New texts on dance: "Vanishing Point"

Delineating the outer edge of the empty stage, an illuminated LED fixture becomes the frame of a living sculpture. The tangled limbs of Dafin Antoniadou and Alexandros Vardaxoglou generate a humanoid being somewhat reminiscent of the androgynous body described in Plato’s “Symposium”. To the rhythmic beat of an electronically-distorted pulse, two bodies, joined suffocatingly tight, do battle, torn between union and separation. This battle determines how the being moves around the space, rendering it alive. The limbs of their bodies doggedly explore ways of co-existing, while their two heads are held at a distance, observing, attacking, and seeking ways to reassert their individuality. This inventive choreography, skillfully executed by these two dancer-performers, proposes the use of basic tenets of choreographic interaction in a duet – such as touching, supporting, lifting, and moving – as exploratory tools of an organic relationship on stage. The minimalistic set, the geometric costumes, the electronic soundscape, and the intense lighting changes come together to create an other-worldly setting filled with symbolism, in which the relationship between the two bodies becomes a canvas for multiple notions relating to the condition of human co-existence. “Vanishing Point” is a work of intensely poetic spirit that uses physicality as its main tool of expression, and that balances leisurely between allegory and literality.

At the start of “Vanishing Point”, two bodies lie fused in the center of the ground. Like an original cubist body painting with tangled hands and feet, Alexandros Vardaxoglou and Dafin Antoniadou create a faceless geometrical shape of angles and sharp edges. With their bodies trapped, they gradually begin to move like an insect into the empty stage. The dynamic duo, joined together, begin to perform a recognizable spider movement. The costumes, in skin color with black circular patterns, perk up this bizarre moving form.

The dancers change directions and bend low as they constantly and violently rotate the positions of their hands and feet. Alongside, chilly lights switch intensively, forming a square. The bodies swap, accompanied by progressively harsh music and fast light changes. In “Vanishing Point”, the somewhat violent and disharmonic coupling proceeds from the desire of union with the other.

“Vanishing Point” introduced us to the choreographers Dafin Antoniadou and Alexandros Vardaxoglou at the 7th Onassis New Choreographers’ Festival at Onassis Stegi. The scenic space is outlined by an illuminated frame of fluorescent bulbs laid out on the floor. The first image glimpsed by the audience is an elaborate tangle of bodies, roughly center stage, that perhaps refers to some imaginary creature. Though this is a duet for a man and a woman, the pair’s gender is not immediately clear. Their faces are hidden due to the positions of their bodies, and their full-body suits, in tones of black and beige, heighten the zoomorphic aspect of their enmeshed bodies. The music is timed almost exactly to the lighting changes, thus bolstering the dreamlike/nightmarish atmosphere. Throughout the performance, the two bodies remain united, changing only the ways in which they are bound, while their limbs, which make constant micro-movements, gradually unfold to allow greater movement through the space.

Their heads are now revealed, and this humanoid creature moves almost reciprocally across the stage. As a consequence, the audience can clearly make out the space delineated by the dancers’ bodies – the condition of perceiving them as one – but the impression they make on the scenic space is unclear and diffuse. The performers’ movements are repetitive and spasmodic, declaring a tendency towards disentrapment and complacency. At the end of the day, might it not be better for a being to accept another body, and to live with the totality of this single, self-sufficient body?

“Vanishing Point” welcomes us with the static image of two intertangled bodies, hugging one another tight, that brings to mind the Lernean Hydra. This image is only intensified by their identical, skin-tight one-piece costumes that reveal their bodies and create a sense of continuity from one body to the other. From this initial stillness, the joint body they create begins to communicate kinetically through an irregular – though rhythmic – interplay of limbs. The two dancers begin to work together in order to move through the space, giving new forms to the being they themselves shape. By freeing some of their limbs, they come close to some partial independence, and their communication is further developed through either attempts to come to some understanding, or to wrestle. Slowly revealing their faces, we now see their personalities and their emotions more clearly. After that, they begin to interact at more rapid speeds, expanding their action to take in higher levels of the space, seeking out the purpose of everything they are experiencing in terms of movement and performance. Journeying through these complex combinations of movement, the dancers come in conflict with their ambitions for personal independence, while a flickering light gives this image an intense and chaotic rhythm. This process gradually peters out, leading the creature into stillness once more. In the end, these efforts are abandoned, and the being finds itself in the state in which it began once more.

The dancers and choreographers Dafin Antoniadou and Alexandros Vardaxoglou have created a work rooted in the body’s potential for complete contact, in a combination of complexity and risk. On stage, their use of fluorescent lights all around the edge of the stage has a dual purpose, as a spatial boundary and as a flashing light source. Through the intensity of their physical interaction, the two dancers are able to communicate their experiences directly to the audience.

Two bodies in a suffocating embrace. The blaring music at times accentuates the pair’s desire to peel off from one another, and at others creates an agonizing pause –almost as if the loosening of this corporeal knot would surrender these two bodies in complete stillness. In “Vanishing Point”, symbolism and references drawn from something other-worldly truly fuel and shape the performance’s material: whether they are fallen from some nightmarish future, or forgotten beings of a distant past is of no real import. The pair cling to one another as if the body of the other were the last plank of salvation. Inescapably, this duet –which cannot in fact be considered a duet in typical choreographic terms– is expressively charged with outbursts, micro-movements that maximize both muscle tone and an undertow of physical violence, indicative of that ambiguous struggle to which the two performers have submitted themselves on an equal footing. And there really is no victor here; any victory is signified by their desire to remain conjoined, so that even when these bodies “come off the rails”, swept up in a chaotic maelstrom of movements, their contact continues to delineate the bare minimum of space, until it is transubstantiated into another form of life.

Dafin Antoniadou and Alexandros Vardaxoglou present a duet of high physical intensity. Their first joint attempt at choreography is characterized by experimentations with familiar movement materials, judging at least by the fact that both remain active as contemporary dancers. The music in the main accompanies the piece organically, coloring the action with cognate tones, and there’s no lack of moments that go a step beyond to create a more cinematically-tinged and imposing atmosphere. The costumes – an indirect reference to Léon Bakst? – complete the aesthetic whole, accentuating the alluring plasticity of the bodies. It’s unfortunate that a lack of stage depth forces the action into the foreground, when one is left with the dominant impression that a little distance and perspective are essential for ensuring the aesthetic coherence of all the elements into a cohesive whole.