Vibrant Contexts

After a first round of Online Conversations around Contextual Art Practices and Curatorship and the project’s first open event in Greece, PLANT continues its quest to broaden and enrich the dialogue on contextual practical experiences, activating a wider national and international engagement and drawing new synergies for potential collaborations. On March 11th, we presented “Vibrant Contexts”, a conversation focused on emerging contextual practices in Athens. 

With reference to the Athens Duncan Dance and Research Center, its history and location, project technologies and the recent shift in losing its operational autonomy as a dance house, PLANT gathered the Center’s former director Penelope Iliaskou alongside multidisciplinary artists and curators Alex Strecker, Anastasio Koukoutas and Vitoria Kotsalou. Together, they shared perspectives and approaches on our ability, as artists and curators, to respond to situations to keep alive, either as institutions, individuals or communities.

Vitoria Kotsalou

Studied psychology at the University of Reading (UK) and is a self-taught dancer and choreographer. She is a founding member of the non-profit initiative R.I.C.E. and the RSOD School of Dance on the island of Hydra. She is a close collaborator of choreographer Michael Klien and a member of En Dynamei Ensemble since 2014. As a choreographer, she has composed the works Day οut of Time (2017), Mount (2019), Rite of Spring – A Map, Solar(2021) and BARE(2023). As a dancer, she has collaborated with Androniki Marathaki, Mariela Nestora, and Agni Papadeli Rossetou. She teaches dance to children, adults, and mixed-ability groups, and also works as a choreographer for theatre performances. She explores dance as a form of intelligence, a mode of existence that characterises all living beings and reaches the true nature of things. Inspired by the study of different practices, philosophies, and collaborations, her thinking extends to social choreography, through which she observes the world and at the same time devises works that convey the possibility of change or of expanding how the world is perceived and understood.

Anastasio Koukoutas

Dance theorist, dramaturge and writer. He has worked, in the publishing field, as a contributor and editor, for independent artists, cultural institutions and organizations, such as Athens & Epidaurus Festival, Onassis Stegi, et.al. He has worked as a dramaturg in theatre and dance performances. He writes frequently about dance for the websites und-athens.com, springbackmagazine.com and teaches Dance History. He has worked as a performer for Denis Savary (National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens – 2016), Virgilio Sieni (Biennale Danza, Italy – 2016), Pierre Bal Blanc (documenta14, Athens – 2017), Dora Garcia (Megaron, The Athens Concert Hall – 2018) et. al. 

Alexander Strecker

Pursuing a Ph.D. in Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University (Durham, USA). His dissertation project is provisionally titled “Oscillating Practices: Fluid Figures of Athenian Contemporary Art,” and focuses on how tensions and tendencies felt acutely in the Greek capital since 2008 resonate worldwide. At Duke, he is a graduate research fellow in the Laboratory for Social Choreography and an affiliated member of the Speculative Sensation Lab (S-1). He has presented his research at College Art Association, the American Comparative Literature Association, the Modern Greek Studies Association, the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, transmediale, and the École normale supérieure in Paris. He has collaborated with arts organizations across Europe: Onassis Stegi, ARTWORKS, Onassis AiR, Athens Photo Festival, VOID, Kunst Haus Wien, Paris Photo, Art Basel, Depression Era, locus athens, MISC, and Zoetrope, as well as Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach Project. He received a BA in English from Amherst College in 2013. Before coming to Duke, he lived in Paris and Athens for several years while working as a magazine editor and photography critic.

Penelope Iliaskou

Academic background in Classical Philology and Linguistics (University of Athens), Music and Dance (Institut de Rythmique J.-Dalcroze, Brussels),  Penelope’s quests around the interpretation and dramaturgy of Rhythm expand in the field of education, image, text, choreography and cultural management. As Artistic Director of the I. and R. Duncan Dance Research Center since 2000, she initiated the Center's connection with the European dance scene and designed, curated or co-curated the Center's international interdisciplinary programs that test collective ways of planning, creating, and learning, connecting ecology with contemporary aspects of dance art and with community. She has a long experience in educational projects and expanded connections with the contemporary dance community and contextual dance art field.