MAINSTAGE

For her latest project, "MAINSTAGE", Elena Antoniou presents a performance that re-examines and deconstructs existing spatio-theatrical conventions, calling upon those present to form living connections with her art in spite of its intangible and ephemeral nature. Her aim is to overturn deep-seated hierarchies that order viewer/performer interaction, and to venture a shift in the ways staged experience is viewed more generally.

While dance has been trying to jump beyond both the staged environment and entrenched representations of the body since the 1970s, these approaches are being intensely reformulated in the present day. Artists such as Elena Antoniou are reinventing the very meaning of an experience that moves viewers – in both the physical and emotional sense – and encourages them to see beyond the obvious. This liberation of the gaze also signifies a shift towards experiences perceived by the body in its totality.

Elena Antoniou loved rhythm and dance ever since she was a child. In an interview, she notes that one of her dearest childhood memories involves her and her sister performing rhythmic gymnastics routines in the street. But only when their father was away – with him they preferred to play football.

“Seeking Pina’s gaze…” Quite beyond her admiration for the legendary German choreographer, Elena Antoniou would like – in a make-believe meeting with Pina Bausch – to sit directly opposite her and look into her eyes, to watch her at work, to study the ways in which she conveyed, or rather engendered dance in the bodies of her performers.

The eight-hour journey Elena Antoniou presented at the Benaki Museum as part of the AS ONE project (a Marina Abramovic Institute collaboration with NEON) brought to mind journeys taken by millions of people across the globe, all of them setting out in search of a new start. Exhaustion, failure, repetition, silence and immobility are just some of the elements this young choreographer and performer wanted to pit herself against, in her own pursuit of an inward journey into unexplored depths of the self.