© Myrto Steirou – Andrew Michael
Artist statement
Born in Athens (1991) Angelos Papadopoulos is a dance artist and director who steers purposely clear off the camera.
Studied economics at the Athens University of Economics & Business and dance at the National School of Dance & the Greek National Opera Dance School. He’s currently pursuing the MRes Choreography & Performance, University of Roehampton in London with an alumni referral scholarship. Awarded with Act Residency Award for the ‘Subject of interest is the boy from wherever;’, a choreography presented in Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. Honored with Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship 2020-21 and Stegi Onassis Cultural Center Fellowship to attend a residency in June 2021 at the CND (Centre National De La Danse) in Paris. Founder of ‘Cicada’s Call’ Dance Company and member of ‘Atrial’ Civil Non- Profit Organization (GR). Member of ‘Room to Bloom’ platform for young feminist artists. Angelos is particularly interested in identity. He follows non-linear narratives
and open dramaturgies in choreography and filming. Common references that often run through his work are the queer, the weirdness of vision, hybridity, play and a direction of bold experimentation, where the idiosyncratic and personal element prevails. His artistic practice is about the body and its presentation. About its aura, psyche, and identity. The body is his first and ultimate instrument, raw material and site for performance.
His performances have been shared in Germany (Tanzahoi International Dance & Dance Film Festival), Greece (Megaron, the Athens Concert Hall), Spain (Act International Festival for Emerging Performing Artists, Guggenheim Bilbao Museum) & Taiwan (Take part in Taiwan Festival). His short films have been screened in festivals in France, Georgia, Greece, Germany (2nd most voted short film), Mexico, Portugal, South America, U.S.A. & Spain and in more than 20 cities in Europe thanks to Freiraum Festival.
Dafni Pantazopoulou is an interdisciplinary professional and a historian from Athens with formal training in Dance (‘Rallou Manou’ Professional Dance School) and in History and Archaeology (EKPA) both in Athens (Greece) with an additional MA degree in Dance History and Philosophy (Roehampton University, London).
For the past 10 years of professional experience, Dafni has danced in LaVeritaDance Company, the GranadaTanz Teatro and AVLOS Company and has choreographed her own works. Her performances have been created in Spain (Teatro Vladimir Tzekov, Ediciones Dauro), Italy (Napadema Festival), U.K. (Emergency Festival) and Greece. She has curated the movement in theatrical performances in Athens and has been engaged in community dance performances with refugees. She is at the organizing committee of the global online conference ‘Dancing with Decolonization’. In her postgraduate dissertation ‘The Phantasmal Greek Dance University’ (2021) she conducted interviews to explore and interpret the issue of the absence of Higher Dance Education in Greece.
As a dance practitioner/researcher and historian, she is interested in the dramaturgical support in dance practice as she explores practice-as-research approaches. Her recent research and practice interests include the precarity and protest space as cultural heritage, documentation as choreography and oral testimony as an interdisciplinary tool for the study of memory and body.
Dafni & Angelos crossed artistically in 2021 during their studies in the University of Roehampton, London. Their shared critical enquiries brought them to collaborate and research together their current proposed interdisciplinary project “We Need to Talk about Father” (see more info below). Issues that affect them always are connected to their positionality. Angelos is a gay, white, low class (believe it or not), able-bodied, cis male and the way he perceives reality is filtered by these labels. Dafni perceives the body as a dynamic field of dialogue, a space where the interdisciplinary experience intersects, transforms, and reveals itself through movement and dramaturgy. Art allows them to make shifts within themself and after all, that’s what they’re looking for as creators: how to make the audience actively question what they are receiving and move them. In their professional experience, they’ve come to realize that the more personal they are with what they’re engaging with at any given time, the more universal their work becomes.
Dafni & Angelos crossed artistically in 2021 during their studies in the University of Roehampton, London. Their shared critical enquiries brought them to collaborate and research together their current proposed interdisciplinary project “We Need to Talk about Father” (see more info below). Issues that affect them always are connected to their positionality. Angelos is a gay, white, low class (believe it or not), able-bodied, cis male and the way he perceives reality is filtered by these labels. Dafni perceives the body as a dynamic field of dialogue, a space where the interdisciplinary experience intersects, transforms, and reveals itself through movement and dramaturgy. Art allows them to make shifts within themself and after all, that’s what they’re looking for as creators: how to make the audience actively question what they are receiving and move them. In their professional experience, they’ve come to realize that the more personal they are with what they’re engaging with at any given time, the more universal their work becomes.