Dance Performance by Arianna Economou

John Cage’s Sixteen Dances

Like many of his other pieces, Sixteen Dances was created alongside Cage’s closest artistic collaborator, Merce Cunningham. The choreography was concerned with the nine emotions of the Hindu classical aesthetic, using titles such as “Anger”, “Sorrow”, “Fear” and “Tranquillity”. This commission was closely attuned to Cage’s own study of Indian philosophy, and acted as a stimulus to the changes in his compositional approach in this period. Sixteen Dances has nine movements and seven related interludes, all of which are developed by chance methodology. The individual sequences, and durations for each were discovered by a combination of using the I Ching and tossing coins.

Arianna Economou is a dance artist and dance- activist in the community, a pioneer giving Cyprus dance a place within the European contemporary arts since 1981.

She studied Dance and Theatre Studies in the UK at the Ballet Rambert School of Dance, the London School of Contemporary Dance, Dartington College of Arts, and Dance and Drama in Education at Exeter University UK. She furthered her studies in Body Mind Centering with Vera Orlock and completed a course on Developmental Movement in Berkeley California in the US.

Since her return to Cyprus in 1981, Arianna Economou has been instrumental in bringing to Cyprus world acclaimed performance artists in improvisation and performance, organizing workshops and performing with them. Economou is the Director of Echo Arts Living Arts Center. She is also the Director of the Dance-Gate Lefksosia Cyprus, an affiliated organization member of the European Dancehouse Network EDN and now partner of MODUL DANCE – an EU funded project directed by EDN. Since 2009, Dance Gate has been running the “No_Body” Dance and Performance Arts Festival – a yearly dance festival in Nicosia. In June 2011, Economou organized the Dance/Body at the Crossroads of Cultures dance conference.

Economou’s own solo and group works vary from text and narrative as the “ site” or pure movement research all marked with a running theme of identity & topos toward transformation. Since 2003 Arianna Economou has been collaborating with Dorinda Hulton, Horst Weierstall and Peter Hulton on Performance Training in Conflict Zones, and Cross Border research Projects initiated in Nicosia the last divided capital in Europe to explore a framework for a new aesthetic for creating performances in a Conflict Zone. In 2005, Arianna Economou has been awarded the “Tefkros Anthias and Theodosis Pierides Cultural Award” and The Melina Mercouri prize from the Cyprus Theatre Organization.

The event is part of the 5th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival