SLAMMING | Dansehallerne

Ticket link and performance time coming soon!

A sweaty ritual. A dance performance on the anarchic and soaked in the adrenaline behavior of a crowd during a punk rock concert. In search of the radical aliveness and the invisible solidarity rules that accompany it.

Three performers on stage commit to one shared agreement: a
ritualistic dance that originates from slamming. They transform mosh pit practices, oscillating between rage and softness, rawness and trust, ache and pleasure, exploring these notions not as dipoles but as correlated elements of a resilient form of dance. The audience ‘sees’ the sweat dripping, the breaths intensifying, and the hearts beating faster while the three performers are wholeheartedly “caught into a mosh”.

The new choreographic trio by Xenia Koghilaki seeks certain emotional nuances in the aggressive crowd, reconstituting a collective ritual that lurks behind an ostensible rage. “Slamming” approaches crowd dances not as something to be deciphered but as a site of experience, exploring the significance of collective movement as a practice of resistance.

In organic affinity with her previous work “Bang Bang Bodies”, “Slamming” is part of an ongoing series of performances in which Xenia Koghilaki explores the relationship between the subcultural practices of moshing and the co-existence of the crowd

Xenia Koghilaki (she/her, 1990) works in the field of performing arts as a dancer andchoreographer. Her practice engages with issues of re-examining the moving body’s aesthetic, political and social aspects. She is a graduate of the Greek National School of Dance and the Architecture Department of the University of Patras . Since 2019 she has lived and worked in Berlin where she completed her postgraduate studies at the MA Solo/Dance/Authorship (SODA) program of the Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin (HZT-Berlin). Since 2021, she has been developing a series of choreographic works exploring forms of collective discharge in movement, leading to performances such as “Bang Bang Bodies” (Tanztage Berlin, 2023), “Slamming” (Onassis Dance Days, Athens, 2024), and “KOPANIMA” (Sophiensæle, Berlin, 2024). Her work has been presented in festivals andvenues in Europe including [8:tension] Young Choreographers’ Series at ImPulsTanz, Oktoberdans, backslash festival at Gessnerallee, les excentriques at la Briqueterie CDCN, and Kommuna Warszawa. As a performer, she has collaborated among others with Kat Válastur on “Strong-Born”, “Diana Even”, and “The FarNear”. Xenia’s research has been supported by the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland’s scholarship program, the Goethe-Institut Berlin, the Fonds Darstellende Künste and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture andSports. She is a Danceweb scholarship holder and she has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2022. Website: www.xeniakoghilaki.com

‘The audience’s gaze cannot help but be sucked in by these multi-limbed chimeras that keep on holding on to each other, softening the falls and supporting the lifts, even as they rip clothes off and slam hips, gifting us with a wondrous moment of high-octane, collaborative care.’ Slamming / Oktoberdans 2024 in Persinsala, Francesco Chiaro. https://teatro.persinsala.it/thrash-mob-slamming-oktoberdans-2024/68323/#google_vignette ‘It is a great work, realistic, raw and mysterious, which stays fascinating from the beginning to the end’ Espaces magnétiques. Fabien Rivière http://www.espacesmagnetiques.com/2024/10/le-festival-excentriques-cest-du.html ‘Xeni Koghilaki finds solidarity within brutality’ Springback Magazine, Léa Poiré