If I try to take a look back at the process till now, the end of the second month of research and preparation for the second year of my Master's degree, I will have to share my experiences, goals, conclusions and thoughts of mine.
Firstly the question "What is Home?" was born during my first year, based on my personal concerns in connection with a broader social situation. We are living in a time where millions of homeless people, refugees, immigrants have to fight daily for their lives and their dignity, as they have lost their homes. I, as well, being alive at the era of globalization, in a span of ten days I can be in three different places because of the nature of my job. This makes me seek for temporary shelters, places to sleep. This is how I started asking for the obvious (as many people told me during the process) question of "What is home?".
If I want this concept to be the subject of my work on stage, what do I have to say and how am I going to express myself?
The first year was filled with research through bibliography, images, sounds, people. My initial step was to search everywhere for the answer, the definition, the meaning. I collected songs, instrumentals, pictures, poems, theory that were either related to my research subject or had an element that for me was deeply connected with what I may consider home. I also collected the answers of various people on the question of "What is Home?".
In spring, I had already accumulated a "chest" full of possible definitions, hues, potential timbres and meanings of the word "Home".
I am always between the dance and the theater trying to figure a way to create an associative theatric script, which will be expressed through movement. This goal ,in conjuction with my fundamental principle of my own artistic identity, is what set the way I will manage and use all this material.
I worked in the studio by myself, with friends that were dancers and with friends that were not. We discussed how we can translate the words in movement, words that come straight out of my "chest". I had accumulated numerous words and I was expecting them to turn into moves according to their rythm, vocalization, musicality and their meaning.
And like that I had my first round of material.
And like that a second thought came to my mind that revealed a personal deeply felt need.
Yes, I do have some material.
But... where am I in there?
How will I filter out all these words so I can create my script?
How do I narrate with the body?
What is my personal movement and how do I narrate with it?
Are the mechanisms that create movement a personal matter?
How am I going to narrate a story?
What is my own home as a dancer?
What is my identity?
What is my home?
Thus, during the summer of 2018 I dedicated my time searching how I will do my research on my questions so I can create a creative result.
My personal research on movement was done through the already existing kinetic language with improvisation and research tools. I have to deeply understand my movement, so I can be able to lead another dancer, and create a kinetic composition.
Then I proceeded to the practical part. I came in contact with the best dance school in Greece, specialized in classical ballet, a dance with a 600 year old kinetic alphabet with a concrete and specific aesthetic. So I started attending this dance school, the Greek National Opera, simultaneously with my Master's degree. I am not a classical ballet dancer, and I actually started dancing at 24. I studied professional dance but I majored in modern dance, so I did not have the chance to delve deeply in classical academic culture. I thought that studying more thoroughly classical ballet would help me with my research process.
While I am trying, as an improviser and a creator, to articulate my own speech, I start to feel the significance to elaborate on a script - a code and a language through which thousands of people have conversed and communicated. This language is modern, timeless, classic. I got accepted in the dance school, something that made me very happy, as it led the way to my research to reach even deeper and become more practical and experiential.
I also got to discuss with Linda Kapetanea and get a better idea of the fighting monkey technique and its tools, as it is part of my research for the evolution of the kinetic perception and the mechanisms behind movement. Linda gladly accepted my proposal and became my artistic couch. So in October started the additional research fragment that deals with the question "What is home?".
What is my home as a dancer?
What is my personal kinetic identity?
How can I develop the articulation, the dialect and the voice beyond words?
During my daily ballet classes at the Greek National Opera, I keep notes and try to fully comprehend how the mechanisms behind movement are being used to the articulation and the creation of this specific aesthetic dialect. Weekly, following the notes and the research, I use the tools from the fighting monkey techique in the studio and I explore the same fundamental principle with different ways.
For example, if I am working for a week or even a month with the mechanism of an outside turn of the hip ( a basic of ballet), I use the fighting monkey tools to research further the movement on the hip region and the effect that it has on the other parts of the body.
Some other day, I may focus on movement in regards to space, and how in ballet we always move in this square. I process the information in the studio and with the fighting monkey tool, where wooden tiles are being placed vertically on the ground, and I move freely but always with respect to them, constantly transfering my weight from one leg to the other.
Also the use of the toolkit is extremely important. This toolkit is a system of tools which are provided by Caroline Ribbers, which help me to familiarize the process of the classical ballet class. Due to the fact that I chose to use a kinetic dialect that I am not comfortable with, as I am not familiar with it, for my research, I try to deeply understand it everyday, so I will be able to use it in its full potential. So how do I gain ownership on something that I am not familiar with?
Caroline, Faculty teacher at Fontys University and a dance artist, is doing her PhD on how somatics help with the process of the kinetic self-learning in a technical or a kinetic dance method. Caroline and I get in contact through e-mail or skype, where she provides me with toolkits and research ways and on my part I give her feedback on my daily practice, where I follow the sensing process.
The research part has begun.
My research is in connection with ballet while trying to get familiar with it. This helps me understand what my own identity is.
This trip is extremely interesting, as I realize there is a gradual preference to mechanisms that I feel familiar with and the research-kinetic-compositional tools. I am focusing in : the flow, the spiral, the fluid movement in the body, the connection of gaze-space, the gravity, the core as center.
As I sort out my tools, I shape my tasks and the methods that I will use to work with the dancers. I will create a kinetic alphabet and material for my final choreography.
The final choreography is the "answer" to the question "What is home?", or to be more specific, it will be an attempt to express a thought on the concept of Home.
I now consider our art as a continuous journey, through which we research the phenomenon of existence and coexistence and sometimes, with our own body we explore the laws and mechanisms tha consist the way that the nature - world around us works, part of which we are too.
At the same time, in connection with my overall research, I have concluded in three final scripts, that I will be using them as a sound score that my final creation will follow. Those scripts were selected through the research I did last year; a poem, a choral and a set of answers on the question "What is Home?".
I have decided that the structure of the choreography will be a group of people that move as a choral. The choral moves under the sound of the scripts, or under fragments of sounds and words derived from the scripts. Everything audible is being created live on stage by the performers. The scripts are voiced by the performers on stage while they dance. During this stage, I research how this text will get structured in a way that at the end there will be a final audio score created. This is the stage where I am currently.
In Greek National Opera I attend a repertoire class, where currently we are working on Pina Baush's choreography "Rite of Spring". As I am working on this choreo, I study the codes and the methods of this amazing choreographer and I knowingly allow myself to be influenced. I feel her ways familiar, even deeply personal, as they are highly connected with the emotion, the soul, without exaggerations and overdramatization. They are simple and full of substance, something that I am very affected and moved by.
In my blog I present fragments and moments of my research and practices, data that I collect and archive, points of the process I find myself in at the given time and small temporary results that are derived from movement or/and the process of creation.
I cite quotes, small realizations, conclusions, reflections, lyrics and sayings.
This is how I share with you my journey and the ways that this journey will lead me to record and write, narrate and dance a poem titled after the word HOME.
Firstly the question "What is Home?" was born during my first year, based on my personal concerns in connection with a broader social situation. We are living in a time where millions of homeless people, refugees, immigrants have to fight daily for their lives and their dignity, as they have lost their homes. I, as well, being alive at the era of globalization, in a span of ten days I can be in three different places because of the nature of my job. This makes me seek for temporary shelters, places to sleep. This is how I started asking for the obvious (as many people told me during the process) question of "What is home?".
If I want this concept to be the subject of my work on stage, what do I have to say and how am I going to express myself?
The first year was filled with research through bibliography, images, sounds, people. My initial step was to search everywhere for the answer, the definition, the meaning. I collected songs, instrumentals, pictures, poems, theory that were either related to my research subject or had an element that for me was deeply connected with what I may consider home. I also collected the answers of various people on the question of "What is Home?".
In spring, I had already accumulated a "chest" full of possible definitions, hues, potential timbres and meanings of the word "Home".
I am always between the dance and the theater trying to figure a way to create an associative theatric script, which will be expressed through movement. This goal ,in conjuction with my fundamental principle of my own artistic identity, is what set the way I will manage and use all this material.
I worked in the studio by myself, with friends that were dancers and with friends that were not. We discussed how we can translate the words in movement, words that come straight out of my "chest". I had accumulated numerous words and I was expecting them to turn into moves according to their rythm, vocalization, musicality and their meaning.
And like that I had my first round of material.
And like that a second thought came to my mind that revealed a personal deeply felt need.
Yes, I do have some material.
But... where am I in there?
How will I filter out all these words so I can create my script?
How do I narrate with the body?
What is my personal movement and how do I narrate with it?
Are the mechanisms that create movement a personal matter?
How am I going to narrate a story?
What is my own home as a dancer?
What is my identity?
What is my home?
Thus, during the summer of 2018 I dedicated my time searching how I will do my research on my questions so I can create a creative result.
My personal research on movement was done through the already existing kinetic language with improvisation and research tools. I have to deeply understand my movement, so I can be able to lead another dancer, and create a kinetic composition.
While I am trying, as an improviser and a creator, to articulate my own speech, I start to feel the significance to elaborate on a script - a code and a language through which thousands of people have conversed and communicated. This language is modern, timeless, classic. I got accepted in the dance school, something that made me very happy, as it led the way to my research to reach even deeper and become more practical and experiential.
I also got to discuss with Linda Kapetanea and get a better idea of the fighting monkey technique and its tools, as it is part of my research for the evolution of the kinetic perception and the mechanisms behind movement. Linda gladly accepted my proposal and became my artistic couch. So in October started the additional research fragment that deals with the question "What is home?".
What is my home as a dancer?
What is my personal kinetic identity?
How can I develop the articulation, the dialect and the voice beyond words?
During my daily ballet classes at the Greek National Opera, I keep notes and try to fully comprehend how the mechanisms behind movement are being used to the articulation and the creation of this specific aesthetic dialect. Weekly, following the notes and the research, I use the tools from the fighting monkey techique in the studio and I explore the same fundamental principle with different ways.
For example, if I am working for a week or even a month with the mechanism of an outside turn of the hip ( a basic of ballet), I use the fighting monkey tools to research further the movement on the hip region and the effect that it has on the other parts of the body.
Also the use of the toolkit is extremely important. This toolkit is a system of tools which are provided by Caroline Ribbers, which help me to familiarize the process of the classical ballet class. Due to the fact that I chose to use a kinetic dialect that I am not comfortable with, as I am not familiar with it, for my research, I try to deeply understand it everyday, so I will be able to use it in its full potential. So how do I gain ownership on something that I am not familiar with?
Caroline, Faculty teacher at Fontys University and a dance artist, is doing her PhD on how somatics help with the process of the kinetic self-learning in a technical or a kinetic dance method. Caroline and I get in contact through e-mail or skype, where she provides me with toolkits and research ways and on my part I give her feedback on my daily practice, where I follow the sensing process.
The research part has begun.
My research is in connection with ballet while trying to get familiar with it. This helps me understand what my own identity is.
This trip is extremely interesting, as I realize there is a gradual preference to mechanisms that I feel familiar with and the research-kinetic-compositional tools. I am focusing in : the flow, the spiral, the fluid movement in the body, the connection of gaze-space, the gravity, the core as center.
As I sort out my tools, I shape my tasks and the methods that I will use to work with the dancers. I will create a kinetic alphabet and material for my final choreography.
The final choreography is the "answer" to the question "What is home?", or to be more specific, it will be an attempt to express a thought on the concept of Home.
I now consider our art as a continuous journey, through which we research the phenomenon of existence and coexistence and sometimes, with our own body we explore the laws and mechanisms tha consist the way that the nature - world around us works, part of which we are too.
At the same time, in connection with my overall research, I have concluded in three final scripts, that I will be using them as a sound score that my final creation will follow. Those scripts were selected through the research I did last year; a poem, a choral and a set of answers on the question "What is Home?".
I have decided that the structure of the choreography will be a group of people that move as a choral. The choral moves under the sound of the scripts, or under fragments of sounds and words derived from the scripts. Everything audible is being created live on stage by the performers. The scripts are voiced by the performers on stage while they dance. During this stage, I research how this text will get structured in a way that at the end there will be a final audio score created. This is the stage where I am currently.
In Greek National Opera I attend a repertoire class, where currently we are working on Pina Baush's choreography "Rite of Spring". As I am working on this choreo, I study the codes and the methods of this amazing choreographer and I knowingly allow myself to be influenced. I feel her ways familiar, even deeply personal, as they are highly connected with the emotion, the soul, without exaggerations and overdramatization. They are simple and full of substance, something that I am very affected and moved by.
In my blog I present fragments and moments of my research and practices, data that I collect and archive, points of the process I find myself in at the given time and small temporary results that are derived from movement or/and the process of creation.
I cite quotes, small realizations, conclusions, reflections, lyrics and sayings.
This is how I share with you my journey and the ways that this journey will lead me to record and write, narrate and dance a poem titled after the word HOME.
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