Pharmacist or Balloonist

As a choreographer and dancer, Elpida Orfanidou has a peculiar, unconventional relationship with dancing. One might say that this relationship is constantly nurtured and enriched by other domains, like the cinema and archetypal idols in the case of the performance Elpid’Arc (February 2014, Onassis Stegi, 1stFestival of Young Choreographers) or her own professional background as a pharmacist in her most recent work “Pharmacist or Balloonist” with the subtitle “a choreographic herbal pharmacy”.

But what might link pharmacy to choreography? Where do these two very discrete realms meet? And if they actually intersect and feed off each other, what is it that they eventually produce?

Orfanidou, along with a motley group of “assistants” and “guest stars”, presents on stage a ritual where alchemy and theatricality blend, inviting the audience to ignore established conventions. As she says, the aim of the undertaking is to “choreograph confusion”, i.e. to find ways to cure human toil of the bane of productivity, spontaneity, and the stereotypes of creative inspiration. In this dialogic laboratory of concocting “choreographic remedies”, where dance, music, words and herbs blend, the spectator becomes “healer and healed”, rethinking the artistic act itself. “Pharmacist or Balloonist”, playing with the elixir of inspiration and the poison of failure, tries out prescriptions, prayers, incantations and other “preparations”, so that time can once more become the “healer” and an instrument of therapy at the disposal of every participant.