Throughout our ancient and modern world, death-related rituals are often prerogative of the female universe. It is women who wash, dress and decorate the corpse, they who accompany the body to the burial with a lament, an expression of extreme pain that anticipates any other form of oral ritual. Following these traditions, Mourn Baby Mourn is a choreography and sound solo, which functions as an intimate manifesto. In this exploration of memories and knowledge that emerge from shared and personal facts, from real or fictitious spaces, Katerina Andreou choreographs a space based on a disturbing dialogue between the past and the present, the archaic and the contemporary. We pass from a lost past to a lost future; from our lost past to our lost future, once understood as a form of transmission between distant bodies.
Mourning in Mourn Baby Mourn is symbolic, covering an era, a generation, a society; mourning for our expectations towards the future and at the same time for what has been left to us as a legacy. Katerina Andreou reflects not only on singular sadness, but on the confusion she experiences today as a worker, dancer, Athenian, woman, citizen and inhabitant of this dying planet.
Katerina Andreou was born in Athens and currently lives and works in France. She is interested in developing states of presence sorting out from a constant negotiation between contrasted tasks, fiction and universes, often questioning the relation to ideas such as authority and autonomy, communication and censorship. She was awarded the choreography prize Prix Jardin d’Europe, at ImpulsTanz Festival in 2016 for the solo dance piece A kind of fierce. Before Mourn Baby Mourn (2022), she created the solo BSTRD (2018) and the duo Zeppelin Bend (2021) with Natali Mandila. She is an associated artist at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Caen en Normandie in 2022-2024.
Katerina Andreou arrives at Short Theatre 2022 in convergence with re-creatures/Mattatoio di Roma where has presented BSTRD e Rave to Lament.
conception, performance Katerina Andreou
sound Katerina Andreou and Cristian Sotomayor
lights and set Yannick Fouassier
text Katerina Andreou
outside eye Myrto Katsiki
video Arnaud Pottier
thanks to Natali Mandila, Jocelyn Cottencin, Frédéric Pouillaude
production and touring Elodie Perrin
production BARK
co-producers centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie – direction Alban Richard dans le cadre du dispositif « Artiste associé », Les SUBS – lieu vivant d’expériences artistiques, Lyon, ADC Genève, Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, La Soufflerie de Rézé, La Place de la Danse – CDCN Toulouse / Occitanie, dans le cadre du dispositif Accueil Studio, centre chorégraphique national Montpellier – Occitanie / Direction Christian Rizzo, Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans dans le cadre de l’accueil studio, Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans – Direction Maud Le Pladec.
with the support of Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Île-de-France
support in experimentation RAMDAM, UN CENTRE D’ART
ph. Hélène Robert
