Era Povera

Era Povera examines the streets and the tropes of the urban condition in its current state as well as in its transformation to something different.

The new work by Aerites Dance Company examines the streets and the tropes of the urban condition in its current state as well as in its transformation to something different. The city, the body, the dwellings and their ghosts, the unexpected and the continuous, the novel tactics of the urban experience and its tragic and comic aspects, become the company’s raw material. If it is true that what characterizes cities like Athens in the 21st century is incompleteness, endlessness and the myriad interventions mainly from below to above with which they go along ensuring their longevity, then Aerites’ work has no other ambition but to capture this yet undefined spirit and its other and still “uncategorized” rhythm.If it is true that the city happens, with oscillating dynamics, immaterial networks that interact with the landscape and the living beings in it, with episodes, patterns, non-sensical elements and painful certainties, Aerites cannot but include that disquietude in their work.If it is true that street languages have been drastically differentiated, since reality is imposing itself on its aestheticization; if it is true that the commons are becoming the new way of perceiving the public sphere and that the “crowd” is replacing the “people” in public discussion and as the conception of the public and the private life are being transmuted, then this other urban culture appears as something painfully elusive, full of conflict, and seductively unclear.Exhausted and at the same time aggressive, broken and because of that full of potential, it is the city (material and immaterial, living and non-living) that primarily choreographs the performance Era poVera. Movement, music, visual approach, lighting and costume design are organically combined to create the texture, the tone, the shiver and the symbolic shadowy light which characterize the performance, as well as the convulsive behaviours, sound and breath that make it come alive. In that sense Aerites’ work does not aim to depict street life in Athens or add material to the folklore that has been developed around the subject, but would rather capture the rhythm that guides this city, and others like it, towards their future.Nadia Arguropoulou

Source: www.aerites.comCreditsCreation: 2012Choreography: Patricia Apergi
Music Composition: Dimosthenis Grivas
 Set: Andreas Ragnar Kasapis 
Costumes: Aggelos Mentis
 Lighting Design: Nikos Vlasopoulos
Dramaturgy: Georgina Kakoudaki
Consultant for the visual: Nadia Arguropoulou
Script: Dimitris Halazonitis, Patricia Apergi
Assistant Choreographer: Dimitra Mitropoulou
Photography: Tasos Vrettos
Performers, Creative Contributors: Ilias Chatzigeorgiou, Nontas Damopoulos, Giannis Emmanouilidis, Chara Kotsali, Maro Marmarinou, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Konstantinos Rizos, Dimokritos Sifakis 
Musicians: Orestis Chatzitheodorou, Dimosthenis Grivas, Danae Nielsen