my heart as an antidote: practices of solidarity
a performance in which the heart begins to respond again
Have you ever witnessed your heart beating when you are stressed, multitasking, interdependent, or mutually supported?
How do we continue to respond with love—as embodied bodies, bodies of politics?
How can we re-establish “relating” by dismantling constant, needy connection—or enforced uniformity—and compose a (performance) world across divergent ontologies, yet toward ONE common heart?

project description
This dance performance seeks to connect through the heart, to communicate not on an intellectual level but through the more intuitive, mysterious, and invisible dimensions of our existence. We have said it many times—but how can we truly be present in this? And how can we find a body and practices that allow for this? We all know what a heart looks like, but few have actually seen its beat. When we do not insist on seeing the heart, we perceive the physical spark of life. In the same way, the performance is not meant to be perceived only with the eyes. As part of this performative world, it incorporates a sacred, mysterious dimension of existence. Through movement and dance, a different connection between us is sought, a heart through the coordinated magnetism of hearts in the performance space, activating our bodily intelligences.
A light source that pulses continuously, low-throbbing and unceasing; together with it, the sound of its pulse—elements that become perceptible when we grow still, much like the beating of our own heart, or the “heart” of others and their needs.
Inspired by the physical organ of the heart, the performance reveals the inner and sensory in a collective experience. Everything that is usually private—perceptible, sensory—appears here in vivid relief in the relationships between the performers. Thus, it is as if you are witnessing your own heart beating: when you are stressed or multitasking, when you are trying to support yourself and hold on, or when you are supporting another person, or even when you are silenced and find peace. Like a diaphragm that bears the weight of the heart in solidarity, dancers seek a body of solidarity—towards themselves and towards others.
A light source that pulsates continuously, softly and incessantly, accompanied by the rhythmic sound of its pulse, elements that become apparent in the performance when we are quiet, just like the beating of our own hearts. Four dancers and a percussionist interpret their interdependence, mutual support, and negotiate their differences, until they become a single unit: a body full of multiplicities, penetrations, enclosures, entrapments, but also transcendence. The work unfolds through four parts (four cavities of the heart) that pulsate in space: pumping, airy field/magnetism, bloody field, dancing pulsing.
It is a performance that is warm and rough, like the muscle of the heart, but also intangible and simple, like the fleeting nature of the "golden leaves of hearts" that dance among us and through our "human weaknesses." Where the heart begins to respond again—like an estuary of collective pulse—as an antidote to the knowledge of the biodiversity of our bodies, illuminating otherness, freeing love as an embodied act of resistance and a desire for a shared life. It is a continuous, often hidden effort to come closer to each other, again and again, so that we can truly encounter each other as human beings once more.
Because the intelligence of our hearts can no longer be suspended, overstimulated, silenced by fear, or reduced to spectacle, it cannot be divided by pride or exploited as pity or vulnerability for political display. It is our gateway to "solidarity" – living with solidarity.
artists
Choreography & research coordination:Androniki Marathaki
Performance & research: Takis Zachariadis, Manousos Klapakis, Sofia Pouchtou, Elton Petris, Despina Sanida Crezia
Musical performance live & research:Manousos Klapakis
Lighting & coordination:Nysos Vasilopoulos
Contribution to the research process through workshops: Marina Tsartsara (Body-Mind Centering Teacher & Istos [BMC Greece] Administrative Director), Eleni Mylona (workshop “Redefining the known. Exploring the unknown”)
Special thanks to: Loukia Minetou (set design advice), Elli Papadaki (unifying element of costumes), Stavros Kapetanios (OKAY initiative space hospitality), Paleohori eco-art space (residency Symbiotic dancscapes) and all supporters of nightscores
photography: Kostis Kallivreatakis
Production:Cloudsdonthaveshape
Co-production:MIR
With the financial support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture
biography
Androniki Marathaki is a choreographer and movement researcher whose work approaches choreography as an embodied practice and a shared experience. With the support of the Greek Scholarship Foundation, she initiated her artistic research in choreography and dance improvisation at C.S.S.D. under the title “modulated choreographies.”
Her practice maintains elasticity in what dance might be, expanding the boundaries of performance and more and more through invisible, intuitive, and sensorial connections with audiences and by trusting the intelligence of the body and its relationscapes. By adopting “practice” as her main choreographic method, she creates conditions where awareness emerges for all that is participating in a dance performance. Lately she focuses on the coexistence of internal and external, individual and collective through the sensoriality within collectiveness for alternative modes of meaning-making in dance to unfold. Her current thematic research bridges the qualities of the organ of the heart with the essence of solidarity.
To date, she has explored a practice for the relationship between sensory stimuli and movement for the “pain–movement–pleasure” triangle that shares in different versions and dynamic topics (Let’s be comfortable in our own skin). She develops performance-based projects that create spaces, experiences, and temporary communities (project nightscores that cultivates networks of artists, observers, and performers—professional and non-professional—and invites audiences into active modes of perception). She has presented through performances, workshops, and installations the thematic Love & Revolution, it's not about if you will love me tomorrow , holy purple, painfully painless,https://www.mirfestival.gr/en/project/androniki-marathaki/
Moreover she has worked as a dance instructor in the Onassis Foundation educational program Dancing to Connect, as an invited artist in Zoom In (artist–craftsman collaboration program), and she guides movement classes for professional actors and dancers. Part of her research has been presented at TWIXTlab: art, anthropology & the everyday in collaboration with the Duncan Dance Centre, and her lecture is included in the digital archive for dance artistic research in Greece (artistic-research.gr).
Her work and research has been supported by the Greek Ministry of Culture, NEON, Onassis Foundation, Costopoulos Foundation, MIR festival, Paleochori Art residency space, Unplugged dance, Island Connect, the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, and other cultural institutions.
past & upcoming events
travelling & technical specifications
Type of Performance: Dance performance
Number of Performers on Stage: 5
Number of people traveling: 7-8 persons
Minimum performance space: 11 m × 7.5 m × 5.5 m
Full Technical Rider:
please download here
full performance
Our supporters
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