Cotton flowers exist / Baumwoll blumen gibt es
The choreographic piece Cotton flowers exist brings into dialogue the actual with the virtual and connects the materiality of the world with the capacity to imagine and create non existing landscapes. More precisely it is an attempt to explore what connects the practice of drawing, choreographing and walking. It brings into conversation three different forms of writing in three different scales: the writing on the surface of a notebook by drawing, on the floor of a stage by choreographing/dancing and what it is written on bodies while walking/strolling outdoors. My intention is to bring into light these highly idiosyncratic inner landscapes that have been inscribed into drawings and translate them into artificial landscapes/room installations. Using my drawings as scores I tried to translate the two dimensional images into moving images. The relation of the body to the cotton was the main agency that made possible the embodiment of the drawings. In the choreographic work Cotton Flowers exist, cotton is used as a material whose aesthetic value becomes the experience of the performance. But actually cotton is a symbol with economic and social connotations. It is a material that signals class and race. It is a symbol of struggle. Therefore,bringing into the performance the social, economic and political context of the cotton production in order to avoid the hyper – aesthetization of cotton was an imperative ethical responsibility. In October 2020, I visited northern Greece where the cultivation of cotton is very common and together with the film maker Artemis Anastasiadou, we interviewed and filmed the cotton producers of the neighbourhood I grew up. The focus of this research was to give voice to the cotton producers of three different generations reflecting on the socio – economic and political conditions of their micro society.
Concept, Choreography, Space: Maria Tsitroudi
Performance: Kai Er Eng, Maria Tsitroudi
Sound: Vincent Viala
Light/Video: Simon Lenzen
Photographic exhibition & Drawings: Maria Tsitroudi
Supported by HTA and the city of Frankfurt
- Performance
- Picture: Talisa Frenschkowski