performing

Belgium

The performance will be followed by an open discussion with the audience.

GOLEM is the extension of the encounter between the dancer/choreographer Julien Carlier and the 75-year-old sculptor Mike Sprogis.
Through this dialogue between two artists of different disciplines and ages, the performance is constructed as the distorting mirror of their journeys, delving into the analogies between their respective practices of sculpture and dance.
One sees dance as ephemeral, moving sculpture; the other sees in the sculptor’s movements and material a dance to be inspired by. Between the two men on stage, there is clay. Manipulated, this material blurs the line between the inert and the living, with the earth becoming human and the human at times becoming lifeless matter.
The title is chosen as a symbol of the concept of duality and to draw a parallel between the creature shaped in the image of its creator and the artistic creation process. It’s a way to represent oneself or the other facing oneself.
In the artistic fusion of these two intense physical gestures, the piece speaks to the passage of time and its challenges on the body and mind. Organic, sensitive, and beautiful.

Credits
Choreographer: Julien Carlier
Performers: Julien Carlier, Mike Sprogis
Dramaturgy: Fanny Brouyaux, Simon Carlier
Music Design: Simon Carlier
Drums: Tom Malmendier
Light Design: Frédéric Vannes
Set Design: Justine Bougerol
Costumes: Marine Stevens

Duration: 50 min.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/308690127

A production of Compagnie Abis created with the support of “Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service de la Danse”. Also, with the support of: Charleroi danse, Ultima-Vez, KVS, Centre Culturel Jacques Franck, Centre Culturel de Namur, the TROIS C-L, the Grand Luxe network and Le Grand Studio.
The show has been performed at Dance Base during the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival (UK), Network Internazionale Danza Puglia in 2023 (IT), the Festival CaféKultour in Timișoara (RO) in 2021, and Trois C-L in Luxembourg in 2020. In Belgium, it has been performed in stages such as the Centre Culturel Jacques Franck (2019) and the Namur Theatre (2022). The piece has also received recognition with the AEROWAVES Spring Forward Twenty20 mention.

Julien Carlier

Julien Carlier is a dancer and choreographer with a background in urban culture and breakdance. His creative work, which he has been developing for over ten years, is inspired by artistic encounters and dialogue on stage between different practices and modes of expression. His recent works include GOLEM (2019), DRESS CODE (2021), COLLAPSE (2021), and PAYSAGE (2024). He is one of the artists selected by the prestigious Aerowaves platform in 2020. After being resident artist at Charleroi Danse between 2020 and 2022, he is actually associated with the Théâtre de Liège until 2028. He founded ABIS company in 2017, and ever since, it embraces an experimental approach that constantly blends disciplines and claims a hybrid aspect, situated between multiple forms of aesthetics.
https://www.juliencarlier.be/

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.