Ballad

So just what it is that makes someone become a dancer? Perhaps the answer lies in the particular pieces which they learn at a young age in dance school, such as those that Lenio Kaklea studied when she took up dancing at the age of ten, in Athens? And to what extent was she influenced by the environment she grew up in? The Greek choreographer answers these and other questions in a solo piece which combines history, dance and music. She recalls pieces that have been important to her — such as Martha Graham’s 1981 Acts of Light and François Malkovsky’s 1925 piece Petit Berger — and performs extracts from them, alongside some of her own recent works. Lenio Kaklea is not seeking to instruct her audience here in the history of dance; rather, she aims to demonstrate that our gestures have the potential to liberate us. And she wants to show that modern dance can also provide an image of a better world. “I became a virtuoso dancer”, says Kaklea. But this marked no more than the very beginning of her trajectory. For Kaklea, art means continuously getting involved, today, tomorrow, and always.
Austrian premiere
Duration: 55 minutes