March 20–21, 2021
Dance and the body on screen. On March 20 and 21, Onassis Stegi will be presenting the first edition of its New Choreographers Festival to have been created specially to live online. For two days, we’ll be pressing pause on quarantine to feel the pulse of young artists – in motion, with emotion, and back in motion once more. ONC 8 is stepping off the stage to connect with audiences in the only place we can currently be “together”: online, via the Onassis Foundation YouTube Channel.
Taking “we’re here, dancing away” as their rallying cry, a new generation of artists are presenting works created over the last two months that use movement to record the present moment and our current situation, giving us their takes on everything we’re thinking, feeling, and going through. And because there are many voices that need to be heard right now, this year’s festival consists of eleven new arts projects, all of which sprang from an open call inviting artists to create original works using digital means.
Green pitches, shots at goal, passes, tackles, and eleven sweat-drenched soccer shirts (Stereo Nero Dance Co., 442, or A Game Without Score). Ten video portraits that lie on the border between the grand and the grotesque, inspired by a dreaming dog (Anna Papathanasiou, Axel’s Just Dreaming). A cooking show springing from 20 ingredients, 20 choreographies, and 20 Instagram posts (Nadi Gogoulou, The Cooking-with-Nadi Show). A Zoom meeting between human and post-human creatures (Irini Kalaitzidi, yaGrid). An electropop manifesto on saving the world (ody icons, YES HALLO HI). A website that’s an interactive, choreographed map of Athens in the time of the pandemic (Myrto Delimichali and Stathis Doganis, Pose_Transpose). A gender-fluid 19-year-old dances in red boots (Vasilis Vilaras, Red Riding Shoes). A 360-degree roving performance along the River Ilissos’ subterranean course (Natasha Sarantopoulou, ILISSOS / limbo eξótica). A lecture-performance taking on extreme dance spectacles that have long been lost (Konstantinos Papanikolaou, The Diving Horse and Other Mythologies). The creation of foley soundtracks using bodily acts (Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, All She Likes Is Popping Bubble Wrap). Six trips to the very edges of surrealism and political discourse (The Besuch Team, Besuch). Eleven new works that are all choreographing Athens, Greece, and the entire world in this strange year that is 2021.
As the curators of the festival—Iliana Dimadi, Konstantinos Tzathas, and Steriani Tsintziloni—note: “For the first time ever, Onassis Stegi’s most ‘physical’ festival will be happening in ways that are entirely digital. Eleven original choreographic works – liberated from notions of ‘pop’ versus ‘high art’, and with a particular soft spot for humor, the absurd, and the unexpected—will all be premiering on YouTube, Instagram, and online. Everything from coming-of-age dance shorts to music videos and from dance-cookery lessons to roving performances, filmed works, interactive maps, texts and images, stick figures, studio visits, and performative talks.
Filmmakers, scientists, programmers, digital media artists, and even YouTubers, influencers, and bloggers all now collaborate closely with choreographers. While not all artists have turned into tech-freaks overnight, more than a few are experimenting with artificial intelligence and working with interfaces, touch sensors, and GoPro cameras, as well as chat rooms, selfies, and social media stories, thus digitally (and otherwise) expanding the hybrid and groundbreaking world of contemporary dance.
Fully aware of the contradictions and functions artists are being forced to face and take on in this time of pandemic-induced suspended animation and digital ferment, the form of this year’s festival is not forced by the impossibility of presenting works live but rather driven by a constant of our own devising. Last spring, we created a digital time capsule capturing the ‘here and now’—the ‘ENTER’ series. And now we’re welcoming key representatives of a new generation of artists, at work in the Greek contemporary dance scene, onto our digital stage.”
