Written by Iris Karayan

A COLLAGE OF POP & SPORTS ICONS

A compilation of web-based materials – pop video clips, YouTube videos of Muhammad Ali and John McEnroe – are appropriated, cut up and rehashed into a new composition. Unauthorised attempts to challenge the obstinate physicality of the body and disappear in abstract identification. Looking closer at some ways in which the body is represented, performed and mediated in sports and pop culture, the work builds into a live collage of physical enactments and performances.

Unauthorised is a choreographic score that mixes movement phrases selected from pop video clips, footage from Muhammad Ali’s boxing fights, John McEnroe’s tennis games, and Northern soul dance moves (a music and dance movement that emerged in the late 1960s in North England). Appropriating and citing dance styles, pop, sports and social icons, my idea is to copy, mutate and reframe these images in an attempt to explore the dynamics of representation of the body. Studying the intention and drive, the rhythm and energy of the copied movements, my focus is to look closer at ways through which subjectivity is produced, represented and performed.

Concept – choreography: Iris Karayan
Music: Nikos Veliotis
Performance: Georgios Kotsifakis, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Yiannis Tsigkris
Artistic collaborators: Yorgos Maraziotis, Betina Panagiotara
Photos: Elisavet Moraki
Production: ZITA dance company
Funded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports (2019)

Video https://vimeo.com/346908472

Trailer https://vimeo.com/350558471