Amazon Dance

Nico Angiuli & Katerina El Raheb (Italy)

Director: Nico Angiuli
Choreographer: Katerina El Raheb
60 min. video performance with live dance performance by Korina Kokkali

Stream link: https://youtu.be/12DPSkakID8

Amazon Dance is a video performance, part of a research work that aims to study algorithms used in factories such as Amazon, for finding the minimum time and the most efficient way to arrange and deliver items in large warehouses, which is a costly and time consuming process. Although many of these tasks are performed by humans, their routes are perfectly predetermined based on algorithms and their movements are specific to achieve the goals of each shift: picking the maximum number of products.

Director and visual artist Nico Angiuli brings to the stage the question of the big companies: is human labor or a robot the most cost-effective? How does this translate to the performing body? Nico analyzed such algorithms in order to create a form of choreographic “score”. How can the abstract space of computing and unseen calculations be represented through bodily movement and effort?

With researcher in informatics and choreographer Katerina El Raheb, and a group of dancers, they worked on this “translation” researching how such an algorithm could be embodied and represented in space. Katerina, in turn, wonders if strictly executing a precise choreography or a score is already awkwardly close to executing commands in the industrial space.

On stage, we see four “human machines” that perform the algorithm with their bodies. During the performance we see a choreography consisting of the stages that correspond to the parts of the algorithm for picking at warehouses. When all the stages are completed the whole cycle starts again in a loop that lasts one hour of labour.

“Input”
“Plot the graph”
“Calculate the graph”
“Visualise Shortest Path”

Produced in 2021 by Onassis Stegi, as part of the European Media Artists in Residence Exchange (EMARE) program of the European Media Art Platform (EMAP), co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

AMAZON DANCE CREDITS

A project by: Nico Angiuli 

Choreography: Katerina El Raheb

Performers: Korina Kokkali, Stefania Gogou, Georgia Aliferi, Katerina El Raheb

Visual Setting: Nico Angiuli

Video: Dotmov 

Soundtrack: Pier Alfeo

 

Video Production

Head of Creative: Christos Sarris

Production Coordinators: Smaragda Dogani, Elena Choremi

Production Coordinator Assistant: Aggelika Stavropoulou

 

Amazon Dance 

Production Coordination: Heracles Papatheodorou, Katerina Varda

Line Producer: Ioulia Stamouli

Stage Manager: Giannis Dovas 

Audio Engineer: Thodoris Tsachalos

Stage Engineer: Iakovos Darzentas

Stage Engineer: Stelios Bourdis

House Electrician: Kiriakos Xanthopoulos

Lighting Technician: Antonis Kokkoris

Asst. Lighting Technician: Pantelis Michas

Asst. Lighting Technician: Michalis Nannos

Asst. Lighting Technician: Pavlos Pappas

Asst. Lighting Technician: Sotiris Mohamed Ali

 

Onassis Stegi 

Program Curation: Christos Carras, Prodromos Tsiavos

Production Coordination: Heracles Papatheodorou, Katerina Varda

Eu Programs Coordination: Dora Vougiouka

Eu Programs & Production Support: Vera Petmeza

 

Produced by: Onassis Stegi 

Part of the program: EMAP 

Co-funded by: Creative Europe