cie. toula limnaios

The choreographic style develops convulsively and meticulously as the company’s dancers’ move around the stage to perform and transmit the chaotic appearance of microscopic viruses. The chaos is organised to reflect real life and dancers scatter away from the center of stage before returning to it in search of moorings, a safety that not only represents the center of stage but also their right that has unjustly been denied to them.
The production represents belonging through the body and the voice of dancers and through anthems. It represents the inclusivity of belonging by deliberately contrasting national anthems to Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (the European Union’s anthem and ultimate expression of fraternity worldwide).

The Sicilian tongue-twister stands as a caution against ‘national rhetoric’ and plea to vigilance, in which even most seemingly mundane actions, could slowly progress towards catastrophic consequences, like in comedies such as Laurel and Hardy.

Patria conveys belonging not merely as exclusivity but also participation, because homeland is in the singular but should always be pluralized along with the word humanity. Indeed, to a certain extent we are all exiles and »home is not a physical place but a mobile need«. (Richard Sennett, The foreigner)

The performances of »patria« were presented on 2 + 3 sep 2022.