polina kremasta
COMMUN ©Panagiotis Andrianos
GENERAL INFO
https://reon.productions/creo-dance-company/
GENERAL KEYWORDS: Community-making, Companionship, Improvisation, Music, Score
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CHOREOGRAPHIC WORKS: Apogeos, Boreades, Commun
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​PEOPLE: Benjamin, Walter; Camus, Albert; Karouzos, Nikos
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PLACES: Ioannina, Thessaloniki, Volos (Greece); Ireland
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CITATION: ​Interview with Polina Kremasta, Ariadne Mikou, online (27/06/2022). Project “Mnemedance”, Collection Mnemedance (#Mnemedance16) URL:<https://www.mnemedance.com/polina-kremasta>, (accessed dd/mm/yyyy).
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INTERVIEWS MAY ONLY BE REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION BY MNEMEDANCE
ABOUT
Polina Kremasta is a Greek contemporary dancer and choreographer who made her first professional steps around 2010, at the dawn of the economic crisis in Greece. As a dance-artist in evolution who becomes through practice, she also developed a folkloric-driven research based on traditional dances, or as she claims ‘societies of dance’, that contain the embodied memory of the residents of Northern Greece. Through observation and deconstruction, this physical research culminated in a contemporary movement practice beyond the limits of this geographical region that aims to enhance the spirit of belonging and community-making by creating instances of micro-societies. Interested in how to bind people together through a shared and common movement language, Polina also came across the fundamental question of 'What is Dance?' that is also at the core of this conversation with Ariadne Mikou. Together they attempt to trace through the elusive nature of words how the practice of embodied memory shifts, evaporates and gets transformed to give space to the 'contemporary' that is understood as something that occurs in the present.
BOREADES ©Thodoris Tsamis
INTERVIEW
QUESTIONS
[00:02:33]
What are your first memories related to dance that shaped your choreographic poetics?
[00:05:49]
Is there something in your path as a dancer that you would like to forget?
[00:08:24]
In your work, what is the relationship between oblivion and creation?
[00:11:36]
Could you speak about your kinetic-dance-anthropology research “Apogeos”,
its evolution and its connection with memory?
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[00:23:07]
What is the role of improvisation in “Apogeos”?
[00:29:56]
Do you think that the memory that you practice has a Greek identity?
[00:33:24]
Where would you position yourself on the map of the history of contemporary dance?
[00:36:55]
Are there any links between the practice of memory through dance and your academic studies?
[00:42:13]
Do you keep an archive of your choreographic work?
APOGEOS ©Alexandre Iseli
BIOS
POLINA KREMASTA graduated with honours from the Higher Professional Dance School “Rallou Manou” (Greek Ministry of Culture) and the Medicine Department, University of Ioannina. She is currently pursuing her Master’s Degree in Anthropology and Folklore Studies at the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Ioannina. Dancer and choreographer of Creo Dance Company, she participates in Greek and International Festivals, Residencies, Symposiums and Platforms and she conducts Workshops. Creo has received state support from Greece in the years 2009–2010, 2017–2022. In 2012, Polina was awarded the first prize Silver Snowflake at the Sarajevo Winter Festival for the performance GODOT. Since 2014 she is conducting the kinetic-dance-anthropology research “Apogeos” under the support and the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. She is also the creator and founder of a multilayered educational program for dancers and public school students, called “Skytali”; a program approved by the Ministry of Education and chosen as one of the most inspiring programs in Europe by EDN (European Dancehouse Network). Her work focuses on two interrelated axes: bringing dance into the community and introducing the feeling of community into contemporary dance.
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She has collaborated with many artists and scholars from various fields. She is teaching contemporary dance, theory of contemporary dance, improvisation, choreography and applied anatomy-kinesiology in various Professional Dance Schools in Greece.
ARIADNE MIKOU is a Greek-born artist-researcher and dance scholar who is currently residing in Italy. With a background as an architect, dance performer, and choreographer, her research is located at the crossover between corporeal, spatial and screen-based arts. Her projects explore alternative modes of archiving (“unstable archives”), expanded and interdisciplinary choreographic practices, community making and site interventions. She publishes interviews and reviews; contributes to academic journals and book anthologies and she also creates choreographic scores. She is co-founder of futuremellon/NOT YET ART, a collective that enables her to expand her choreographic practice as well as to experiment with the curation of screendance. In 2018, she was awarded her fully-funded PhD Degree in Interdisciplinary Choreographic Research from the University of Roehampton (UK) and she holds a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from The Ohio State University (USA) supported by a Graduate Teaching Assistantship and the State Scholarships Foundation of Greece (IKY/Erasmus/Erasmus+). In 2021, she was awarded a Research Grant for the Creative Europe project Dancing Museums-The Democracy of Beings from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and she was a Selected Artist for Creative Europe’s mAPS-Migrating Artists Project_Challeging Dance and Cinema Across Europe (2020–2022).