Freedom, at Last – Iraqi Bodies
Iraq – Sweden
Freedom at Last embraces the ultimate. Looming before us, action, and life veiled by stillness. As we sit, silent, anticipating our last freedom, we find that our quest for freedom demands that we endure ourselves, the others, the State, the war, and ultimately the revolution.
The work of Iraqi Bodies explores the link between movement and gesture, between dance and theatre. The development of their artistic practice has been deeply influenced by the likes of Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski, Jacques Copeau and Tatsumi Hijikata while retaining a constant dialogue with thinkers, writers and poets such as Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Charles Baudelaire, Le Comte de Lautréamont, William Shakespeare, Henri Bergson, Krishnamurti and many others.
The poetics of awareness is an absolute given in their continued search for a radical scenic language.
Freedom, at Last was first created for an industrial venue in Gothenburg during the winter of 2022. Since then the piece has found new reiterations with a varying cast of performers and has been presented in Sweden and Italy. For the performance at Akropoditi DanceFest we will be inviting two of Akropoditi Dance Theatre’s performers, Ariadni Kitsou and Angeliki Ageletaki, to join the rehearsal process and performance of the piece as it finds itself in yet another reiteration in Syros.
Credits
Director: Anmar Taha
Dramaturge: Josephine Gray
With: Maria Freire, Josephine Gray, Ariadni Kitsou, Angeliki Ageletaki
Set design/light/sound/costume/props: Anmar Taha & Josephine Gray
Production: Iraqi Bodies
Duration: 40 min.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/774895928
Anmar Taha
Artistic director of Iraqi Bodies. Graduate of the Institute of Fine Arts–Theater Department in Baghdad Iraq 2005. He holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Contemporary Performing Arts from The University of Gothenburg. An experienced director, actor, and light designer, he has brought his remarkable visions to life for the past 12 years. His works have been presented in festivals around Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Josephine Gray
Artistic director of Iraqi Bodies. She is a graduate of L’ÉcoleInternationale de Théâtre de Jacques Lecoq and holds a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and a Master’s Degree in English from the University of Sheffield. In 2022 she published the anthology Second Nature: Comic Performance and Philosophy together with Dr Lisa Trahair (UNSW, Australia) with Rowman and Littlefield International, London, UK. In 2022 she initiated and directed the studium RADIX which continues on into 2024.
Ariadni Kitsou
She was born in Athens in 1993. She studied in the Department of Education and Early Childhood Education at the University of Patras. She graduated from the Greek National School of Dance in 2016 and since then she has worked as a classical and contemporary dance teacher at various dance schools in Athens.
She has also worked as an animator in creative activities for children, as well as a teacher in children’s camps and a yoga teacher for children.
Since 2014 she has collaborated with the Hellenic Dance Company under various performances presented at the Concert Hall, the Athens Epidaurus Festival, and has participated in performances at the Benaki Museum and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center.
She lives in Syros. She works as a kindergarten teacher and since 2021 is a member of the Akropoditi group and teaches classical and contemporary dance at the Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre.
Maria Freire
Maria Freire is a performer from Porto, Portugal. She is currently based in Copenhagen where she is completing her 3-year BA in Contemporary Method Acting at CISPA– Copenhagen International School of Performing Arts. In 2023 she is part of the choreographic research-project Prosopon and performed in the piece TERAS and Freedom at Last.