Pizza à la Casa becomes a after-show ritual at La Villette for me. After the Festival d’Avignon, Memory of The Great Tamer has already been distorted. During the show, I compared it, rectified it, reinforced it.
The universe is the Great Tamer and the delicate surface the Earth.
On the instable and delicate playground, the earth or the universe, repeats the absurdity of human history. A day, a year even a century. A non-stop lost and found. the piece is even too short to compare with archeology. Dimitris is certainly inspired by the traditional three-act structure but time is not linear here. Or it is as our own history repeats but not necessarily in the exact way. New things are interwoven and the history evolves. The acceleration makes sense if we consider it as a learning process, also theatrically speaking, it is a crescendo.
When the shoe deracinates, the sound points into my heart, leading to a question of philosophy: can we get rid of our history? Or we just pull it out and put it back in a different pot? From dust to dust, from six feet under above. Like a tree, our life circles. Astronauts seem epic but their breath reminds me of those of animals. Yes, even one day we leave for the moon, the history will just repeat over there. If you have seen Kubrick’s Odyssey 2001, you know what I mean.
In front of the stage, orange, book, then the skull. That’s the thread of the piece. Papaioannou’s beaux-arts background outstands his works in the history of dance. The timeline is actually himself, not his canvas/stage. He starts with image, making it concrete with human body. Certainly he did absorb massively from contemporary dances, as he said so in Avignon. Subjectively, I saw Pina’s influence in several images, such as man in the water. He completed his works, giving it to us, the audience, to feel, to imagine, to connect.
In Avignon, I admired his attitude towards his works. A true artist I would say. He didn’t want to influence us by his origins of creation. True, some spectators were nervous. I am sure that a lot of them tried to catch up with critics on all the references. Is that necessary? Not for me. When I go to a museum, I let artworks approach me in the most instinctive way: lines, colors, volumes, etc. Don’t tell me the story, let me feel, imagine, connect. That’s how I treat all kinds of arts, including performance. If I am not connected, I just walk away. If you are not connected to The Great Tamer, you can do the same.
Dance Visa 