When we set up the camera in the neighborhood of Exarchia, ready for our first dance, We were full of mixed emotions. After a four months pause it was time for the body to create again. Numb and confused, we were looking for ways to connect. We chose Exarchia as a starting point because we knew that the neighborhood that never sleeps, would awaken the necessary boost for us to restart.
Going up the hill of Filopappos towards the place of our shooting, a thick silence gradually covered the familiar sounds of Athens. Arriving there, the silence underlined every rustle of leaves, every chirping of birds. The landscape allowed the city to stretch in all of its directions and the gaze to reach the extremes of the mountains and the sea. The strategic choice of the "past" was strongly inherent. Throughout our stay, we were effortlessly whispering.
Exploring the Athenian arcades was like an adventure of the lost treasure. Our notes on the map wandered us to locations such as, Monastiraki, Omonia and Syntagma. The passage through the arcades seemed to change time and space. A feeling that you are cheating the daily downtown walker by taking a "secret" short cut through tunnels that connect different parts of the city. Intersections of familiar roads, parallel worlds of social gatherings and trade. Entering the world of an arcade is a conscious choice. Each time we were crossing an arcade, we gained a different experience of its beauty, no matter how many times we visited.
Our visit to Pedion Areos, was a total surprise for us. We knew it was one of the largest parks in the center of Athens, but its actual size was unexpected. Despite its size, the presence of people enjoying their afternoon walk was intense, though limited. Paths leading to small squares, filled with a variety of colors, textures and images, letting the mind to imagine creations and stories. Fields that had been turned into playgrounds where children and adults played group games, corners where small choreographies and trainings were set up, music, voices, smiles. Seemed like impossible to exist outside the eyes of the crowd and yet the park impressed us, as its large area and variety of compositions was giving space to both extroverted coexistence and isolation, in a very special way.
The most famous structure in Petralona, their trademark, the bicycle road, worked as a compass for our installation of the camera.
During the entire time of the filming, the diverse character of the inhabitants that were passing in front of the camera, offered a complete connection to this, always vibrant, neighborhood in the city of Athens.
It was the first time that we hadn't decided yet about what our frame would be or how it would look like and that was because the whole area of Zappeion offered a variety of different scenes with rich interest.
As young children in a candy shop, we relied on an instant decision· the dance would take place against the backdrop of the Historic Zappeion Megaron.
The area was steaming an artistic aura. After examining possible scenes with special interest each, we chose the point that would emerge with its silence and architecture, our original need for movement, connection, dance.
The colors speak for themselves. One could say that the scene was waiting for us to be discovered. One would say that it found us, we did not find it. The dance came out effortlessly, fluid, completely present.
Tree, light, scent of chamomile, path that leads to the unexplored. The Plato Academy, with the feeling of entering a sacred space, a space of meeting and contemplation, where thoughts and ideas were heard and shared.
A park that, when we entered, opened our hearts, reminded us how to be a "big" child, reminded us how it feels to be physically and mentally Free!
Τhe urban square is most discussed and multi transformed! How do you capture the feel of the square? For others is a meeting point and for some others an only home. For the city, is an opening, a breath, a plateau between the horizontal and the vertical, streets and buildings.
The urban square, as the eye of the cyclone, where the imprint of all the elements that crossed it remains alive. That was our dance.
Architecture, mathematics, the musicality of geometry. Highlighting the Panathenaic stadium through the camera, the improvisation reverently followed this repetitive rhythmic construction. Square volumes sometimes become walls, sometimes stairs and sometimes moldings that create an elliptical verticality. Lines that by distance are curved, openings that reveal stairs. A fractal, living, precursor of an era of repetition.