Sound and movement performance „MOS“ / Ioanna Paraskevopoulou (Greece)

Concept & choreography: Ioanna Paraskevopoulou

Performance: Georgios Kotsifakis, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou

Dramaturgy: Elena Novakovits

Audio technical support & Sound design: Danis Chatzivasilakis

Lighting design: Eliza Alexandropoulou

Tour Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou, Tzanos Mazis

Video Engineer: Konstantinos Asimakopoulos

Set & Costume design & video editing: Ioanna Paraskevopoulou

Visual design: Bois Futuri

Wooden constructions: Miltos Athanasiou

Executive producer: Ioanna Paraskevopoulou

Tour Management: Cultόpια & Ioanna Paraskevopoulou

Tour Coordinator: Christina Liata (Onassis Stegi)

Commissioned and produced by: Onassis Stegi, Atėnai

Touring supported by: Onassis Stegi’s “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program

Special thanks to: Eleni Tzarou, Thanos Daskalopoulos, Alexandros Tomaras

Premier: 2022 as part of Onassis New Choreographers Festival 9

Duration: 40 min.

Location: @Small Hall at Klaipėda Drama Theater (Teatro str. 2)

RECOMMENDED for lovers of motion and motion picture sounds

MOS IOANNA PARASKEVOPOULOU trailer from IOANNA PARASKEVOPOULOU on Vimeo.

A soundtrack created before our very eyes…

“MOS”* is the scenic interplay of movement, sound, and image, with two performers furnishing a series of cinematic scenes and moving images with an original sound setting and signature that is their own.

Two performers enter discourse with a disparate series of images and seek to impart their own transcription in space. The body and (micro-)movements co-exist with curious objects and materials to act as a means of sound production. The material is intensified, exploded, paused, repeated, and distorted to bolster the sound experience. Within the scenic formulation, individual pieces of information are teased out of the reused materials, thus inviting audience members to generate new connections and interrelations. They find themselves successively transformed into listeners of a makeshift and heterogeneous soundtrack that unfolds before them. The performers become the intermediaries between archive and audience, offering up their own personal takes, composing their own sound adaptation of a non-linear cinematic script, and choosing, at the end of the day, what could possibly be heard. “MOS” amplifies narratives that arise out of the mutual interplay and co-existence of seemingly incongruous archival sources, thus bringing visibility to elements that cannot easily be seen or heard. One of the inspirations for “MOS” is the “coconut effect”, a term that describes any non-realistic sound effect added in to aurally delineate everyday actions, presenting us with mixes that feel realistic but are not. Objects such as a pair of bellows, an umbrella, a plunger, and so on, are transformed into animating, sound-producing media.

* The word/acronym “MOS” has more than 20 definitions. Here is just a selection: make optical splices / microphone off stage / microphone out of service / minus optical signal / minus optical stripe / minus optical sound / missing of sound / mit ohne stimme / mit out sprechen / mixer out smoking / motion on screen / motor only shot / motor only sync / music on side / muted on screen / muted on sound / muted optical stripe.

Ioanna Paraskevopoulou is a dancer based in Athens. She graduated from the Greek National School of Dance (KSOT) and is currently studying at the Ionian University’s Department of Audiovisual Arts. Her research focuses on the relation between audiovisual media and movement. She has collaborated with such artists as Iris Karayan, Christos Papadopoulos, Dimitris Papaioannou, Alexandra Waierstall, Sofia Mavragani, Tzeni Argyriou, Patricia Apergi, Andonis Foniadakis, Harry Koushos, and other dance companies, performing in Greece and beyond.

Ioanna has been awarded the best performance prize for the video dance Sans Attente by Konstantinos Rizos at the InShadow–International Festival of Video, Performance and Technologies and the second prize for the performance Mneme-21 by Maria Koliopoulou at the 5th International Dance Festival in Algiers. In 2019-2020, she was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS.

For her video project “All She Likes Is Popping Bubble Wrap” she was awarded with the Best Sound Design Award at the FIVideodanza Festival in Mexico and the Best Video Art Award at the MIFVIF, Venezuela. The 10min-long version of "MOS" entitled "Coconut Effect" won one of the four prizes at the 7th edition of Danse Élargie competition organised by Theatre de la Ville, Paris. She presented MOS at Onassis New Choreographers Festival 9, which had its European premiere at the Julidans NEXT (NL).

Having been part of the European dance network Aerowaves with selected works by Iris Karayan (Mothers and Unauthorised) and Christos Papadopoulos (Elvedon and Opus), this year the choreographer with her piece “MOS” is included in the list of Twenty23 most promising creators by Aerowaves. ioannaparaskevopoulou.com

 

Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou