Dramaturg's Note

Two basic components are clearly discernible in Christos Papadopoulos’ choreographic research. The first pertains to the spatiality of the body – the way the body becomes a carrier of the perception of the space it inhabits, positioning us actively and consciously in the world. The second deals with the insistence on a kinetic pattern, so that the course of time can acquire a different duration – to move from the juxtaposition of moments to a unified, integrated temporal cosmos. Still, despite the focus of performing on the here and now, which expands through the function of repetition, the choreographer’s wish is to free our eye from the compulsion of sensationalism. One might say that his quest is for a sort of minimal discipline, the infinitude that realizes itself in the human being and the aggregate that surrounds him.

This intensity in observing the things that surround us, as when we find ourselves in nature and are bewitched by the phenomena that make up its cosmos, cannot be quantified. The act of seeing carries no weight unless it is linked to the emergence of a specific inner landscape, with the personal appropriation of space. So too, in this specific choreography, the body renders the diversity of a world visible through the imperceptible gradation of movement, to ultimately free us from the finiteness of the stage. What is more, the stage is not merely the surface on which movement takes place; for the choreographer, it is a spatial condition of introspection, a malleable material that seeks to emulate the enchantment exerted upon us by the immensity of the celestial sphere. Similarly, the approach of the other implies a rapport that is not exhausted in proximity but diffused in the incalculable, fundamental difference of the other, transforming space to a locus of coexistence.

—Tassos Koukoutas