CULTURE

Natural disaster inspires modern dance production

The performance «Missing Persons,» a Landscape dance company production, is described as a «tribute to the land that changes and to people no longer considered missing.» The group, founded three years ago by dancer/choreographer Ioanna Parali, presented a first version of the show, inspired by last year’s disastrous tsunami, at the First Panorama of Modern Dance in April. The completed version has its final performance at the Hytirio Theater tonight. Through movement and music, by Nikos Vassileiou, the company presents the development of a tsunami and its effects on people and the environment. «I was looking for something really different,» said Parali to Kathimerini. «The choreography developed out of the collaboration with my dancers: Stella Zanou, Iris Kyriakopoulou and Markella Manoliadi. «I wanted to develop the idea on three levels,» Parali said. «The event’s beginning, when the plates start moving deep in the earth, then the wave created inside the sea; finally, the wave’s collision with the human element and the disaster it causes.» The show brought on many reactions when it was first staged, as the screening of images from the moments that followed the tsunami accompanied the dancers. «While collecting material for the show, we discovered that similar phenomena have hit Greece, even recently,» she said. «Geological disasters are international. With the passing of time, natural phenomena become more disastrous because of human intervention in nature.» The aim of Landscape is to use new methods and media, combining sounds, screenings and digital technology to promote the collaboration and exchange of ideas with other art and scientific groups in Greece and abroad. So far, it has staged three productions other than «Missing Persons»; the group usually bases its creations on a central theme, which for 2002-2005 was «People and the Environment.»

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