Erotikon / Higher States, Part 3

Tough times for falling in love! How have our erotic and sexual selves been transformed by the contemporary environment of imagification and new modes for mediating human communication? To what extent has our understanding of love changed in an era of social media and dating apps? Can we still imagine alternatives, or have we become entirely reconciled to the versions of eros that saturate the media? Kiriakos Hadjiioannou poses pending questions concerning the diachronic nature of erotic phenomena on his third installment of his choreographic body of work Erotikon / Higher States, part 3, from 18th to 20th January at Onassis Stegi.

On this piece, the choreographer envisions a contemporary symposium devoted to eros. Using a series of analytical tools and methods, such as song, philosophical discourse, movement and gesture, Hadjiioannou attempts to construct an erotic meta-vocabulary, a language that can give physical shape to unexplored aspects in the field of everyday human relationships.

Credits

Concept: Kiriakos Hadjiioannou, in collaboration with Margarita Tsomou
Direction, Choreography: Kiriakos Hadjiioannou
Created with and Performed by: Kiriakos Hadjiioannou, Mickey Mahar, Maria Sideri, Nancy Stamatopoulou
Music and Sound Composition: Maria Sideri, in collaboration with Orestes Benekas
Set Design: Urs August Steiner
Light Design: Nyssos Vasilopoulos
Costumes: Antibodies
Dramaturgy, Text Editing: Anastasios Koukoutas, Margarita Tsomou
Œil Exterieur: Myrto Grapsa, Bernhard Siebert
Voice Coaching: Yiannis Vryzakis
Feldenkrais Method Instructor: Marilena Petridou
Photos: Kostis Fokas
Assistant to the Production: Katerina Drakopoulou
Production Management: Stelios Georgalis

Produced by: Onassis Stegi

Partner: Tanzhaus Zürich

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Philosophy has always had a tense relationship with the phenomenon of eros. On the one hand was its romantic conception, and on the other its philosophical dimension, as an ideal place of encounter with the Other.

Can we still speak of eros in this day and age? What possibilities or silent social resistances are expressed through the topic of eros? “Erotikon” imagines a broad spectrum of meanings for eros and love, presenting personal and intimate experiences, calling on memories, offering moments of consolation. Its creators imagine a sort of “Manifesto of eros in troubled times”— which, drawing on Roland Barthes’ "Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse", uses bodies and music to construct a contemporary vocabulary of love: “heart,” “body,” “presence,” “dependence,” “insanity,” “jealousy,” “sex,” “suicide,” “depression,” “pain” and so on.

Kiriakos Hadjiioannou has appeared at the Onassis Stegi before, at the 2nd Young Choreographers Festival in 2015, with the work Or Who Owns the World. That performance was based on the 1932 German political film "Kuhle Wampe", with a screenplay by Bertolt Brecht, directed by Slatan Dudow and with music by Hanns Eisler. Both the theme of the film and its adaptation for stage treat pointed social problems and issues, trying to give a substantive answer to the question of how contemporary political action and thought take shape in artistic practice.

Kiriakos Hadjiioannou graduated from the State School of Dance, Athens and holds a masters degree in choreography and performance from the Department of Theatrical Studies at the University of Giessen (Germany). A multidisciplinary artist, he divides his time between teaching, research and choreography. His works combine elements from various artistic realms, transgressing monolithic, inflexible understandings of the art of dance, as in his triptych "Higher States", which treats transcendent mental states and which was awarded the June Johnson Dance Prize (specifically for “Hyperion,” "Higher States, part 2").

Beyond his collaborations with educational institutions abroad (La Manufacture - Haute école des arts de la scène, Lausanne) and the important support he receives from the Swiss Arts Council ProHelvetia for his choreographic research, Hadjiioannou continues to experiment as a performance artist, both in his own works and in collaborations with visual artists, cinematographers and other choreographers of international repute. He then incorporates these experiences and experimentations into his own writing, which at times tends toward cinematographic and artistic performance (“Or Who Owns the World”) and sometimes toward a kind of futuristic ritual, which aims to uncover repressed or unknown aspects of physicality.