INK / Photos and Video © Courtesy of Dimitris Papaioannou
DIMITRIS
PAPAIOANNOU
INK
ATHENS
MILANO
ROME
SEOUL
MONTREAL
BUDAPEST
SADLER'S WELLS
LONDON
THEATRE DE LA VILLE
PARIS
Greek dancer, choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou is certainly the most inspirational contemporary dancer of our time, interweaving the body with visual art.
Papaioannou, in his latest site-specific dance performance INK, a duet performed by the choreographer with dancer Suka Horn. On stage, each creates a cannibalistic interdependence in a fantasy world. What we see is a black and grey world, angel and demons, Greek mythology, a lot of plastic, and a lot of water. The scene is constantly flooded with water, giving the piece its tempo and an inter-generational conversation with Pina Bausch’s epic work Vollmond.
“I created a show, which was born from a deep and personal emotional flow, an emotional state very different from my previous works” Dimitris Papaioannou
Who is the young man?
Our animal side, the irrational, what we deny about ourselves and do not want to see?
As time goes by, the scene gets increasingly elaborated, both visually and physically. A sensual and meticulously constructed love scene takes place, where the hunted creature becomes domesticated, and falls in love with its captor. Imminent disaster is in the air, Papaioannou loses control over his prey, and Horn comes out victorious, on top of a defeated master.
A review will be published shortly after the performance at the Theatre de la Ville, Paris.
INK / Theatre de la Ville, Paris (France)
13 - 15 May 2024
INK / Sadler's Wells, London (UK)
28 February - 2 March 2024
/ The Instigator
INK / Photos © Courtesy of Dimitris Papaioannou
Don’t let them tame you.' Isadora Duncan
'You were
once wild
"Centauri" by Cristian Cucco / Photo © Courtesy of Robert Fischer
CRISTIAN CUCCO
CENTAURI
GASTEIG HP8
MUNICH
Italian contemporary dancer Cristian Cucco has a ferocious energy. He divides his life between Munich and Milano, and currently performing “Centauri”, an outdoor dance performance, in collaboration with the Munich Philharmonic.
“Centauri” by Matteo Carvone and dramaturge Francesco Cocco, is a series of four mini pop-up performances for six dancers from Munich’s Indy scene, a new way of exploring public spaces in unique constellations. The performances take place at four different locations around the Gasteig HP8 Cultural Centre.
Centaurs are mythical creatures, half-horse-half-human creatures, with free spirits, galloping at full tilt through a boundless landscape. They embody the wild, irrepressible elemental force inherent in all of us. As warriors, they battle everything that is regarded as norms. “Centauri” celebrates the potency of identity, which we should not try to suppress, or hide away.
Late summer, Cristian Cucco will be part of a new production titled “VIRO”, a duo with Compagnia Abbondanza / Bertoni for the Oriente Occidente Festival in Rovento (Italy).
With Munich-based international jewellery designer, the sparkling Saskia Diez, he explores, just as the designer herself, the intimate relationship between jewellery and the body with sensual simplicity.
“Centauri” Cristian Cucco / Gasteig HP8, Munich (Germany)
25, 27, 30 April and 5 May 2024
Compagnia Abbondanza Bertoni / Oriente Occidente Festival Rovento (Italy)
3 - 10 September 2024
Saskia Diez / Munich (Germany)
/ The Instigator
Video © Courtesy of Pina Bausch Foundation
PINA
BAUSCH
THE RITE OF SPRING
SADLER'S WELLS
LONDON
At Sadler’s Wells London, the dancers of the contemporary dance company Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal, from various African countries delivered a shattering vision of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring with a devastating force.
“How would you dance if you knew you were going to die?”
It was the question that sparked Bausch’s imagination when she first created her choreography in 1975. The performance grabs you by the throat from the first moment and never slackens. For the latest creation, the Pina Bausch Foundation planned the piece with Senegal’s pioneering École des Sables, gathering 38 dancers from 14 different African countries who learned the piece verbatim from former members of Bausch’s company.
Before the performance starts, you will see a woman lying face down on a peat-covered stage. The day dawns into difficulty. The choreography is continually unexpected yet feels breathlessly inevitable. This cast, a tight community assembled from scratch, is immersed in both wrenchingly abstracted and realistic movement. Bare-chested men dash with jack-knife vigour between women shuddering uncontrollably in their slips. A sacrificial dress like a wound passed from body to body until one woman emerges from the throng.
The force of lead dancer Anique Ayiboe from Togo is electrifying as the sacrificial victim.
“In Africa, as well as in European cultures such as ancient Greece, it was quite usual to sacrifice young, female virgins to obtain something from the Gods” says Senegalese-French dancer Germaine Acogny. “For me, seeing The Rite of Spring highlighted historical, cultural similarities between Africa and Europe. I thought that if it were to be danced by a group of African dancers, it would bring a very special energy to the piece.”
It wasn’t until last year that Acogny was given the chance to bring her vision of an African Rite of Spring to life when her school in Senegal, École des Sables was asked by Bausch’s son to co-produce a program with The Pina Bausch Foundation and Sadler’s Wells.
“The dancers all came from very different cultures and technical backgrounds. It wasn’t necessarily going to be easy for them to learn Bausch’s choreography,” explains Acogny. “But when I saw the result of their hard work, energy and their capacity to learn, it confirmed what I had always thought: that although they are very different to Western styles, the traditional, African dances offer a very solid foundation, and enable dancers to adapt to new movements. It was simply amazing to see.”
In addition to the dance performance, the decision was made to film two run-throughs of The Rite of Spring before the premiere, one in École des Sables’ studio, the other on a Senegalese beach at sunset that latter became the film Dancing at Dusk. The dancers let their dresses flowing in the wind, sand sticking to their skin, and interwove the sound of lapping waves in the background, augmenting its elemental intensity.
“The digital performance is a celebration of African art and cross-cultural collaboration, feeling particularly relevant at a time when the world is fighting for the recognition of Black humanity.” said Acogny. “It’s important to make people feel that we could all enrich each other. We want to use dance to help everyone to get to understand each other. That way we will no longer be strangers.”
"The Rite of Spring" Pina Bausch / Sadler's Wells, London (UK)
7 - 11 June 2022
/ Zoltan Alexander
Video © Courtesy of Max Cookward
MAX
COOKWARD
CREATIVITY
IT'S WHAT MAKE US
V&A
LONDON
A new artistic collaboration was created with contemporary dancer Max Cookward, BBC Young Dancer Contemporary Finalist, and the V&A, titled Creativity. It’s What Makes Us.
The film takes us on a cinematic, whirlwind tour of the world’s largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts, and design. The South Kensington institution is transformed into a space of wonder and magic in the two-minute film.
“The director Georgia Hudson and myself were interested in bringing a wildness into the space that challenged the typical ways people move through galleries” explains Cookward.
The film opens with a shot of Cookward as a mannequin wearing Dilara Findikoglu’s tartan dress with silver charms and safety pins, and tells the story of a mannequin dancing through the galleries to a haunting soundtrack, encountering art, design and performance inside the museum. It is a boundless creativity within the museum walls that brings our hero to life, and with the other dancers step into a genderless fantasy that connects back to childhood.
Hudson's filmmaking is known for interrogating themes of identity, self-expression and youth culture. For this production, she is joined by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Seamus McGarvey as Director of Photography. Original choreography by Max Cookward, assisted by Magnus Westwell. Dance by Tania Dimbelolo, Iona McGuire, Pierre-Antoine Bardot and Emma Belabed, and an original soundtrack by Fredwave.
“I imagined how embodied versions of the static artworks might move, bringing to life the sensuality of the Greek God-like sculptures” Max Cookward
With the V&A free general admission policy, art, design and the museum itself is open to everyone.
Max Cookward / V&A, London (UK)
28 April 2022
/ The Instigator
Photos © Courtesy of Bobal Photography
MILAN
MAURER
THE HIDDEN MAN
BY PAL FRENAK
TRAFO
BUDAPEST
"Each animal has its own universe" Gilles Deleuze.
Freedom as a replacement for bondage. Content as opposed to form. Manifesting our innermost feelings.
In 2015, Hungarian-born Milan Maurer's first performance in contemporary dance was Birdie with Compagnie Pál Frenák. During his career, he has been awarded many times: won the Pro Talento Award, the Fülöp Viktor Scholarship and was chosen for the Best Young Talent of the Season in 2016, as well as the Best Performer in National and International Contemporary Comprehensive Arts Convention in 2019, and most importantly the Cross of Merit in 2022.
Beyond being a beautiful work about the masculine body, and the use of space as tools of a choreographic expression, the creation of choreographer Pál Frenák, The Hidden Men (Fiúk) is an immersion in the unconsciousness of boys and men. It holds up a mirror in front of audience, in which they will examine closely the archetypes of man, the "Macho”, the "Narcissus” and the "Hercules”.
Frenák alternately calls up male chauvinist violence, stupid pretentiousness and the balance of power that structures our interactions with others. He offers a radical vision, and probes male sexuality through its different aspects: its origins, as well as its unconscious sources.
The trio of ropes hanging down into the stage opens up a vertical dimension. The dancers free us from our earth-bound existence and show the way to an unattainable reality as they all desperately want to get to the top.
“The Hidden Man” (Fiúk) Milan Maurer / TRAFO, Budapest, (Hungary)
3 June 2023
“The Hidden Man” (Fiúk) Milan Maurer / TáncFest, Budapest, (Hungary)
18 May 2023
/ The Instigator
Photo © Courtesy of Laszlo Szito
PINA BAUSCH
NELKEN
SADLER'S WELLS
LONDON
Nelken (Carnation) is a signature piece in Pina Bausch, Tanztheater Wuppertal’s repertoire. At Sadler’s Wells, London, with a field of over 8000 pink carnations on stage standing upright, Nelken conveys a tragic and cruel view on the world, that is unfortunately even more valid today than 40 years ago. It is also a tender piece, overflowing with humanity and emotions that have profoundly touched the audiences all over the world.
“I hate carnations. They stink!” shouts on of the dancers, but again, you should never expect a Bausch dancer to be voiceless.
The dancers, male or female, wear pastel coloured silk dresses, others strict black suites. Bausch’s women are always chic in high heels, like her men. The men, who caper in cocktail dresses are then ordered back into suits and ties again.
Bausch’s style is built on gestures, emotions, power, dependence, and repetition. It is not dance, nor theatre, and certainly not linear, coherent narrative. Maybe it is both in a complicated, chaotic nostalgia. The production is bursting with full of deep emotions, and loving. Pain ends with an ultimate hope, at least, with an illusion, to let us believe there is still hope in humanity.
"Nelken" Pina Bausch / Sadler's Wells, London (UK)
14 - 22 February 2024
/ The Instigator
Photo © Courtesy of Nederlands Dans Theatre
NEDERLANDS
DANS
THEATRE
FIGURES IN EXTINCTION
GODS AND DOGS
LA RUTA
SADLER'S WELLS
LONDON
A rare opportunity to see the Nederlands Dans Theater presenting a trio of works at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, spanning generations, continents and contemporary issues in a UK premiere of their mind-bending performance.
FIGURES IN EXTINCTION
We are living in an age of extinction: of animals, of languages, of our connection with nature and even people. What to think when we witness violence in which we are both perpetrators and victims?
Choreographer Crystal Pite and director Simon McBurney reflect on their fears and hopes for the age we live in. In a major new collaboration from Nederlands Dans Theater and Complicité these world-renowned artists work together, drawing on a rich array of materials such as the sound of icecaps melting, tree roots growing, and the protests of climate change deniers.
GODS AND DOGS
Gods and Dogs is the 100th choreography Jiří Kylián created for Nederlands Dans Theater. This mysterious piece by the master choreographer visualizes the fine line between normality and abnormality. As he puts it: “Surely no positive developments can ever be accomplished without the help of a healthy portion of madness.” Gods and Dogs is referring to Kylián’s fascination for the beauty of what is left incomplete in life.
LA RUTA
On a dark, fog-shrouded stage, a street is at once a motorway, a lonely village lane and a forest path. Space and time are suspended. Argentinian choreographer Gabriela Carrizo combines modern dance with acrobatics and slapstick in La Ruta.
With her unusual, experimental style, Carrizo takes us into a parallel dream world that you can interpret into your own never-ending story. Be warned: she doesn’t let you go easily.
Nederlands Dans Theater / Sadler's Wells, London (UK)
19 – 22 April 2023
/ The Instigator
JUST PUBLISHED
PINA
BAUSCH
KONTAKTHOF
SADLER'S WELLS
LONDON
Her bleak vision changed the face of European dance. Like it, hate it, but there is no denial that anything is created by Pina Bausch is ART. The revival of the 1978s creation Kontakthof came back to Sadler’s Wells, London.
“I’m not interested in how people move, but what moves them” Pina Bausch
