Program Black Box

21.7 | 19:30 | 40’

Kalamata Dance Megaron / Black Box

ANASTASIA VALSAMAKI

W REST L ING

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About the performance

With undiminished interest in the conceptual content of body states, the choreographer Anastasia Valsamaki presents her new work focusing on the different ways to conceive wrestling.

If with wrestling we usually refer to the escalating conflict and consequently the discharging of an action, Anastasia Valsamaki urges us to see the transition from intensity to repression and its reversal in a ‘struggle’ that does not divide winners from losers.

In this peculiar struggle, five dancers – as a group but also as a quirky ensemble – try to bring together a priori contrasting elements: the initiating explosiveness with the awkwardness of a pause, the refueling of the physical frenzy with the suspension of relaxation, the completion of a pattern that constantly re-articulates by changing its composition. Ultimately, if the goal is to remain ‘in the game’ by constantly inventing new rules, then the fight comes as a promise to renew what keeps us still in the game, even if, momentarily, every evident goal seems to have failed.

Strobe lights will be used during the performance. Viewer discretion is advised in case of a history of epilepsy.

  • Concept & Choreography: Anastasia Valsamaki
  • Music & Sound Composition: Jeph Vanger
  • Dancers: Gavriela Antonopoulou, Nefeli Asteriou, Nikos Grigoriadis, Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Thanos Ragousis
  • Dramaturgy: Anastasio Koukoutas
  • Lighting Design: Apostolos Strantzalis
  • Styling: Nefeli Asteriou
  • Production Manager: Eleni Valsamaki
  • Producer: MIND THE LOOP

With the financial support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and the ARTWORKS award 2020.

After graduating with honors from the Greek National School of Dance​, Anastasia Valsamaki made her debut as a choreographer with Sync in June 2016. In 2017, she was selected by the Aerowaves network as one of the 20 most promising emerging choreographers in Europe. That same year, ​she ​attended the Postgraduate Program in Choreography (I.C.E) at the SEAD Dance Academy in Austria and presented Sync at the Athens & Epidaurus Festival. In 2020, she presented her project DisJoint at the Onassis New Choreographers Festival 7. During the 2020-2021 season, she received the ARTWORKS award, participating in the 3rd Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program and was selected as an Aerowaves Twenty21 Artist for her work Body Monolog​ue​. She remains an active dancer and choreographer, while also working as a dance instructor.