The dance film ‘Soft power in a Matrixial World’ is a site-specific dance performance, which is composed through close improvisational scores, based on kinesthetic/somatic practices. It is the crystallization of my practice research in situ in the abandoned Old University of Ioannina (GR), questioning how I can transform unusual and abandoned places for dance into dance stages through the use of different artistic disciplines: dance, scenography and cinematography.
Two women-performers investigate the alternation of the feminine movement’s qualities and dynamics -derived from the activation and utilization of their human sensorium. The sense of vision, touch and hearing, allow them to interact with the environment and to create a dynamic relationship both with each other and the space. Their embodied presence brings forward the ‘soft power’ of the womanhood. It ‘enlightens’ the crucial components of the woman’s world which displace the socio-political stereotypes nowadays: that is, freedom in making choices, kinesthetic empathy and sensitivity.
The Old University of Ioannina ‘housed’ for the first time the struggle for gender equality in the city. Metaphorically, the contradiction between its abandonment and the performers’ qualities enhance the female bodies’ vibrancy, while the spectators create their own abstract narrative, concerning the produced relationship(s) at every present moment.