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Waiting for Leaning Tree (Studio Stage - The Royal Danish Opera, 2025, March 8th) © Mehmet Kerem Özel Leaning Tree is a dance piece produced by the Dansk Danseteater (Danish Dance Theatre) and the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra. It was choreographed by Fernando Melo and its music composed by Signe Lykke. The first performances of Leaning Tree , which took place at the start of the 2023-2024 season in the main hall of the Royal Danish Theatre, were presented to the audience with live music performed by eight groups of musicians placed in different areas of the auditorium as well as in the orchestra pit, creating a feeling of immersiveness. In the 2024-2025 season, Leaning Tree was once again included in the programme of  Dansk Danseteater, this time performed with recorded music at the Danish Royal Opera's small hall, Studio Stage, as well as in various cities across Denmark, and at the Kuopio Dance Festival in Finland. Comprising 13 dancers from around the world and led...

Posters of Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 and Kontakthof at the entrance of the Barmen Opera in Wuppertal waiting for Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78 Kontakthof by Pina Bausch (1940-2009), first performed in 1978, is one of her masterpieces. Literally translated as 'contact court', Kontakthof is set in a dance/ballroom, a large and spacious meeting place with high ceilings and a stage for other purposes, such as music-theatre-cinema performances, where European society has traditionally gathered to meet, socialise and dance, usually on Sundays. [There are also authors who interpret the Kontakthof as the hall in the red-light districts of cities where prostitutes present themselves to customers]. The set and costumes for Kontakthof were designed by Rolf Borzik, Bausch's partner at the time and one of the most decisive figures in the form and aesthetics of Bausch's theatre in the early years of Tanztheater Wuppertal, as he was also involved in the choice of music and many...

La Ruta  © Rahi Rezvani, NDT 1 Gabriela Carrizo and Frank Chartier, founders of the Peeping Tom dance company, have been working separately again for the past two seasons, following Kind in 2019, which they created together long after A louer in 2011. In 2022, Carrizo created her second choreography, La Ruta , with NDT 1 dancers. In 2023 Chartier created a piece for the duo's own company, S 62° 58', W 60° 39' .  La Ruta was on NDT 1's programme in 2022-23 and the current 2023-24 season, while S 62° 58', W 60° 39' continues its world tour. For those familiar with the work of Peeping Tom, neither Carrizo's La Ruta nor Chartier's S 62° 58', W 60° 39' begins surprisingly or unexpectedly. In La Ruta , which lasts about 30 minutes, Carrizo has transferred the eerie and creepy atmosphere she created indoors (in the cabin of a cruise ship) in The Missing Door , which she had previously worked on with NDT 1, to outdoors, on and around a road, an asp...

INK, Megaron-Athens, 2023, January 12th, World Premiere © M ehmet Kerem Özel 15 January 2023, on the plane, on the way back to istanbul  there are two worlds: one lived inside, the other projected outwards. the first is at the level of the stomach; full of water, turbulent, whirling, swirling, emotional, sensual; naturalness, sexuality reside here, this is where man is born. the second is at the level of the head; the mind, thoughts, lights scattered around... the old man on the stage, in black trousers and a black shirt with rolled up sleeves, has these two worlds...  in the first moment, the old man suddenly grabs an octopus from the ground, pulls it out, tames its flesh by beating it, bites off a piece, eats it, then sits down on a chair and rests... at that moment, the fountain moves in a certain radius from the level of the man's head and sprays water, the water hitting the curtain behind him...  the hunt for octopus is a very greek phenomenon, it's something that al...

Our series, which we devoted to Dimitris Papaioannou's Transverse Orientation , which is currently touring the world stages, started with a playful essay written by our writers Ayşe Draz and Mehmet Kerem Özel. We continue our series with an interview with Jan Möllmer, one of the performers of the piece.  © Simon Baucks Dimitris Papaioannou, in an interview with Mehmet Kerem Özel in Athens in December 2019 and published in Art Unlimited in February 2020, told performers from all over the world, from Canada to Korea, participated the audition for Transverse Orientation , which was under creation at that time. He said he was excited to be working with an international team for the first time, saying about the eight-person team, two of whom are Greek: “Now it seems that these talented people are willing to leave their homes and take an apartment in Athens in order to work with me. So, I’m taking advantage of the circumstances and I’m curious about what will happen. I’m enthusiastic wit...

For this article, that consists of sort of a play within itself, Dimitris Papaioannou selected and sent to the authors six images, previously not shared with the press, particularly for this article, from Transverse Orientation that the authors have watched together two nights in a row, on the evenings of October 10-11, in Plovdiv, within the scope of One Dance Week 2021. The authors then selected five images each and wrote down their recollections and impressions independently of each other. Just as Papaioannou does, for all his works, inviting a trusted friend for final rehearsals to give a title to the work, the authors invited choreographer/dancer Gizem Bilgen to give a title to this article. (Left aligned bold text by Mehmet Kerem Özel. Right aligned normal text by Ayşe Draz) Black orb-headed creatures that make vaguely mechanical noises; they're cute, they're happy. They are easily distracted, they can easily get involved in a game, but they can easily lose themselves ...

Zwermers, Pan~ // Catwalk, © Jostijn Ligtvoet Fotografie  What is the essence of performance in your opinion?  Performance, in our case, has the double meaning of being a live-performance but also being Performance Art, the art form where the artwork is created through actions executed by the artist.  Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How?  In our project Pan~// Catwalk the performers provide this action: the continuous changing of outfits. By doing this, the outfits take centre stage and tell the story: the huge transformative power outfits can have on a body and how it provides a sense of identity. The audience get’s confronted with their own inert tendency to label everything we see and realises how fluid the concept of identity really is. As an artist working in the field of performing arts, how do you personally cope with the challenging conditions resulting from the pandemic? The pandemic has greatly influenced our work. Due to cancelled perfor...