Alexia Sarantopoulou was born in Athens. She studied sociology, contemporary dance and earned a Master’s Degree in Architectural Theory. She started working as an actress in 2010 with Motus. Since 2014 she has been part of the Greek theatre collective Nova Melancholia. In 2007 she founded the ERRANDS artistic collective together with other architects and visual artists.
Emilio is inspired by the homonymous treatise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Émile or On Education), a study on the human condition written in 1762. Contrasting concepts of nature and culture, the philosopher describes the state of nature as a happy and utopian pre-social place of equality and self-sufficiency.
But how to educate a child in a corrupt and corrupting society? Without books or precepts, far from the city and the pomp: nothing can be taught to Emilio, who must learn everything in contact with nature.
The performance comes to life through the creation and destruction of various tableaux vivant, themselves a play on the indeterminate boundaries between organic/inorganic, dead/alive, organism/machine, body/object. The stage is a constantly changing picture. Images form and dissolve, Emilio transforms and transforms himself. He experiments, alters, builds, inhabits, changes. Apparently distant elements blend, giving life to other aesthetic possibilities. Emilio creates a multitude of fluid spaces, hybrids and impure landscapes that transcend the limits within the limits.
