conversations in ten questions 87: Christos Papadopoulos
© Pinelopi Gerasimou
Christos Papadopoulos has become one of the most prominent Greek choreographers of the last decade. He studied dance and choreography at the SNDO (School for New Dance Development) in Amsterdam, theatre at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece and political science in Athens. Papadopoulos' first pieces Opus and Elvedon, produced by his own dance company LEON KAI LYKOS (THE LION AND THE WOLF) and highly acclaimed in Greece, were included in the Aerowaves 2016 and 2018 selections. With ION (2018), commissioned by Onassis Stegi and co-produced by Théâtre de la Ville, Paris and Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, and Larsen C (2021), also an international co-production, Papadopoulos has already been invited to more than 25 venues and festivals across Europe. Mellowing for Dance On Ensemble and Mycelium for Lyon Opera Ballet were the first two in 2023. Ties Unseen, which premiered at the end of September 2024, was his piece for NDT 1, one of the most prestigious contemporary dance companies in the world.
While the world premiere of Papadopoulos' new piece, to be staged in May 2025 as a co-production with Onassis Stegi, was being eagerly awaited, good news came: it was announced that he had been awarded the inaugural Rose International Dance Award at the gala evening held at Sadler's Wells in London on 9 February 2025. The process of awarding this biennial prize for new dance in any style, made possible by a generous donation from an anonymous person who chose the name Rose, to Sadler's Wells, considered one of the Kaabas of dance in the world, is a lengthy one: A long list of 14 nominators - directors, artists, producers and writers from all seven continents of the world - selected a selection of dance works to premiere between October 2021 and February 2023, which were then screened by an international jury of six selectors and performed live at Sadler's Wells in the early days of February 2025. An Untitled Love (Kyle Abraham), Carcaça (Marco da Silva Ferreira), Larsen C (Christos Papadopoulos) and Encantado (Lia Rodrigues) were the finalists, with five UK-based judges deciding the winner.
Coming back to Papadopoulos' pieces, I saw Mycelium in Berlin at the end of last summer as part of the international dance festival Tanz im August, and Ties Unseen at the online streaming of the first programme of NDT 1's 2024-2025 season, Architecture of the Invisible, including pieces by Jiri Kylian and Hofesh Schechter. Before I move on to my interview with Papadopoulos, I would like to share with you my impressions of these pieces.
In both Mycelium and Ties Unseen, Papadopoulos used the large casts of the dance companies he worked with, designing the former for 20 dancers and the latter for 16.
Both pieces begin on a dark stage, with the rhythmic beats of the music coming from deep within. In Mycelium we first notice a dancer; she moves forward, backward, sideways, looking at us, moving her body and arms slowly, but very slowly. After a while, another dancer joins her from the side, then a second dancer from the other side, then two or three of them enter the stage at the same time, one after the other from the sides, and a crowd forms on the stage. In Ties Unseen though, as the stage slowly lights up, we see all 16 dancers scattered in front of us.
The costumes of the two pieces (the first by Angelos Mentis, the second by Marie Gerstenberger) follow the same logic; all the dancers are dressed in a uniform with very small differences, the clothes are dark, the tops reach to the neck and only the arms are exposed. Thus, faces/heads, arms and hands are accentuated on the bodies. In Papadopoulos' choreographies, these three elements, heads, arms and hands, are in the foreground.
In these two pieces the dancers' bodies move by breaking, as if a small ball inside them hits the limits of the body and changes direction, but the main emphasis is on the head and arms. The arms curl and sway under the water like long seaweed caught in a calm current, or like reeds exposed to the wind and a gentle breeze. When 16-20 figures, dressed in similar clothes, making similar movements with similar emphasis and speed, but not in unison, move with a choreography that focuses especially on the arms, it creates a wonderful effect. Sometimes these figures gather and come together, sometimes they move as a group, forming a triangle that squeezes and opens backwards; many of them move one by one to the front of the triangle with manoeuvres that are very difficult to recognise, sometimes sub-groups of four or five separate from the whole, sometimes whole sub-groups are suddenly thrown in different directions, some of them merge, some move further apart, then come together again. We are presented with an organism that shrinks, expands, contracts, changes shape, dissolves, decomposes and reassembles.
In Mycelium, Eliza Alexandropoulou's lighting design leaves the dancers' feet in darkness, creating the effect that they are slightly suspended in mid-air. In this state, they resemble flocks of starlings dancing in the city sky at sunset, or jellyfish swimming in the dark depths of the ocean.
In Ties Unseen, Alexandropoulou moves lines of light the length of the stage, with varying degrees of intensity, back and forth across the depths of the stage, allowing these lines to lick the bodies of the dancers, creating a different, strange, disorienting effect.
To sum up, Papadopoulos' choreographies have a mesmerising and hypnotic effect on the audience. They have simple, minimal sequences of movement, but when performed by a large crowd with slight variations, they leave the audience in awe; at least that is the feeling I have experienced.
Now I give the floor to Papadopoulos to find out more about him and his pieces with NDT and the Lyon Opera Ballet.
What is the essence of performance in your opinion?
For me, performance is all about creating an imaginary landscape. The most important thing in a performance is to be able to make it personal. For me, anything else is not important, like beauty, the stage, aesthetics, tensions, and so on. The key is to use a performance to reveal something deeply personal. So, in my view, personal art is the most valuable and communicative.
I'm still sometimes surprised and happy when someone watching my performances tells me something that I'd thought of myself. It means I succeeded in transmitting something personal. So for me, performance is a window. It's a way of seeing inside someone's soul and imagination.
Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How?
I believe that art has the power to transform, educate and change things in the long term. And we're facing some pretty serious political and global challenges right now.
Sometimes I feel like art could do more. Take the war in Palestine and Russia, for example. There are a lot of difficult situations going on in the world at the moment. And sometimes we might say that art is doing its part, but sometimes I feel that it's not enough when you have more on your plate. I think we need to be more drastic and more and more involved in this situation. In general, I believe that art is our most effective weapon. However, I feel that we need to do more politically.
When you are working on a piece, what sources inspire you? Do dreams play a role in your pieces?
When I start creating, I usually have a very vague idea, a fleeting sensation, or an elusive concept, but it's not yet fully formed. I often find that my inspiration comes from nature. I grew up in a small village, so I spent a lot of my childhood in the mountains, watching the plants, the forest, and how the birds fly around in the sky. I believe that nature has been a significant source of inspiration for me. But what I find really interesting is not actually the movement of the birds, but how they interact and communicate with each other in these systems. I'm amazed at how these huge flocks of birds can communicate so precisely. For me, it's more about how individuals can fit into a social structure and communicate, agree and function within it. So this is how individuals can maintain their identity and be part of a social group – it's a key part of my work in general. That's something I'm always working on. What does it mean to be in tune? What does it mean to be in sync? Does being synchronised mean that we're part of an army, or that we can maintain our personality and our right to object or say yes or no?
I don't know if dreams really play a big part of my inspiration. Dreams are part of the evolution and our childhood years are stimulating a lot of dreams. So, I think there's a connection, but I'm not sure if it's a direct one. I never saw a dream and got the idea for a performance.
When do you decide to give a title to a piece you are working on, if it already does not have one?
My first piece, called Elvedon, was inspired by Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves. So, I knew exactly what I wanted to call it. The name Elvedon comes from a small village in the novel... I also came up with the name for my second piece, Opus, pretty much straight away.
The title of my last piece, Larsen C, came to me in a different way. I was struggling to find a title that felt right, and I realised that every title I considered felt a bit forced and unnatural. I decided to trust the process. Larsen C is a massive iceberg in Antarctica. We spent a lot of time in the rehearsals talking about ice and how icebergs move and change. I thought the title should reflect this process we're working with ice. Sometimes I know exactly what I want, and other times I need to see how things evolve. Sometimes I come up with a title and then realise that it needs to change as we make adjustments along the way. Sometimes the theme and the performance itself need to be tweaked a little. It's an ongoing process. Sometimes you come up with a great idea and have a title in mind, but sometimes you need to work out the details and understand the process better.
Are there any artist or person whom you think influenced your art most? And if there is such an artist or person, who?
In music, I'm drawn to and have been influenced by the minimalism trend, with composers like Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and others. In terms of cinema, Tarkovsky has been a major influence and inspiration for me because of his trust in the passage of time and his ability to allow the viewer to really look, observe and engage with the film. I'd also like to mention Béla Tarr's work in cinema. I've been really inspired by Béla Tarr's film, The Turin Horse, because it's so interesting how he uses time to develop the narrative. Another example is Virginia Woolf's novel, The Waves. It's structured in a way that almost has no chapters or paragraphs. It's a big brainstorm. So, I'm inspired by artists who play with the concept of time and how an idea can be developed and evolved through repetition and iteration. I've found these kinds of events really useful and inspiring. I also find the functions in classical folk music really inspiring.
When you consider the current state of the world in every sense, what is the most important and urgent issue for you as an artist?
As I've mentioned before, I feel that we could do more. And I sometimes feel like I'm a very narcissistic person. I think we're narcissists because the countries next to ours are at war and suffering, and we just keep on going with our lives and our work. There are times when I feel really stressed. And then I had a reality check: I'm stressed because of the work. But then you look around and see all these people suffering. And then you realise that your problem isn't as important as you thought. There are people with far more serious issues to deal with. I feel there's still a big lack of unity and of how we can resist, fight back and make our opinions heard. And not just in theory, but in practice too. So, what I'd really like to see is more action, rather than just theory.
Over the last 20 years, Greek choreographers have been increasingly making a name for themselves, especially on the European stage. What do you attribute this success to?
I'm not sure. There are lots of different reasons why. First of all, I think that the Greek dancing scene has been around for a long time, but it wasn't the right moment for Europe to really take notice. So there are lots of reasons why not only the art in one place is evolving, but also why the rest of the countries can really appreciate and recognise it. From our perspective, I think it was a period when great artists were travelling abroad a lot and getting more education. The education system was also at a higher level. On the other hand, I think the crisis and difficult political and economic situation in Greece have also had a positive effect on the dance scene. In Greece, I don't know how it is in Turkey, being an artist and especially a dancer, not an actor that is more well received, is very difficult. It is extremely hard to make a living as a dancer. It takes a lot of courage to stick with it over the years. Many people give up because it's tough to make a living as a dancer. So, when you do it, you're not messing around. If you want to do it, you're really doing it because it's very hard. If you want to keep going and stick with it, you've got to be really passionate about it. I believe that all of this trouble and helplessness can be resolved by collaborating with other artists and coming together to create networks to support each other, because there is no other support around. It's important to support yourself. All these reasons are why this artistic wave got off the ground in recent years.
You don't seem to prefer a stage design that stands out and uses material in your pieces. Body movement is the main element, followed by light, which is a very important part of your pieces, and music. We see that you have collaborated with Coti K. in many of your pieces. What is the importance of music in your choreographies? Is the music completely defined from the beginning or is it part of the creative process, does it change during the process, is Coti K. involved in the rehearsals?
All the composers I've worked with, including Coti K., Giorgos Poulios and Jeph Vanger, have been in the studio with us from day one, helping to create the performance. My view is that music is the borders of the world which I'm trying to create. Let's imagine we're on a bus, and the driver is changing speed sometimes. So, the bus affects our movement. So, the bus is the main driving force behind everything that happens in this world. So, in my world, the bus is the music. It really defines how the dancers and the performance are moving. So we really need to make the most of every bit. It's not a sound scale, and it's not like a sound carpet. It's really important to keep the tempo consistent because we're constantly stepping on the beat. So, if the music doesn't add complexity, what you see is really dull and might be boring. If the music doesn't give us a bit more, there's always a feeling of inconvenience. So, what I actually enjoy doing is building up the same way I build movement; movement by movement. So, the sound designers are always in the rehearsal studio. We're constantly working on the composition. We keep making changes. We make adjustments from the very first day until the premiere.
You recently created a piece called Mycelium with the dancers of the Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon, which is touring Europe and Mellowing with the dancers of Dance on Ensemble. Now you are giving the world premiere of Ties Unseen with the dancers of the Nederlands Dans Theater.
What are the difficulties or comforts, challenges or conveniences between creating a piece with dancers you have always worked with and who know your style and, creating a piece for dancers of an existing company?
The main issue in both cases is time. When I'm working in Athens, I spend four months rehearsing for eight hours a day, five or six days a week. With NDT, it was one month of rehearsal, 2.5 hours with the whole group per day. It's really not much at all. With the Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon, it was a bit better. So in these companies you meet amazing dancers, great conditions and amazing studios, but time is always an issue. There's no time to rehearse properly, let alone go deep into it and then rehearse again. But you know, it's a case of give and take.
At the same time the technique of the dancers and their ways to involve are great. They're so professional, it's always impressive to see.
When I agreed to these proposals at the start, I was really wondering if they will get it. Is it worth doing this in one month? Is it worth leaving my company in Greece and going there to do it? But in fact, everything is a new challenge for me. And meeting young people, even if they don't know much about my work, is always really useful for me. I get to rethink and rephrase my work, teach it and rediscover it within it. It's always really useful, but it's very fast-paced.
In our previous question we focused on the dancers. Apart from that, in terms of environment and facilities, what are the difficulties and advantages, comforts and challenges as well, for you in creating a piece in dance companies such as Nederlands Dans Theater or Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon, which have an artistic tradition and institutional history?
I’m really well received in both cases, and it was great to work in such a supportive environment, especially in Lyon.
In my company I'm the artist, I'm the producer, I'm trying to make money and organise the tour I'm doing. I do everything, so it's also great sometimes to go and just do the artistic work and not have to worry about budgets.
[The version in Turkish of this interview was published in unlimited.]
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