Movement in water – Vitoria Kotsalou

BARE UNDERWATER
Movement workshop in water

The workshop explores the sea as a field that enables us to activate very different fields of movement, embodiment, and imagination. In the workshop we will explore concepts, movements, patterns, and ways of being that develop or unfold from being within and friction with water. Manoeuvring, breathing, floating, and dreaming are the key elements through which we will begin to penetrate different modes of dance/embodiment/movement/existence. Axes that have emerged from years of dance research in the water will lead us to develop strategies for exploring navigation of thought body. The workshop will expand in out of water practice as well, where we will have the opportunity to engage with how the water dance (amneotics) practice informs our dance practice on land.

Ages: Adults
Level: Skilled swimmers

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Vitoria Kotsalou

Vitoria Kotsalou is a psychologist and a self-trained dancer, performer, and choreographer based in Athens. Her eclectic training, not bound by one tradition, and constant research from many different disciplines carve out new fields of engagement for dance immediation. As a choreographer and artist, she operates dance as a way of being, a means of thinking and assimilating the world, and as a field of connection to the intelligence that governs the nature of things.
Vitoria is one of the founding members of the non-profit organization R.I.C.E. and the RSOD Dance School on the island of Hydra. She is a close collaborator of choreographer Michael Klien and a member of En Dynamei Ensemble since 2014. As a choreographer, she has composed the works Day out of Time (2017), Mount (2019), Rite of Spring – A Map (2021), Solar (With En Dynamei Ensemble-2023), Bare (2023). As a dancer, she has made important collaborations with Androniki Marathaki, Mariella Nestora, and Agni Papadeli Rossetou. She teaches dance to children, adults, and mixed-ability groups, and also choreographs theatre performances.
Vitoria approaches dance as a phenomenon of life, that has the potential to touch all socio-political aspects of society. Her passion, belief, and experience in the possibility of dance a force, that enables different ways of being, communicating, and forming relationships, expands to thinking through movement and coming into contact with an intelligence that exists in (and connects) all living organisms. Drawing inspiration from the study of different artistic practices, philosophical approaches, and collaborations, her thinking extends to social choreography through which she simultaneously observes the world and designs works that convey the possibility of changing or expanding the way it is perceived.