Erotikon / Higher States, part 3
Kiriakos Hadjiioannou
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Introduction
A series of performative fragments that presents an ode to eros, or whatever remains of it. Vibrating between theory and lived experience, poetic language and the emancipated body, “erotikon / higher states 3” invites us to imagine eros differently.
A vaudeville manifesto on eros: a contemporary symposium whose inquiries can be danced.
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? Which social conventions does feminist and queer theory yearn to destroy so that eros reclaims its vital momentum?
Kiriakos Hadjiioannou poses pending questions concerning the diachronic nature of erotic phenomena.
The third installment of his choreographic body of work “Higher States” 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.
A multi-modal experience, an ‘ode’ to eros - or whatever remains of it.
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©Kostis Fokas
In what ways can dance speak of eros today?
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. Plato’s Symposium emphasizes the deep “theatricality” of philosophical thought and even today can provide motivation for us to approach the ideal, cognitive dimension of eros.
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 Cultural Centre 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.
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