YEAR 2 | U(R)TOPIAS ACADEMY OF CHOREOGRAPHY
-
YEAR 2 | U(R)TOPIAS ACADEMY OF CHOREOGRAPHY -
PART OF 2023 ΕΛΕΥΣΙΣ | EUROPEAN CAPITAL of CULTURE
MYSTERY 59 / YEAR 2 / EPISODE 5
BOUBOULINES (S.02 E.05)
Christiana Kosiari
DATES: 29 & 30 June, 1 & 2 July 2023
Concept · Choreography: Christiana Kosiari Original Music: Jan Van Angelopoulos Consultant costume designer: Lina Stavropoulou Photography: Stephie Grape Poster: Giorgos Zartaloudis Trailer: Christiana Kosiari Trailer Editing: Sofia Sfyri Performance · Co-creation: Afroditi Kapala, Maria-Aggela Katsikali-Kosiari, Mata Koulouridi, Niki Filianou
This work is inspired by the repetitive movements of women workers in the factories of Elefsina. During the peak of industry, women workers were often called Bouboulines.
Four women over 65 meet around a table. A meeting place that represents many moments of togetherness and sharing. A place of work, discussion, singing, female empowerment, revolution, celebration. Mechanical factory movements create a new kinetic vocabulary, where the four women transpose these moves into a dance of women driven by friendship, affection and love. The performers are not professional dancers, they are the women next door, our mothers, our aunts, our grandmothers. Their faces reflect all those women who have toiled, who have been empowered, who may be retired but who live every moment in the spirit of a child.
They are life itself and they invite you to sing and dance with them.
A NOTE BY THE CHOREOGRAPHER
A walk around Elefsina with the balconies, the drying clothes, the old women walking arm-in-arm along the pedestrian street and others sitting on chairs outside their homes and chatting, provided my first inspiration for the project. Observing their bodies, the weight of life inscribed on them, their gait but also their tenacity for life, I felt the need to deal with people over 65.
A second visit to the factories of Elefsina intensified my involvement with the women’s issue, which has been of particular concern to me in recent years. Thus, the so-called Bouboulines, the female workers of the region who, even in old age, in the heyday of the industrial era, wanted or had to work, became the central idea for my work.
I started by interviewing women who had worked in the factories of Elefsina and, while focusing on the memory of everyday movements in the workplace, I examined how gestures describing mechanical movements acquire other meanings and are transformed into choreographic material.
The choreographic language is based entirely on the physical capabilities of the four women and the attempt to produce materials from actual manual movements. I wish to show that dance belongs to all ages, and everyone can express themselves through dance.
© Photos: John Kouskoutis
/ MORE EPISODES
← GO TO PREVIOUS PERFORMANCE
STATION: THE KITCHEN DANCE A HOUSE TRANCE VOCABULARYΣΤΑΘΜΟΣ: THE KITCHEN DANCE
A HOUSE TRANCE VOCABULARYS.02 E.04GO TO NEXT PERFORMANCE →
STATION: DUNK ΣΤΑΘΜΟΣ: DUNK S.02 E.06