portfolio

Bounce

Costas Kekis

Bounce is a performative ritual of personal and collective repair. The group of five performers work through shared sensorial physical practices of emotional resilience, driven by the need to care, cure, withstand and thrive. Next to the dark sounds of Tanja Fuchs aka Abu Gabi, the performers are relying on the physical perception of the self, the space and the other in order to form a choreography of private and shared histories in their search for endurance. Bounce is an embodied and embedded process towards an ecology of perception, that is, the way the activity of our senses functions to bind our separate nervous systems into the encompassing environment and thrive – or in other words: to bounce back.

Choreography: Costas Kekis
Created with and performed by Mzamo Nondlwana, Asher O’Gorman, mirabella paidamwoyo dziruni, Daniel Nasr, Marcio Kerber Canabarro
Stage and Costumes: Panagis Marketos
Tailor: Evandro Pedroni
Sound: Tanja Fuchs aka Abu Gabi
Feedback: Chris StandfestProduction assistant: Almud Krejza

A co-production by Costas Kekis/ Taystee Tears and brut Wien.
With the kind support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs Supported by Im_flieger. Special thanks to Walter Bauer Live show premiere on January 20th 2021 (cancelled) Video version presentation on April 22nd 2021 https://brut-wien.at/en/Programme/Calendar/Programm-2021/01/Costas-Kekis

Knuckles become clouds

Anna Prokopová, Costas Kekis, Andrea Gunnlaugsdóttir

Attempting to experiment with what a posthuman body can do and what a posthuman brain can think, Prokopová, Kekis and Gunnlaugsdóttir are engaging in an interrelational and affective journey. They rethink taken- for- granted modes of experience of the human itself, including customary perceptual modes and affective states. The human is seen as a figure, fluctuating between dependency as well as agency, in a multi-systemic world of interactions and affects with living and non-living beings. This relationality stresses that the human is a prosthetic creature, coevolved not only with other human beings and species but also with various forms of technicity and materiality, forms that are radically “not- human” and yet have nevertheless made the human what it is.

Concept: Anna Prokopová and Costas Kekis
Choreography and Performance: Anna Prokopová, Costas Kekis and Andrea Gunnlaugsdóttir
Feedback: Chris Standfest
Sound: Peter Plos
Light: Jan Wagner
Stage & costume: Lidija Lovrinović, Magda Jurišić
Production management: Almud Krejza
Co-production: Tanzquartier Wien
Supported by: Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien MA7, Studio Matsune, Tschechisches Zentrum Wien

It beats soft in the veins

Anna Prokopová, Costas Kekis, Petr Ochvat

The voice is produced and perceived through vibrations of the bodily organs and the air. And, so the perfromers inform us, it is precisely in that physical space that body, voice and language meet. The three extra-ordinary dancers examine and transform this space, their relationships to each other and to the audience, in search of ways to act in collaboration with others and to constantly re-examine this process. At the same time, their serious endeavour is filled with an accurate sense of the poetics of infinite vastness and loneliness, of unprecedented closeness and unfathomable comedy.

Concept, performance: Anna Prokopová, Costas Kekis, Petr Ochvat
Vocal coaching: Alex Franz Zehetbauer
Lights: Patricia Schönangerer
A co-production of WUK performing arts and Maggie Palms.
With the support of Impulstanz Turbo Residency, Life Long Burning, Studio WTKB, Studio Matsune and Imflieger Schokoladenfabrik

Corpse of a dance piece

Anna Prokopová, Costas Kekis, Petr Ochvat

The figure of the zombie – its uncanny anonymity, minimal subjectivity, unconditional collectivity, its useless body and its aimless existence – is the metaphoric and creative starting point for artists Prokopová/Ochvat/Kekis in their quest to radically deconstruct choreography and performance. Inspired by the unproductivity of zombies, the three artists undermine the capitalist dictate of efficiency to arrive in the pure potentiality.

Artistic Direction, Performance and Choreography Anna Prokopová, Petr Ochvat, Costas Kekis
Sound Markus Steinkellner
Stage and Costume Hanna Hollmann
Outside Eye Chris Standfest
Project Assistance Saskia Ottis
Production Maggie Palms
Co-production Brut Wien

Vivid

Costas Kekis

If the mind is a muscle, as Yvonne Rainer stated some forty years ago, then dreaming and imagination must be its heavy weightlifting.

Vivid is a research project, which attempts to evoke movement and choreographical images through the mediation of speech. It is strongly related to the spectacle as mediation of experience and/or as a representational form of experience. “Hyperreality” is defined by Jean Beaudrillard as ‘a real without origin or reality’ and by Umberto Eco as ‘the authentic fake’. A similar term is the simulacrum as described by Gilles Deleuze, ‘an image without resemblance’. It seems that in contemporary culture, there are these constructed realistic fabrications of various kinds, as an effort to come up with something that is better than the real. In this sense, vivid is a practice on imagination. Its criticality lies on regarding imagination as a necessary tool in order to be able to envision new spaces, utopias and alternatives not only in a personal and artistic level but also in a political one.

Concept, performance: Costas Kekis
Coaching: Christinne Gaigg
Text proof-reading: Asher O’ Gorman

Brunswick Centre 1970’s

Costas Kekis & Quim Bigas

In the Brunswick Centre two apartment complexes rise away from a central concrete concourse, where initially there were few shops and vast areas of empty space. It was an area to pass through, not to use. (The Fall of Public Man, by Richard Sennett, 1974) A materially raw architecture may impose transits in public spaces. Correspondingly, a void public space, such as the plain stage, may not favour any other use than passing by. The performers decide to use calculated internal relations, randomness as well as mutual looks, motions and states in order to arrive a point where a constant interchange between the formal/public and the informal/private person takes place through constant navigation in the bare performative space. Uniformity and abstraction assist the appearance of personhood.

‘Brunswick Centre 1970’s’ has been performed in theatre stages as well as public spaces.

Creation, performance: Costas Kekis & Quim Bigas
Costumes purchased at H&M “the uniform of the world”

Ultra XYX

Costas Kekis & Eve Chariatte

“The costume is queer. The scenery is selected. The lights are changing. The prop is elastic. The person is designed. The mood is huge. This work is ultramodern. That’s Eve. That’s Costas. ”

A male-female dance duet does not necessarily have to end in a classic love story. Traditional gender roles are embellished by showing popular gender clichés in a highly ironic way. This is a take on the new “ultramodern” form of the pas de deux in the third millennium. Attempting to queer up our own heteronormativity, we end up in making a queer soap opera on stage.

Concept, performance: Costas Kekis & Eve Chariatte
Sound editing: Costas Kekis
Supported by: Palais Kabelwerk, Performance Art Depot (PAD) Mainz

What u lookin’ at

Costas Kekis

This piece is a research on the act of seeing and being seen. The eye works with different focuses and qualities, a fact that reflects on the many synonyms the English language – and not only – uses, as for example “to see, to watch, to look, to observe, to make out, to witness”. These are performances of the eye while seeing in different contexts, with different aims and for different reasons. The work offers the viewers various performance clips inviting the viewers to watch with different qualities. Exhibitionism and narcissism are elements informing the exposure of the performers on stage.

Concept, artistic direction: Costas Kekis
Performance: Lana Hosni, Evandro Pedroni

80m/min

Costas Kekis

80 m/min is the average walking speed of the human being. It is a playful piece with the ability to transform formally, intellectually and emotionally through different human forces which are brought up by the performers. Group dynamics and politics in combination with emotional states and everyday acts compile the composition. The overall stage environment comes to support this experience. A piece which walks through small abstract scenes of common people.

Directed by Costas Kekis
Performed by Eve Chariatte, Sofie Hellström, Douglas Jung, Sophia Papanikandrou, Evandro Pedroni, Katarina Rilović
Light design by Robert Herbe

Email: costaskekis[a]yahoo.gr