Danae Papadopoulou

ThRACES is a solo performance inspired by the the body's relationship to its traditions and to collective memory. Following the experience of migration, the body continues to carry embodied memories from its country of origin. The main focus of this performance revolves around customs from the Thrace region in northern Greece. The performance is centered around three main elements: the female body engaged in the bread-making process, the rhythmic motifs of recognized traditional music and the oral tradition. ThRACES serves as an intermediary space between memory and forgetting, where the body exists in a perpetual state of tension. As the body carries forward inherited popular traditions, it simultaneously transforms them and undergoes its own transformation, thus creating a new personal experience rooted in embodied memory. Repetition serves as a leitmotif into this performance through the mechanical gestures of kneading dough and as main element of oral tradition. Influenced by anthropological theories, the performance is woven on the collective, anonymous traditions that have been inherited. It places the body in a critical state, to serve as a conduit of transition and transformation, akin to a bridge between the past and the present. ThRACES has been conceived during the participatory research laboratory for young choreographers T.R.I.P.