ALASKA

True to its commitment to supporting Greek choreographers, the Onassis Stegi is this year staging an Iris Karayan production. Step by measured step, the dancer-choreographer and her Zita company have blazed a trail that has included important waystages in Greece along with international honours that have presented this dynamic representative of contemporary Greek dance with new opportunities.

Karayan’s previous work has tackled subjects including the violence of human nature, the relationship between the individual and the group, the construction of movement along with its evolutionary process, and the exploration of action in space plus the traces it leaves behind.

In this new production, while placing her trust once again in a long-term associate, the cellist and composer of electronic music, Nikos Veliotis, she also proves herself open to new collaborations across the arts by inviting the art theorist, exhibition curator and author Sotiris Bahtsetzis to advise on the dramaturgy of her new choreography and the visual artist Yorgos Maraziotis to create its stage environment. Together with the Zita dance company, they experiment with the senses and the way in which the image in motion is perceived and comprehended.

Using their senses of touch, hearing and sight, five bodies move but never lose contact with one another, redefining their relationship with the others and their surroundings. This ‘common body’—meaning the feelings that produce thoughts, the images that create meanings and the experiences that are in a constant state of flux as they connect us to the material world—pose questions about our very identity. A key reference point for the work is the way in which the ongoing process which unites thought and feeling is made accessible to the viewer.