Press Quotes

 

image[…]The contemporary Greek choreographer Tzeni Argyriou used to be enamored of digital technologies and the vast possibilities for their integration with dance. But after more than a decade of experimentation in this realm, she became disillusioned with the impact of tech on our lives and bodies and sought less electronically mediated forms of connection. The result is “ANΩNYMO,” a visceral, visually stark dance for seven performers that will have its U.S. premiere on Thursday at Peak Performances at Montclair State University. “ANΩNYMO” is informed by conversations that Argyriou had with anthropologists, historians,hackers, psychoanalysts and sociologists, followed by extensive movement research […]

BRIAN SCHAEFER – THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Anonymo manages to show in an ingeniously comprehensible manner how it can be possible for individuals who are alienated from themselves to become subjects with full body awareness.”

Kultur im Norden

 

Review by Gérard Mayen | «ANΩNYMO» de Tzeni Argyriou

Sept danseurs athéniens redonnent vigueur et actualité à des ressources gestuelles qu’on pensait périmées.

Les manifestations culturelles abondent, qui glissent le vocable “international” dans leur intitulé. Cela au point que ce critère semble parfois assez vague et galvaudé. Tout à l’inverse, obstinément, les programmes conçus par Anita Mathieu pour les Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine Saint-Denis, invitent à des voyages sur la planète entière, à la recontre d’artistes dont l’immense majorité nous était inconnue au moment de découvrir leurs noms couchés dans le dossier de presse.

En orbite parisienne, ce n’est qu’aux Rencontres et pas ailleurs qu’on a l’occasion de les découvrir. Il est d’autant stupéfiant d’avoir à constater qu’assez peu de programmateurs poussent leur curiosité jusqu’au Théâtre Berthelot à Montreuil. La chorégraphe grecque Tzeni Argyriou y montrait sa grande pièce collective ANΩNYMO. Pas plus tard que la veille on avait découvert (à June Events), la dernière pièce de sa compatriote Katerina Andreou.

A peu près rien ne les fait se ressembler. A ceci près qu’il s’agit de deux productions accompagnées par la puissante fondation Onassis. Au regard de l’impact formidable de ces deux pièces, on émet l’hypothèse de des gestes artistiques très forts puissent naître de contextes historiques très rudes – comme celui de la république hellénique depuis une décennie – mais cela particulièrement dans le cas où, tout de même, de vrais moyens de travail leur sont accordés.

Trois hommes et quatre femmes sont réuni.e.s sur le plateau d’ANΩNYMO. Au-delà du fait d’être tou.te.s grec.que.s (à en juger par la consonnance de leurs patronymes), il.les forment un paysage physionomique très contrasté et vigoureux. D’âges divers, de silhouettes campées, on ne leur trouve rien du lisse standardisé, séduisant mais fade, qui continue d’affecter nombre de productions chorégraphiques. Derrière ces apparences pleines de caractère, on a même voulu fantasmer qu’il aurait pu s’agir de résidents d’Exarchia, l’intrépide quartier que peuplent les alternatifs anarchistes de la capitale grecque (soupçon infirmé après vérification).

ANΩNYMO peut se décrire aisément. Son premier tableau en dit énormément. Les septs interprètes sont alignés de manière frontale. Le motif de la frise étirée, et de la fresque relevée, continuera d’être largement dominant au fil de la performance. Sous une lumière rare et dramatisée, sur un fond sonore océanique sourd et grondant, les danseur.se.s font face, solidement, au public. Chacun.e affiche un signe corporel figé, par un agencement particulier de ses bras au regard de son visage.

Pour s’en faire une idée : l’une tient l’un de ses avant-bras très nettement à la verticale devant son buste, et juste au niveau de son visage, ainsi masqué pour l’essentiel, sa main s’auréole vigoureusement en un soleil dont les cinq rayons sont ses cinq doigts écartés aussi nettement qu’il est possible. Ou bien cette autre : face à son buste, ses deux coudes sont en position jointive, à partir de laquelle ses deux avant-bras s’ouvrent en formant un “V”, que les deux mains concluent en encadrant le visage.

Ces motifs symboliques ont tout pour rappeler les lettres d’un alphabet muet. On y perçoit d’emblée quelque onction rituelle, qu’aiguisent le port de tête, la tenue de regard, et une expressivité assez soutenue. Une théâtralité de figures, quoique sans intrigues ni anecdotes, empreint ce drame de corps. On pourrait encore évoquer les costumes, pour typer l’esthétique un rien surannée qui rôde sur ce plateau : invariablement noirs, ils montrent à la fois un souci de tenue dans une diversité de coupes, mais toujours une sobriété assez austère du modèle (par exemple la jupe ou la robe longues systématiques côté femmes).

A partir de ce premier tableau, la chorégraphie va consister à un enchaînement de légers retraits en arrière successifs, par chacun des interprètes tour à tour, et là un grave lâcher du visage s’orientant vers le sol ; puis un retour en position initiale, où le motif des mains et avant-bras va entreprendre de s’animer. Peu à peu, les bustes gagneront en amplitudes d’inclinaisons, de ré-orientations, de tours. Les membres avec. Etc. Tout le spectacle s’ordonne en amplifiant sa marge de variabilité sémiotique.

ANΩNYMO développe patiemment mais sûrement un vocabulaire de plus en plus riche, une syntaxe de plus en plus agile, par où les membres supérieurs reliés, se répondant, écrivent des phrases de plus en plus ambitieuse. Cette composition des bras, en broderie savante des articulations, des élongations, des combinaisons entre deux corps mais aussi entre tous, est étourdissante, mais non sans rappeler le motif quelque peu convenu, voire le cliché, des figures de danse folklorique, avec leurs longues théories de danseur.se.s tenu.e.s par la grande chaîne de leur bras horizontaux, d’épaule à épaule. Cela aérien, au-dessus d’une vivacité de pas.

Qu’est-ce qui va donc, néanmoins, conférer la vigueur d’un coup de poing, et l’acuité de l’actualité, à cette pièce ? Un passage par l’embrasement d’une transe, sinon la beauté poignante, forcément poignante, d’un chant choral a capella, ne suffisent pas à l’exprimer. Les qualités bouleversantes d’ANΩNYMO sont plutôt à rechercher dans une nature de présence, une franchise abrasive, une respiration collective solidaire, désaliénée de tout souci du “léché-fini”, non sans rappeler quelque chose d’une Maguy Marin, pour un regard français.

A l’abri des chichis, une réalité vécue, supposée rude, électrise ce plateau. Cette énergie vibrée, mâchée, partagée, suffit à nous défier en politique, sans qu’il faille nécessairement spéculer sur ce que cela montre de la doxa de l’individu et du groupe, actuel marronnier que cultivent doctement tant et tant de pièces chorégraphiques.

 Gérard Mayen

Spectacle vu mercredi 6 juin 2018 au Théâtre Berthelot (Montreuil), dans le cadre des Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine Saint-Denis.

 

Thoughts on Tzeni Argyriou’s performance Anonymo
Review by Klimentini Vounelaki 

The opening scene of the performance Anonymo is indicative of what is going to follow: seven performers lined up facing the audience, one beside the other in a straight line, indistinguishable in total darkness, evocative of totems – primitive symbols covering their faces with masks made by their own hands. This transformation through masks is doubly symbolic: on the one hand it refers to our history, on the other it links us with today’s digital world, since by a virtual leap in time, one is reminded of the Facebook “wall”.

The memory of the body

Tzeny Argyriou (born 1977), a graduate of the National School of Dance, with her group, amorphy.org, has since 2003 been exploring the postmodern condition, experimenting with new technologies through performances, installations and interactive happenings that, as she says, have freed her imagination. Chronologically, she belongs to a generation that questioned its predecessors and is now led to a reflective investigation of the traces of memory. “We aim to rediscover the power of the dance as a medium of personal and collective expression and catharsis,” she claims. The memory of the body resists and returns: the “dancing body” in the conditions of late capitalism and technological revolution is not merely restricted to the role of a mirror of the “social body”, but it plays an active role as a subject of history. This is the time that the “critical body” emerges, heterogeneous and undisciplined, inconveniencing the viewer through quests in uncharted waters – as the American, Sally Banes and the French Jean Marc Adolphe would put it.

We live in the realm of the World Wide Web (Internet) and we daily experience a new reality that springs from torrents of information flooding the social media. The digital world expands in all fields of the social, inevitably involving the body, even through its exclusion. Every click, every image, every search through digital platforms entails the possibility of a “like” or a “share”. It is a game with the narcissistic ego, where every exposure of the self involves its concealment. The invented digital self seems unrestricted by the materiality of the body or the physicality of the emotion. As Miguel Angel Melgares, the performance dramaturge, aptly notes, “the collective imaginary inevitably connects to the social media, Facebook, Twitter etc., as they expand the possibilities of communication and lead to the imaginary of the contemporary individual. The technological platforms are not a simulacrum of the social, but a planetary community with innumerable impulsive moods. The social media are not masks of the real; in fact they create multiple digital realities. This unstoppable flow of information and the speed of the interactive game generate conflicting emotions between the idea of the continuous digital presence and the real body that gradually disintegrates.”

 T_h_e_ _“I_” _a_n_d_ _t_h_e_ _“W_e_”

So we live in the time of the “I” and the title “Anonymous” followed by the choreographer’s name, though contradictory, pays homage to the “We”, to circle folk dances that are far removed from the sophisticated western dance scene. The invocation of the power of the group, an inherent part of the past, far from seeking authorship in many works of our cultural heritage and our folk tradition, contains vast wealth and transfuses emotional power as it forms part of our DNA. Conversely, contrived and branded works that surf on the surface of events connect to the memory of the present and remain messages without recipients, unaddressed, unemotional. When the masks are removed during the performance and the user’s data are decoded, physicality and recollection are revealed. Then, “You are what you share.” If via ‘share” the Internet becomes a utopian virtual space, it also gives vent to our obsessive need to transmit data to others. The desire to share sensory experience, judgements and views of our analogue world inflates our digital self. It may be that sharing is an expression of generosity and perhaps the Internet was founded on positive values, but it still presents imbalances able to turn a utopia to a dystopia. The most significant threats are the undermining of the inviolability of the private sphere and digital alienation through exclusion of the physical. People as social animals have an innate need to exchange material on both a physical and a psychocognitive level.

This very psychosomatic unity is the imperative in this performance. The ritual evolves and climaxes (trans en danse) through the communication of the bodies as they coexist, coordinate and converse to the sound of the bell and the rattles; then finally, when the enchanting traditional song, “If I could be the perfume you put on your hair, with every breath you take I’d flow into your heart…” is heard, the feeling escalates, while embroidered kinetic motifs traverse the stage, embodied by seven exceptional dancers from different generations of the Greek dance scene.

Klimentini Vounalaki is a journalist/dance critic 

 

Memorandum”: A memorandum that we deserve

“Elements from different eras have been used to make us travel in time in order to enlighten us for the past and make us think for the present.”
Renalia Gargaropoulou- adARTes 107- 2013

A shifting landscape: Contemporary dance and the conditions of crisis

“In this process of remembering, the choreographer explores and exploits part of the past in an effort to reappropriate history, inviting us to consider the potentiality of the present beyond what is currently actualized or envisaged. Memorandum thus creates a public space, embodying tension, resistances and oppositions, where new subjectivities can be formed and new possibilities imagined.”
B. Panagiotara & S.Tsintzilioni, Roehampton University

Memoria Obscura in Black and White by Tzeni Argyriou

“The history is written again and again, it’s on us to read it with a subjective eye without falling to the attractions of the past.” “With five major layers which are composing miraculously a great display screen wall, Argyriou stirs memories, marks the nostalgia of the era and suggests a clean modern look to citizenship as transformed every year and adjustes as many new arising as time passes”
A. & K. Koufalis- Eleftherotypia, 2013

Memoria Obscura is an excellent performance that amazed the audience.

We dare say that Tzeni Argyriou’s work will be the peak performance from all that have passed or will pass this year at the Valakou Theatre. […] Sometimes when the performance ends, its relation with the spectator ends somehow automatically. There are sometimes though, when the end of the performance signals only the end of the first cycle, as the “food for thought” that remains at the spectator signals a new cycle by itself… In our humble opinion this is the category in which Argyriou’s performance belongs under the title “Memoria Obscura”, Angelos Kalogrias-
Evdomi Efimerida, February 2013

DieWiege der Krise. Öffentliche Kulturkürzungen auf der einen, prosperierende Stiftungen auf der anderen Seite: Die griechische Theaterszene spiegelt das Land in der Schuldenkrise und wagt zugleich neue Aufbrüche. Eine Reportage

“Zu dieser neuen Off-Szene gehört auch die Performerin Tzeni Argyriou, die beim Low-Budget-Festival im Cacoyannis-Center ihre erste eigene Arbeit zeigt: «Dr. Maybe Darling Version 11.0.5 in process». Mit den spröden Charme einer Miranda July, die in Gießen ein paar postdramatische Nachhilfestunden genommen hat, steht sie in der Tiefgarage und trifft den aktuellen Knackpunkt griechischer Befindlichkeit im Kern: Sie zeigt ein Video, in dem sie junge Griechen befragt, ob sie glauben, dass sie selbst entscheidungsfreudig oder entscheidungsschwach sind. Mit den unterschiedlichsten Gesichtsausdrücken sind sich alle einig: Sie können sich nicht entscheiden, ob sie sich gut oder schlecht entscheiden können. Das Publikum amüsiert sich und trifft gemeinsam mit Tzeni Argyriou die Entscheidung, raus vor die Tür auf die breite Piräus-Avenue zu gehen und gemeinsam den Verkehr zu blockieren. Nach ein paar Minuten gespielter Site-specific-Randale kehrt man lachend wieder auf die polierten Granitstufen des erst kürzlich eröffneten Cacoyannis-Centers zurück, um gemeinsam für ein Gruppenfoto zu posieren.”
ARMIN KERBER- Ausland-23.02.2012

Conversation with our minds and souls

Τzeni Argyriou presented the original performance, with a very clever subject and imaginative acting, Dr. Maybe Darling-
Matina Kaltaki – Lifo, 27/10/2010

Dr Maybe Darling

“She is writing on her computer and through the curtain/ screen, through the computer and the projector, which means through technology, we have the chance to follow not only the figure but also the thoughts of the young woman interpreting Dr Maybe Darling. […] Suddenly, through the reactions of Dr Maybe Darling we recognize a lot of our own reactions. And if throughout the performance the audience was laughing it is because they recognize their own selves in this intelligent discussion with the mind and human soul.”,
Olga Sella- Kathimerini, 24/10/2010

See you in …..Walhallathens!

“Don’t be put off by our title; it’s just a play on words taken from the title of the hi-tech performance “See You in Walhalla” (2-3/7), a picture which is featured on the cover of “athinorama” and which has been selected as one of the not-to-be-missed performances of this years Athens festival.”
Athinorama, I.Dimadi, 31/5-7/6/2007

Walhalla: enter

“See you in Walhalla, by amorphy.org, is an extraordinary worldwide first. It is the first time that a three-dimensional computer game has been shown unfolding live in a theatre and in real time. Walhalla is a world of signs, long avenues, cross-roads, crowds of people, graffiti, concrete and water, which comes alive in the hands of the player. It is a utopia which is both notional and encountered: somewhere that does not exist, but can yet be detected in everyone’s experience. A timeless no-where, where day succeeds night at the will of the player who presses the right button; where a turning at a set of traffic lights in Amsterdam leads to an open piece of waste-land in Athens, a dark room in Sofia or to a completely unknown environment – a product of imagination.”
Ef- E.Tzitzilaki, 21/6/2007

Walhalla, a digital dance drama

“One of the best Greek producers of new media dance drama that we have seen up to now has also chosen Valhalla as a title to speak about the relationship between the virtual and real body, as well as dramaturgy in the age of the virtual environment. […]Her prison is the tiny window of the computer. The Internet and games are nothing more than an extension of the imposition of this economy on the individual. “The loneliness of the ‘player’, and his obsession with technology urgently pose the question: who is in control, the player or the game?” The creators of this performance pose this question and provide their own answer: the Fwd: See you in Walhalla is an investigative project, on which artistic companies and new media university groups worked for a year in Greece, Bulgaria, Holland and Germany.”
M.Tsimitakis -Kathimerini, 15/7/2007

SEE YOU IN WALHALLA

“Game on.

Player-traveller: a girl.

Route: any urban location and the entire digital world.

Destination: the sacred city of Walhalla. We saw the performance last year and liked it. Its setting is a three-dimensional video-game, which plunges you into a virtual world both imaginary and real: “Virtual reality”. […]together with the lights and sounds, before long, you feel that you too are connected up; and the more you “lose” yourself, the clearer your thinking becomes.”
Athens Voice, 28-4/7/2007

Psycho/Cycle

“Is it art, theatre, an art installation or something else? Jenny Argyriou and Ash Bulayev aim to produce original creations which combine movement, the theatrical interpretation of the image, design and sound and which are not pigeon-holed as belonging to a particular artistic form.

” Christos Polymenakis- Ozon, 2004