Mariela Nestora
From stage to page
from stage to page is an artist led initiative, focusing on the Greek dance scene. It started in 2010 with an open call from Mariela Nestora to choreographers and dance practitioners write about their work and share their practices, articulating through language and moving from stage to page. https://fromstagetopage.wordpress.com
Interviewing choreographers is an ongoing project since 2011. Interviews are conducted by Mariela Nestora and are available only in English. Interviews of choreographers, updates from previous interviewees and an invitation to dance theorists to write articles sharing their views on this initiative or on the development of the Greek dance are collected in volumes and published digitally.
In 2022 a book of all the interviews 2011-2021 will be published both digitally and as hard copy, marking the shift of the from stage to page project onto a new website updated and including artistic research, scores and theses from the greek dance scene.
Soft Scores
Soft scores propose a soft approach to the complex processes of co-creating and thinking together with others. It is a collection of scores for creative encounters in choreography, writing and discussing. This notebook is for those interestedin making performances and experimenting with inspiring and empowering tools in their process or those exploring creative ways of being together with others.
Like open works, these scores are completed by the reader, performer or actant. In addition to the multiplicity of possible interpretations, certain scores are self-perpetuating; designed to generate more scores every time they are activated. Mariela Nestora developed these scores during her artistic research Investigating performance as a gathering, speculating on different modes of coexistence.
Fieldwork scores
Thinking- with should always be a living-with , aware that relations of significant otherness transform those
who relate and the worlds they live in.
Maria Puig de la Bellacasa
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The Fieldwork scores is an open source project, also ran as a workshop or participatory performance.
In the gathering/workshop Fieldwork scores , human relations with plants are reimagined, enacted through the body, without language, offering the space to reflect on our relationships to the rather unfamiliar Others surrounding us in a city garden: plants.
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The Fieldwork scores explore our relationship with the plant world while living in a city. Hoping to cultivate new relationships with plants, rather than overlooking them, taking them for granted or limiting their importance to their use, the Fieldwork scores asks: "what if humans can form temporary collectives with plants, and learn from each other? What can humans learn from their world? These scores are an invitation to practice thinking and moving in the presence of plants and because of their presence. To become motivated by the potential relationships rather than affirm differences. What is probably needed is the cultivation of a certain intimacy with plants, and like all intimacy, takes place in a unique way.
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Activation
The scores propose different perspectives on potential relationships and interactions rather than suggest constraints or tasks. They address body, movement and dance as these are primary fields of experience in connecting to world, nature and other species, yet not exclusively- the movement of attention or movement of thought can equally nourish the experience.
Imprint
Documenting your experience of activating the score through different mediums (texts, drawings, diagrams, etc.) An imprint that lies somewhere between trace, document and imagination.
You can participate in the open source Fieldwork scores project by sending an email to mariela.nestora@gmail.com , a score will be sent to you and completing it involves two steps: 1. Activation and 2. Imprint., activating it and documenting the experience. Participants choose where and when to activate the score they received, select the medium with which they capture their experience (texts, drawings, sound recordings of thoughts, photo/video), then email their imprint to be included in a future publication- and if they wish to continue, receive another score.
This call to action might renew our perception of our species; as a species becoming with all other species; a becoming-with?
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Launched, February 2022, as a method to create INTER_ESSE, a dance with performers Yiannis Tsigkris and Vitoria Kotsalou during the MOVING GROUND project at the Duncan Dance Research Center, Athens, Greece.
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