INK

"I like the way water sounds and, above all, that it is a manifestation of Nature," says Dimitris Papaioannou, a Greek experimental theatre stage director, choreographer, and visual artist. Papaioannou visualizes his pieces before they begin to be matter and body, because as a painter and as a Greek, the naked bodies of classical statuary are sources of nourishment. "I really like the naked body and I want to be someone who calls you to the theatre, and who, among other questions about life, offers you to appreciate the beauty of youth in all its aspects: aesthetic, philosophical and with its erotic connotations. I am sharing with you something that I am, something that moves me, something that obsesses me".

INK comes after the worldwide success of The Great Tamer and Transverse orientation seen before in Madrid which has toured all continents. However, the performance this time is more intimate. In 2022 its creator retakes the artistry and reworks it for an international tour, jumping on stage himself, which is noteworthy because it is always a privilege to see Papaioannou himself on stage. He takes to the stage in a passionate tour de force with the impressive German dancer Šuka Horn. The show comes to Madrid after performances in Athens, Milan, Rome, Montreal, Seoul, and Barcelona.

INK is water and body, liquid, and flesh, living and naked nature, dance and fight, look and moan, silence and light. It is a piece related to one of his previous works Primal matter (2012), which was also a dance duet between a clothed man and a naked man. Artist and model, father and son, mature man seducing young man, or as suggested by the critic Roger Salas, a great connoisseur of the Greek's work, a tête-à-tête and a body to body that "refers to archaic schemes, from the ancient world, from literature, history, mythology, theatre and poetry: Achilles and Patroclus, Alexander and Hephaestion, Cratinus and Aristodemus, Charyton and Melanippus, Damon and Fintias, Harmodius and Aristogiton, Cleomachus and Philistus. Are they trying to revive a legendary couple through this evocative piece?” There are even those who have seen a Captain Ahab using all his force against Moby Dick, under the violent curtains of salt water. The treacherous fight against his inner monster. There is a whole universe created between these two figures who attract and repel each other, who fight and love, who want to dominate or be dominated. An octopus, an intelligent animal of the abysses, with precise movements, which will throw up a wall of ink when it feels threatened and is savagely beaten by fishermen against rocks to make it tender in the mouth. Papaioannou's poetic ability reaches, at times, epathetic heights.

The Greek artist is still in top form at almost 60 years old. Dimitris Papaioannou achieved fame as director of the spectacular Opening Ceremony of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, which seems a long time ago now. He has become one of those popes of the international scene (in the wake of Bèjart, Bausch, Kantor, Wilson, Lepage, Castellucci...), called to leave a unique legacy through a recognisable and highly imaginative language, where dance and theatre coexist in a symphony of heroic bodies and polysemic objects. And a soil always ready to crack, to show hidden desires, to open for the new sprout, to close on the eternal mysteries. Symphony of symbols that, as in INK, assume the living materiality of the stage, alive as water, a powerful ethical and aesthetic element for a deeply Mediterranean artist. INK is a mythology, as irrational as it is human, as wild as it is illustrated, a two-step that fascinates by filling our viewer's eyes with powerful and passionate images, which we will carry with us, in memory, much longer than we think, because Papaioannou has a unique skill to percolate on our perception of the sublime.