images created by dancers.
His novelty has now been seen by audiences on the New Stage of the Prague National Theater barely two weeks after its world premiere in Lyon. In Transverse Orientation we find other features of Papaioannou’s work. Strong stylization, any series of absurd and aesthetically refined loosely connected images full of symbols, provisions for Greek myths and the greatest inspirations in the visual arts. Vivaldi’s prudent and momentary music only seems to idealize it all.
The scene is laid out simply: a white wall across the entire width of the stage, on which a fluorescent lamp hangs. It rhythmizes the production – it flickers with a crack, it tends to fall off the wall; at any moment, the performers return to it to better attach and repair it. It acts as a permanent alienation in the background of the main events. It is constantly reminiscent of the instability between light and darkness.
The polarity permeates the whole work, especially through its other strange creatures: an abnormally tall slender figure accompanies a small strong, a woman and a man merging in an elongated work with a woman’s face and gender, centuries with centaurs, ie creators with human and animal characters.
There are images of the relativization of youth and old age, when a shuffling old obese woman turns into a girl in the cold. The image of birth is very impressive, when we look into the belly of pregnant girls, from which the intestinal mucus drains away, so that the contours of the newborn appear and the girl turns into a madonna with a child. And just as crucial is the picture of ruin and loss of reproductive ability, in which men are the genitals ripped out of the body and its new value is compared to bull feces.
Trailer from the production Transverse Orientation by Dimitris Papaioannou. | Video: Julian Mommert
Also in this work there are obvious references to Greek mythology, especially to the myth of the Minotaur, a bloodthirsty bull monster that lives in the darkness of the Cretan labyrinth. The huge puppet of the black bull dominates several key scenes. In the moments of the match with Thése, some of the performers become “blacks” – leading the puppet and are a part of it, but at the same time they are in an imaginary dialogue with it.
Scenes with a bull puppet look strong visually. The monster’s giant body clashes with a vulnerable naked man. At first it is a struggle, the subjugation of wild energy, the process of domestication and finally the gentle dialogue of the hero with a peaceful animal, which lickly and lovingly licks the body of its tamer. These are scenes with an abrasion of male sweat, sexual instinct, adrenaline and at the same time make-up beauty – for example, when a naked man saddles and triumphs over a bull.
Picture from the production Transverse Orientation. | Photo: Julian Mommert
The Minotaur motif keeps coming back. The monster, born out of the love of Queen Pasifae and the white bull, gives birth to male-female beings, and repeatedly and in various forms encounters the imaginary Thése. There is a reference to Thése’s victory with Ariadne’s sword and a thread motif that will help the hero escape from the labyrinth.
Places of disturbing to shocking alternation of naturally light-hearted comedic performances. Papaioanna likes to be inspired by black and white film grotesques. The opening scene seemed to fall out of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Characters with comically children taking off heads with clumsy Chaplin walking move around the stage and lie down with disobedient folding ladders.
At other times, the sharp light of the spotlight carves a white circle into the darkened scene, creating space for a small solo comedy number. A scene in which the performers balance on rotated polystyrene prisms then develops into unfettered children’s playfulness.
The production keeps the viewer in tense uncertainty. Papaioannou’s time often passes slowly. The motifs – for example, the construction of a mound made of polystyrene blocks, which is eventually demolished by clumsy builders – have been developing for a long time. The space is also relative: a girl pouring water from a bucket gradually drinks into the floor. It eventually bursts like the earth’s crust, revealing a lake beneath it.
Picture from the production Transverse Orientation. | Photo: Julian Mommert
The finale belongs to Papaioannou’s essential element, water. The floor, a while ago solid and solid, changing in the torn cliffs on the sides, on which a naked man sits in an aesthetic pose, watching the peaceful lake atmosphere with boulders. The image of the idealized beauty of the landscape is disturbed only by the figure with the mop, in order to clean up the illusion again for everyone. The show is over.
Transverse orientation is a series of unforgettable images: absurd, combining low and high, disgust with beauty, immersion in meditation with grotesque. Papaioannou’s world takes the viewer into a new reality that is far beyond what can be verified by reason.
The production
Dimitris Papaioannou: Transverse Orientation
(Organized by the Prague Dance Festival)
New Stage of the National Theater, Prague, premiere on June 15, reruns on June 16 and 17.