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Transverse Orientation

Dimitris Papaioannou

After the great success of The Great Tamer (2017) and Since She (2018), Dimitris Papaioannou is back at the Holland Festival with his new work Transverse Orientation (2021). As with all his work, the focus is on the human body, which is not just strong and beautiful but also curious and always looking for something. Referring to major themes from art history and Greek mythology, the director addresses questions about life in a light-hearted manner. In Transverse Orientation, the new generation turns against an enormous bull that symbolises a violent, antiquated power. The bull is killed, just like the mythical hero Theseus killed the Minotaur (half man, half bull) on Crete: in hopes of a better future. Still, Papaioannou admires and has compassion for the archetypes he symbolically reckons with: ‘They set the course of history and gave humans a direction’. With a great feel for composition, timing and sense of humour, Transverse Orientation is both an ode and a farewell to his ancestors.

dates

Thu June 24 2021 8:30 PM

Thu June 24 2021 10:30 PM

Fri June 25 2021 8:30 PM

Fri June 25 2021 10:30 PM

Sat June 26 2021 8:30 PM

Sat June 26 2021 10:30 PM

information

  • Duration of performance unknown (zonder pauze)

The focus is on the human body, which is never taken for granted in Dimitris Papaioannou’s work. Different dancers’ limbs find each other and together form a new body. The naked lower part of one dancer’s body forms a single figure together with another’s torso. A hand mimics a tongue. Dancers move like animals, like insects or like divine mythical creatures. They resemble statues and echo compositions of well-known paintings. Compositions Papaioannou’s pieces reflect his early career as a painter. He does not refer to his work as choreographies but rather as compositions.

The focus is on the human body, which is never taken for granted in Dimitris Papaioannou’s work. Different dancers’ limbs find each other and together form a new body. The naked lower part of one dancer’s body forms a single figure together with another’s torso. A hand mimics a tongue. Dancers move like animals, like insects or like divine mythical creatures. They resemble statues and echo compositions of well-known paintings. Compositions Papaioannou’s pieces reflect his early career as a painter. He does not refer to his work as choreographies but rather as compositions.

His work in recent years includes the trilogy Primal Matter (2012), Still Life (2014), The Great Tamer (2017), and also Since She (2018), the latter two of which featured at the Holland Festival previously, as well as the video installation of Inside (2011). With vividly spot-lit figures against a dark background, the scenography resembles the chiaroscuro style of painting of Goya, Rembrandt and Caravaggio. In The Great Tamer, Rembrandt’s painting The Anatomy Lesson was easy to recognise. For Transverse Orientation, Papaioannou chose to work with a white background for the first time since Primal Matter (2012). This offers different possibilities, like the use of colour and the composition of shadows. The new scenography refers to the work of an important example for Papaioannou, the American theatre director Robert Wilson. Spontaneous creation For Transverse Orientation, Papaioannou put together an international cast for the first time. More than five hundred dancers from around the world auditioned. The eight dancers who made the final selection worked closely with Papaioannou and played an active part in the playful, intuitive creative process, which the director himself jokingly describes as ‘a nuthouse’ – always on the edge of ridiculousness and meaning. The New York Times aptly described the dancers in Papaioannou’s work as ‘expert puppeteers of themselves’. While it might seem like the director painstakingly prepares everything in advance, he stresses that this is not the case: ‘My works evolve during rehearsal, they are not composed beforehand. I prepare material only in order to kick-start the process – and most of the time, I throw it out. I’ve resolved to not know what the outcome will be ahead of time, to trust in the process. In the end, if I’m lucky, the work reveals itself, and I try to understand it, to perfect it. I reserve the right to change it all at the last moment’. Light beauty Though his work always touches on serious existential questions of life, Papaioannou – who once made comics as well as paintings – above all aims at lightness within those themes. The title Transverse Orientation refers to the natural behaviour of moths, which use a distant light source to orient themselves, while also referring to a poetic quote from the Persian philosopher Rumi: ‘Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle’. According to a Sufi parable, the moth only truly gets to know the light by being consumed by it. Similarly, humans also only find enlightenment by disappearing in it. On stage, the search for a meaningful life is expressed through dancers who use ladders to climb towards a source of light. Or through a man supported by other men, moving like an insect up a wall towards the light. This results in a great many vivid scenes, which are at the same time beautiful, funny, or disturbing. Beauty is never heavy in Papaioannou’s work. He says: ‘I look at traditional beauty with irony to find its true beauty inside’. It turns out to be light and humorous.

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credits

concept Dimitris Papaioannou cover image Dimitris Papaioannou direction Dimitris Papaioannou cast Damiano Ottavio Bigi, Šuka Horn, Jan Möllmer, Breanna O’Mara, Tina Papanikolaou, Łukasz Przytarski, Christos Strinopoulos, Michalis Theophanous music Antonio Vivaldi stage design Tina Tzoka & Loukas Bakas sound design Coti K. costumes Aggelos Mendis collaborative lighting designer Stephanos Droussiotis music supervisor Stephanos Droussiotis sculptures Nectarios Dionysatos sculptures, special constructions, props Nectarios Dionysatos props Nectarios Dionysatos, Eva Tsambasi mechanical inventions Dimitris Korres creative production Tina Papanikolaou executive producer Tina Papanikolaou, 2WORKS in samenwerking met POLYPLANITY Productions direction assistant Tina Papanikolaou assistant direction, rehearsal direction Pavlina Andriopoulou, Drossos Skotis assistant to the set designers production assistant assistant to the sound composer Martha Kapazoglou costumes assistent Aella Tsilikopoulou special constructions and props assistant Eva Tsambasi photography Julian Mommert cinematography Julian Mommert technical manager Manolis Vitsaxakis assistant to the technical director Marios Karaolis stage manager David Blouin sound technician David Blouin stage manager, sound engineer, props constructions David Blouin props master production assistant lighting programmer Stephanos Droussiotis costume department Litsa Moumouri, Efi Karantasiou, Islam Kazi stage technicians Kostas Kakoulidis, Evgenios Anastopoulos, Panos Koutsoumanis lighting constructions Miltos Athanasiou silicone baby made by Joanna Bobrzynska-Gomes props team Natalia Fragkathoula, Marilena Kalaitzantonaki, Timothy Laskaratos, Anastasis Meletis, Antonis Vassilakis executive production associate Vicky Strataki executive production assistant Kali Kavvatha props production manager Pavlina Andriopoulou international affairs Julian Mommert international relations, communications manager Julian Mommert production Onassis Stegi, Grec Festival de Barcelona, New Vision Arts Festival - Hong Kong, Holland Festival, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, Saitama Arts Theatre, Teatro Municipal do Porto, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, Biennale de la Danse de Lyon, Dance Umbrella, Sadler’s Wells, Toronto Luminato Festival, TO Live, ROHM Theatre Kyoto, Théâtre du Châtelet, Théâtre de la Ville–Paris, Stanford Live, Stanford University, Festival d’Avignon, Fondazione Campania dei Festival – Napoli Teatro Festival Italia with the support of Festival Aperto, Festival de Otoño de la Comunidad de Madrid, National Arts Centre - Ottawa, New Baltic Dance Festival, ONE DANCE WEEK Festival, P.P. Culture Enterprises Ltd, TANEC PRAHA International Dance Festival, Teatro della Pergola – Firenze, Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale, TorinoDanza, Hellerau European Center for the Arts Dresden funded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports

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