Here and Where?

A choreographic stage work for Stopgap’s apprentice company Sg2 that was originally created right before UK-wide lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘Here & Where’ is about the way we look at each other, the way we reach for each other and how we connect in space and time even in the most difficult of situations. 

Following the structure of the painting ‘The raft of the Medusa’ by Theodor Gericault, it’s diagonals and triangular forms, the reaching and touching actions of the bodies and the trajectories of their movements in space, we tried to make the painting become alive, to extract those characteristics and put them in another context.  Contrary to that we employed the use of circular pathways, a motif that is characteristic of nature and human nature.

Throughout the piece we follow the dancers on a journey from the initial meetings to the more intimate and intense moments that unfold through the reaching, holding, pushing and pulling actions, to their own imaginary crossings and opening up in space, to their each time unique encounters, re-unions, variations and caring moments, till they eventually let go of every gesture and every notion thus deconstructing the piece to its very basic act of looking at each other.

The song about a ship wreck that happened more than two centuries ago in the Mediterranean sea is a reference to the multiple ship wrecks that take place in the same sea nowadays and that the title ‘Here and Where’ wants to imply. 

Choreography: Maria Koliopoulou

Original music score: Yannis Isidorou

Created for and performed by Kat Ball, Finlay James, Abbie Thompson, Sander Verbeek