2026 ~ Roaming Assembly #33 ~ Ever Given / Stavros Karayanni, Waters of Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt: Tactile Affect, Dancing Memory

Dance embodies not only what seems obvious and apparent but what flows surreptitiously in the grooves that open as ideology erodes emotion. The movement that attracts me is fuelled by this flow and seeks to gesture, literally and figuratively, towards prescribed behaviour but also proscribed. The body’s kinesthesia is therefore inextricably linked to the various kinds of heritage that the body carries. Often, this complex heritage shapes those emotional layers where Memory sculpts its presence in the movement. This presence may also function as storytelling – a narrative of the body’s remembered but also unconscious history, a fluid and kinaesthetic record of the body’s own history and a choreographed expression of trauma and loss, but also the cultural wealth that is intrinsic to every body. While investigating Body and Memory, this presentation poses questions that have to do with how we understand Memory in terms of ideology and in terms of the body; how we are able to dance our body’s narrative, and how we can attain an embodiment of desire as at once a life-affirming force and a sorrowful loss. And always the movement, carrying a body that is lightened by the exuberance of self discovery and heavied by the promise of deliverance just as the Memory springs forth like an oracle from the future to prophesy the past.

About Stavros Karayanni