residency Island Connect
Limerick, Ireland August 2023 & Naxos, Greece September 2023
With the artists Natalia Manta & Elton Petri
"Returning to my womb
It’s not so easy to be green.
Greenscreen, green disease and sesame,
Where does green lives?"
Practicing Relating No 1: greeness and non greeness
A sharing and a ten day residency program Island Connect in the city of Limerick in Ireland by the artists Androniki Marathaki, Elton Petri and Natalia Manta.
Hosted by the Irish Aerial Creation Centre and the green surroundings of the forests and the Shannon River in the west coast of the Emerald Isle, they questioned how do we experience greeness and how are able to feel the absence of its nature.
Associations with climate urgencies, collective memory and nationality diversities unraveled the urge on what and how we notice, experience and communicate.
We see colourness subjectively. Yet, the force of perception is a moving force.
What are the practices that can unravel with flexibility the figure before it comes into form?
How can we sense the force of perception and dance its Soma?
This artistic research is part of the dance improvisational practice “Let’s be comfortable in our own skin” about the feeling of movement and its relation to Bodily stimulus and is focused on the relation of movement and colourness.
Island Connect Residency Program (Theatro Entropia & Irish Aerial Creation Centre 2022) | Creative Europe | Limerick 2023
Special Thanks to John Britton
By standing still in the eternal blueness, by remaining on pause in front of what might be forgotten, by reexamining the potentialities of an awareness where our skin is like the illusional line of horizon, we reached a point of exploring the relation of spaceness and solidity.
We are right there. In the blue of the sea and sky and of the solids and spaces.
Practising relating No 2: Am I able to sense your blueness my dearest world ?
A coordination of movement and bodily sensations that are activated through a "forgotten" way of paying attention to the eternal blueness of sky and the sea and that reached a point of exploring the relation of spaceness and solidity.
Facing the blue and regulating my "solid-space” whatever to embrace the blueness.
What does it mean to become blue?
How free am I to perceive my solidity?
How free am I to sense my spaceness?
How do I value space and how expensive do I think the sky is?
How solid do I feel my Body? How can I sense “Its” spaces?
How can the crown of my head be free to sense what’s outside my Body?
How can my hair “face” the blueness of the sky?
How do I measure the solidity of the sea?Why bother?
How solid are the borderlines of my sea|see?
Am I able to sense your blueness my dearest world?
In Naxos Island hosted by Island Connect, with the company (thank the blue gods) of the great artists Natalia Manta and Elton Petri.
Androniki Marathaki | choreographer, performer
Elton Petri | performer, choreographer
Natalia Manta | performer, visual artist
This is part of an artisitc research for the sensorial materiality of the colours and it is explored through the imporvisational dance practice "Let's be comfortable in our own skin".
Special Thanks to Marilli Mastrantoni for hosting us and for organizing the program, as well as Yalena Kleidara for her precious support.
Island Connect Residency Program (Theatro Entropia & Irish Aerial Creation Centre 2022) | Creative Europe | Naxos 2023
P.S.:“Being comfortable in our own skin” means mostly questioning the coordination of our Bodily sensations and the way we move within the world. It refers to supporting and researching on strategies, practices and a Way of living through effortless movement. And this refers inevitably to exploring the regulation mechanisms for not forcing, but still continuing moving.
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The video is the artistic reflection of the group's process, through the sensorial artistic lens of the dearest Natalia Manta.
Sound by "Songs Of The Humpback Whale - by Dr. Roger Payne"
