LA NADA/NOIR 

                            dance performance based on film noir

                            Life begins on the other side of despair   

                                                                          (Jean Paul Sartre)

                      CREDITS

Concept& Direction : Ki omos kineitai

Choreography: Ki omos kineitai in collaboration with the dancers

Sound Design: Kleon Antoniou, Thodoris Rellos

Lighting Design: Camilo Bentancor

Set Design: Angeles Mirra

Constructions: Lazoulos Dimitris

Created with and Performed by: 

Amendas Giorgos, Karaxanidis Tasos , Linardou Antigoni, Malkotsis Ermis, Paraskeuopoulou Ioanna, Sougioultzi Christina      

 Length:      approx 80 mins

ΒRIEF DESCRIPTION

      A dance performance that uses as basic tool the human body and its expressive possibilities and potentialities where the techniques of circus and performance play a forceful role to the evolution of the plot .The existence of constructions on the stage function effectively for the dancers to overcome the limits of their body and of their dance techniques when they are using them and at the same time formed the space of stage in an alternative way and generates multiple levels. Αll the elements of the performance are of equal importance- motion, text, music, lights, scenography blend, interact and converse and the boundaries among them are totally blurred following an interdisciplinary approach of the form- in order to create the right aesthetic results and to convey the desired meaning to the audience not in a didactic way but to transfer an enlarged artistic sense.

CONCEPT

     The performance is based on the aesthetics of film noir ⁽¹⁾ in terms of the composition of the  image on the stage, of the lights, of the strong psychological and emotional  expressive approach of the conduct of the performers on stage, οf the time flashbacks (in other words  a sense of discontinuity of linear time, as can be given by means of stage direction of the movement and the dramaturgy) and of the plot of the stage script.

      The main themes of film noir are fatalism, greed and betrayal, in a dream world, strange, erotic, ambivalent and hard. The basic plot usually involves search for some type of detection. The path to the solution of the mystery is marked by catalytic revelations regarding the “nature” of heroes and social structures.Τhe balances that have been disrupted do not revert and the rift remains unbridgeable.

⁽¹⁾ Film noir:A concrete movie style, which emphasizes the cynicism of the characters and the dubious and ambiguous moral incentives. The classic period of film noir in the U.S. extends from the early 40s until the late 50s ie ,so the period of economic recession. Associated with the urban setting of the early 20th and the fall of the value system of the past (by nature) societies.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

         Having the notion of film noir and its philosophy as main axis during the performance are displayed extracts of texts of the theoreticians Søren Aabye Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre which declared fundamental positions of existentialism and function as starting forces for the creation of performing/kinesiological motifs and ideas.

To refer some of them:

– “existence precedes essence”

     The focus of existentialism is not ideas or notions, but the notion of man as a unique and unrepeatable being. The existence does not have inherent static properties, as it was believed that the substance occurs, but shaped perpetually by personal action.

-“Only when we act, – when we are making important choices-only then we are confronted with our own existence.”

-“I  exist means that I sully my hands”

-“The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die”

      There is no external benchmark in which man could be oriented. The only benchmark must be himself and he has to create rules. The self-determination of behavior as an act of freedom is something inescapable.

“Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he didn’t create, he did not coined himself but in the same time is free, because once cast in the world, he is responsible for everything he does”

The individual is placed opposite to the “System”

The responsibility is not limited to the narrow confines of the individual subjectivity. As man elects himself, through his actions, and simultaneously elect an image of the man generally.

Respect for human dignity is a request even in a universe which is devoid of any meaning and without the existence of any transcendental reason to govern.

MUSIC

Original score composed by Kleon Antoniou, Thodoris Rellos