New texts on dance: "Becoming with Animal"

Riveting and atmospheric, the work “Becoming With Animal” seems to have sprung from the writings of Haruki Murakami. From the very start, it constructs a state of dark realism where the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, the human and the bestial, are blurred. Choreographer Iro Vasalou is a compelling performer in this solo piece that brings a woman’s transformation into an animal to the stage, tracing its various phases. But is it a transformation? Or is it a dive into existing animal instincts? Alone, set inside a circle of spectators, she manages to create an agonizing atmosphere that begins with a ritual act, moves on to her taking the place of becoming a hunter, inviting audience members to take part in her experiment, and ends with her returning to the here and now, as if she has just extricated herself from ecstasy, empowered and transformed.

It is a powerful solo in which the performer experiments with her body in an exploration of identities that cast doubt on social norms. Its bestial energy, repetitive nature, and physically exhausting demands highlight not only the grueling process that is transformation, but also the difficulties that every change entails.

“Becoming With Animal” is a manifesto that concerns itself with the transformation of a woman into an animal. A contemporary rite that takes the body as its main medium, surrounded by the audience. The rhythm of the music and the flashing of lights bolster an ecstatic and frenzied dance: a variation of the tarantella or tarantism, a ritual practice from the south of Italy used to cure hysteria induced by the bite of a spider. In this version by Vasalou, woman and animal become one.

Under a flickering white light, the performer is gradually transformed and guided towards an equation through symbolisms that reflect an animal nature: the painted lines on her body allude to arteries and emphasize the inner intensity of her movements. The audience bears witness to this mutation, characterized by the playfulness of the spontaneous.

Our protagonist turns to point at the audience, challenging it to take part. The audience watches anxiously as each participant is selected, while she, depending on how each “chosen one” reacts, moves and interacts with them. The dancer’s gaze keeps our interest undiminished, intensifying the already intense emotions induced by the participatory aspect of the performance. Beyond the notion of interaction, one observes the relationship of the body to the space and the powerful presence of Iro Vasalou, elements which – taken together – highlight the artist’s intentions with regard to the creation of a contemporary ritual act.

We enter a rectangular black box theater and sit around the perimeter of the space. Lights go off, a male voice repeats the word “female”, which turns into a beat that itself becomes rhythmic dance music. Backlights reveal a barefoot young woman dressed in a sporty outfit who immediately starts an energetic, android dance. Colored ceiling lights replace the spotlights. Her dancing, amid the viewers, the music and the lighting, reminds me of a club where people dance alone, close to each other, following the loud, steady beat. Rhythmically, she crouches, she points, she lashes, she pivots, never settling, always changing.

From club girl, she bends over onto all fours, her hair untethered, her body as poised and alert as an animal. Unwinding the rope from her waist, she approaches the audience, gives one end of the rope to her chosen member, pulling the spectator into a play of weight and direction. She repeats this with two others before releasing the rope, and dances on her own more softly. Her vivacious, physical, present dance earns our undivided attention, triggering every so often our kinaesthetic empathy.

In “Becoming with Animal” Iro Vasalou created an intriguing atmosphere, even if I wasn’t able to abandon my viewer’s distance and let myself merge into the performance. Although I enjoyed her animated dance, her embodied transformations and intimacy, I felt she could risk more in both choreography and dancing. Still very young, she has nevertheless choreographed and performed a solo that holds promise for the future.

Choreographer and performer Iro Vasalou transports us instantly into a psychedelic atmosphere. Set within a circle formed by the audience around her, accompanied by trance music and multi-colored LED lights, with her hair left loose, her body and dancing approaches an ecstatic state, transforming the space into what feels at times like a club, and at others like the site of some ritual happening.

Interrupting this process with complete silence, the performer attempts to literally mimic the movements of a tarantula, accompanied by a sound reminiscent of an insect’s scuttle. During her retreat from this mimetic episode, she releases a length of rope from her body, symbolizing the web, and the performance takes an unexpectedly interactive turn. She entices audience members into the circle like they’re prey, and gives them the opportunity to create in collaboration with her. Once this interaction is complete, she continues to negotiate her transformation from an animal-like being into a woman. Through spinning movements reminiscent of whirling dervishes, she builds a psychedelic atmosphere like that at the start, and gradually transforms herself back into a woman once more.

Inspired by the ritual practice of tarantism, the performance “Becoming With Animal” creates focused images of charming simplicity that leave you feeling complete – with the sense of having understood their content. The use of space and Iro Vasalou’s powerful presence enthralled audiences, and provided no answer to the question of whether the images offered up are a literal choreographic approach to this specific ritual rite, or whether they spring from our protagonist’s hallucinatory state.

Galvanized by the exclusively female southern Italian ritual practice that is tarantism, the choreographer and performer Iro Vasalou studies the process through which a person is able to recognize their animal characteristics and to use them as a means of developing their personality.

The performer’s journey begins forcefully with an ecstatic dance, brimming with intensity and exhaustion, in order to allow the emergence of her animal self through the use of the clearly skillfully-developed movement language of a spider. How can a person go beyond their animal self? In answer, the choreographer proposes that this responsibility be shared with the audience. With a length of rope already tied round the performer’s body, she offers its end to people in the audience as a sort of leash, or makeshift reins. While in theory this suggests she is handing over control and leaving herself vulnerable, quite the opposite happens in practice: the assurance with which the performer chooses people to take part in this process with her means that spectators are left feeling vulnerable by the possibility of being chosen, and uncomfortable when they find themselves in a position of power. She has complete control over this relationship.

By means of this journey, a contemporary and particularly timely female archetype is revealed: one that is emancipated and empowered, able to take complete charge of her life’s course by taking stock of things in a more liberated way.

In the dimly-lit space, chairs placed roughly in concentric circles round the empty stage await the choreographer and performer Iro Vasalou to appear. The tight spacing of the chairs induces a crowded, intimate atmosphere. Sat as I am in the outer ring of concentric circles, it soon becomes clear that I’ll be watching the action in between the heads of those in front of me. This in-amongness keeps my body and my mood in a state of alert, ensuring my active participation in the ritualistic happening to come.

Complete darkness reigns. Electronic sounds reminiscent of tarantella rhythms fill the space, introducing the work’s main theme – tarantism. Vasalou then appears on stage, dancing ecstatically to a strong beat of the kind one hears in the city’s clubs. The music stops. The sounds of the tarantella dominate the soundscape once more, and the performer interacts with them. She tries insect-like forms of movement produced by her otherwise humanoid body. A ritual act of transformation and exploration. A morphological and kinesiological conflation of the female form with that of the insect. The osmosis between movement and music makes the mind redefine how it perceives the action, almost convincing it that an actual transformation has taken place.

This construct is suddenly abandoned. Vasalou returns to her humanoid dimension and seeks out her prey, somewhat threateningly, from among the audience that surrounds her. Proffering spectators the end of a rope tied round her waist, she selects who to work with, pulling them into the stage arena. A game of balance and resistance between the two communing bodies, each holding on to the ends of the rope, provokes a sense of the responsibility the audience has with regard to the integrity of her body, until Vasalou decides to abandon this situation too. She drops the rope and returns to the movements of her four-legged insect. The new movement language she adopts sees her pointing her finger at all of us.

“Becoming With Animal” is a performance that tests, and is tested through ritualistic and interactive practice. Through its call on spectators to take part, and the dangers this interaction entails, the work undoubtedly raises questions regarding the power relationships that exist between audiences and performers.