Written by Tzeni Argyriou
When technology defines our life and our relationships, isn’t it time to start from the beginning? Shouldn’t we walk to the river source? A journey to the source of Dance – A journey to what is “ΑΝΩΝΥΜΟ”…
“ΑΝΩΝΥΜΟ” looks back to a time when art wasn’t something created by particular, named individuals, but a practice which brought people—and kept communities—together. It immerses itself in these societies’ dances and modes of expression, which are rooted in human contact, holding, group cohesion and shared joy. It observes our lives through collective body memory, the experience of passing traditional dances on and their complete transformation into a contemporary movement idiom. It is the representation of a dance which, though it has creators, insists on defining itself as “anonymous” as it seeks its roots in rites of initiation and participation.
The work is underpinned by research which Tzeni Argyriou conducted during her residency at the Onassis Stegi in 2016–17 with the support of Isadora’s Duncan Research Center and Onassis Library. The starting point of our research was based on the concept of anonymity, seen by a double and complementary point of view that travels from the primitive forms of art to the contemporary values of a digital society. Researching Anοnymo dwells into different layers: Artistic Anonymity, Social Anonymity, Media Anonymity. Some of the main actions of the research was Anonymo Symposium, in which we invited experts from different research fields to reflect on their expertise through lectures, round tables and feedback sessions, with the clear purpose to implement the research on an intellectual level and Anonymo’s Labs – Research workshops on movement, rhythm, physicality of the sound and musicality of the body as well as experimentation on mask forms, uses and aesthetics. Material from the research has been presented at international events such as Tanzmesse 2016 Dusseldorf, Arc for dance Festival 2016 and Isadora Duncan Center 2017. The initiative thought-concept by Tzeni Argyriou come to meet other people opinions, minds and body works on that concept in order to create an anonymous project-performance. The final work “ΑΝΩΝΥΜΟ” produced by Onassis Cultural Centre and co-produced by Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis and Kalamata International Dance Festival premiered May 2018 at the main stage of OCC and since then has been touring to international festivals.
