FOTIS
NIKOLAOU

TAMATA

...on promises

 

Tamata: Promises and tributes given to gods or saints in exchange for a grace, a favour, or the fulfilment of a desire.

 

Alone and with a sense of defeat and loss of belief, six men are seeking for their new faith. In a timeless and lonely landscape, in a place where memory becomes a nightmare and the present a deep painful wound, they struggle violently but at the same time quietly to rediscover their body, their truth ... the light.

 

The bodies fall, hug, tremble, stay still, breathe, shake, explode, sway, fight, dance, crave, hope, promise and sacrifice. Moments and encounters that come and go and others that are lost forever into the dark, leaving them alone again, confronted with their passions, their desires and their fears.  Confronted always with one single enemy, themselves.

 

A dark, pagan and at the same time poetic journey for search of identity, the need for tenderness, the sense of belonging somewhere, belonging to someone, coexistence. A melancholic journey, hidden behind shadows and darkness but filled with desires, cravings, rage, fragments of memory and sudden shadows of light. A look into the hidden desires and untold stories of the tender male soul.

 

DESIRES

Like beautiful bodies of the dead, who had not grown old

and they shut them with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,

with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --

that is how desires look that have passed

without fulfilment; without one of them having achieved

a night of sensual delight, or a moonlit morn.

​

C. P. Cavafy

Concept - Choreography:  Fotis Nikolaou

Music:  Dimitris Spyrou

Set design:  Elena Kotasvili, Alexis Vayianos

Costumes:  Constantina Andreou

Light design:  Panagiotis Manousis

Photos:  Pavlos Vrionides, Amanda Protidou

 

Dancers - Performers:  

Giannis Economides

Tasos Karachanidis / Ilias Bageorgos

Fotis Nikolaou

Panos Malaktos / Ilias Bageorgos

Alexandros Stavropoulos

Dimitris Spyrou

 

Commissioned  by the Cultural Services of the Cyprus Ministry of Culture within the frame of the Terpsichore 2018 program for the research and development of contemporary dance.   

 

Performances

26th Kalamata Dance Festival / August 2020

1st Cyprus Choreography Showcase / March 2020

Cyprus Contemporary Dance Festival / June 2019

ARC for dance festival / Athens, Greece / May 2019

MOTUM Dance Festival / Thessaloniki, Greece / April 2019

Rialto Theatre / Limasol, Cyprus/ December 2018

THOC main stage / Nicosia, Cyprus / November 2018 (premiere)