It was quite a delayed realization until Dimitris Papaioannou's video installation "INSIDE" began screening that I learned about the West Kowloon "Free Dance" series of works and activities. "Free Dance" was initially a series curated by West Kowloon featuring avant-garde contemporary dance works and related workshops by Hong Kong and international choreographers. These include the Hong Kong dancer Yang Chun-Kiang's "Spirits and Bodies - "Free Space Heavenly Playground", the Thai choreographer Kornkarn Rungsawang's "Dance Wish Come True" which blends modern VR and AR technology, and the renowned Greek performance artist Dimitris Papaioannou's 6-hour stage performance recording "INSIDE" with his behind-the-scenes documentary "BACKSIDE" that I later watched, alongside the final act, Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger's "TANZ." Their diverse creative styles fully showcase the thoughts on dance (theatre) and humanistic concerns of avant-garde dance artists from Europe and Asia.
The outside view through the window reflects a temporal change from day to night, as well as spatial transitions akin to scenic movements of a train or cruise ship. It inevitably recalls the seemingly real-yet-fake spinning landscapes outside the cruise ship in the movie "Poor Things." The Greek director of "Poor Things," Yorgos Lanthimos, happens to share the role of theatre director and creator of the 2004 Athens Olympic opening and closing ceremonies with Dimitris Papaioannou, showing a similar choice in the transferred scenes of time and space.
INSIDE as a performing art piece must be watched along with Dimitris Papaioannou's personally shot 81-minute BACKSIDE documentary. BACKSIDE meticulously reveals the wonders of various stage mechanisms before, during, and after the performance. For example, how performers vanish directly from the center of the bed under the audience's watchful eyes—revealing that the mattress hides an exit tunnel like an escape net. Performers also need to grasp the timing of their exit or repeat certain actions or sit leisurely at the dining table eating. Though these life rhythms appear leisurely, on-stage management requires flexible precision, making everything the same yet different, mundane yet creative.
In the gradually changing human landscapes of Dimitris Papaioannou, while spectators can freely enter and exit within the 6-hour performance, watching seemingly infinite cyclical scenes naturally evokes reflections on life and begins to sense the creative touch of Greek Master Dimitris Papaioannou—his strong interest in "repetition." While discussing "INK," I summarized Dimitris Papaioannou's visual arts background, often drawing from traditional drama's focus on plot and character on stage, cleverly transforming it to speak through composition and materials, introducing new scenes and interpretations to stories. A few years ago, the stage film "NOWHERE" shown in Hong Kong demonstrated how dancers co-perform with lighting equipment and suspended structures, with computer programming design enabling 26 performers to move within mechanical devices. The cold yet seamlessly connected "repetition" of machinery serves as a point of reflection on the relationship between humans and machines. Dimitris Papaioannou's celebrated work "The Great Tamer" repeatedly appears from the start—the white cloth covering naked bodies on stage constantly blown away. "INK" leverages the qualities of water and marine creatures, playing wildly with showers and octopuses spurting water uncontrollably.
Dimitris Papaioannou is the first choreographer invited by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch to serve as both choreographer and theatre director, declaring himself heavily influenced by Pina Bausch. In "Café Müller" by Pina Bausch, chairs endlessly fall, while futile attempts to set them upright recur; in "Carnations," beautiful elements are juxtaposed with things unpleasing or even disgusting; in "Breath," a white male dance teacher repeatedly corrects an Indian female dancer's toes to make them pointed, demonstrating delicate beauty. It’s easy for the audience to notice how Dimitris Papaioannou amplifies the narrative elements and techniques of "repetition," fully pushing everyday sample movements to the extreme and playing for six hours; the BACKSIDE documents actors visiting and exiting like a revolving lantern. The long and hopeless monotony of life, the transformed outdoor space-time in INSIDE is merely projected images — we are all in the prisons of time and life, unable to escape.
Within the West Kowloon team's curation of the screening of INSIDE, the Free Space’s big box venue is arranged like beanbag sofas, with the audience almost lying down to experience this "long repetition," against the backdrop of a massive city skyline made from stacked glass cups. These cups echo the vessels used by performers in the video to drink water, as everyone lives through the motions of drinking water and using these cups. Arguably, while 12-hour or 24-hour theatre performances are not news anymore, perhaps the key to performative art is how to portray the 6-hour continuous "fish endlessly enjoying itself" performance with deep meaning. Alternatively, "repetition" itself may possess healing functions in a rapidly changing era, akin to the counterpoint to carnival, settling images as resting places for the soul. ●Text by Leung Wai Si