Sweet Abyss | edu

In Sweet Abyss, Medie Megas, creates a tender, youthful chοreography, based on the individual temperaments of the performers with different disabilities, physical and learning. The choreographic concept emphasized the simplicity of language and of movement, which hides a immense power and profound meaning. The action of the dancers dressed in black was full of still images, simple dialogues, observations, self-observation, and the visual landscape was shaped by wooden platforms which connected and disconnected. Courageous confessions by some performers connected people with disabilities to humor and imagination. Something which prevails in this performance is the solidarity between the performers. At the end, one of the central male figures, highlights the ambiguity and the contradictions in our emotions towards disability, our fears, the heroic acts it encompasses and its grey sides. He stands with optimism and starkness,  in front of the audience and gives us his strong message: “Disability is in front of us and we do whatever we want with it!”

Natalia Koutsougera | dancetheater.gr | 9.3.2015

‘Sweet Abyss‘ was the title of the dance piece created within the context of the Unlimited Access program for a group of adults with and without learning or physical disabilities by Medie Megas with the assistance of dancer Irini Kourouvani. It was presented as part of an triple bill performance on the main stage of the Onassis Cultural Centre, along with Karagian’s ‘You listen to a sound. You run across the stage. You stop. You feel an arm on your shoulder. You go on…’ and Koliopoulou’s ‘The flight‘.

Sweet abyss 

A pier juts out into the blackness of the stage. It leads to the Sweet Abyss, an unexplored, mysterious place, alluring but threatening, incomprehensible but simultaneously filled with rich meaning. This space is created and explored by the dancers through their movement, their gestures and the routes they take. But language, too, is present in all its poetry and prosaicism, complexities and inadequacies.

Every movement, every text and idea the dancers put on stage has originated from their improvisations and reflects the form and content of the workshops run by Medie Megas and Irini Kourouvani.

Credits 

Choreographer: Medie Megas

Assistant choreographer: Eirini Kourouvani

Set designer: Vaggelis Artemis

Lighting: Thomas Oikonomakos

Costumes: Konstantinia Vafeiadou

Production assistant: Ariadne Papapanagiotou