ANTHOLOGY
Etymology in Greek: Anthología = flower-gathering
from ánthos = flower + légō = collect


drawings on Anthology by Paulina Prokop & Andreas Hannes
A group of six dancers skip through the city, conversing with space and playfully interact with the surrounding. Scenes appear in different sites and culminate with a central showcase. A whirlpool of energy in which visual references, pop music and various dance styles from different decades rushes by. With mash-up songs straight from YouTube and athletic choreographic scores, the dancers take us on a celebratory ride and transform the public space into a dance floor, an arena and a ballroom, where we witness the vulnerability and resilience of the body. As the performance progresses, the mash-ups evolve into more epic and intense arrangements, while the exhaustion of the dancers becomes palpable. This builds to a breaking point. The dancers are challenged to decide how to continue.
Anthology is a dynamic skipping performance that reflects an increasingly fast-paced society driven by information overload and exhaustion. At a rhythm of survival and short-lived prosperity, pop culture serves as tradition and pop music as a direct link to commerce and capitalist thinking. Through intergenerational and intercultural references, Anthology encourages us to look back and question how we move forward. We are constantly on the move, but is our vitality endless?
My artistic practice focuses on hope. Skipping is a physical way to practice hope. Anthology invites reflection and hope through a sense of connectedness from shared history, as a counterbalance to the ubiquitous us-them thinking. It takes the audience on a rhythmic adventure, stimulates the collective memory and makes people feel how important fun is in life.
RESEARCH
I am particularly interested in reinterpreting skipping with the aim of connecting diverse histories. This one-minute video gives a clear picture of skipping styles from different genres and cultures.
Skipping variations across dance styles & cultures
The main research questions: can skipping connect and highlight different dance styles, disciplines and techniques? How can it act as a connective tissue for an overarching view of dance? With Anthology, I aim to explore possible connections so that the audience experiences a journey through different styles and references. I explore in detail the variations of skipping in contemporary dance, ballet, hip-hop, house, folk dance, jazz and ballroom dance techniques.
Below you can find two videos of research presentations that took place in 2024.
ANTHOLOGY - Research Presentation #1
Dansateliers 01-11-2024
ANTHOLOGY - Research Presentation #2
International Theater Amsterdam
19-11-2024
INSPIRATION & INTENT
Annual pop music collections started appearing on YouTube and were meant to celebrate the best songs of the year. A successor to the Top Hits CDs and a form of medleys, pop anthologies and megamixes are mashups that encapsulate elements of a large number of songs (80 - 150) in a 6 - 10 minute track (examples: Pop Danthology 2012 | Hits of 2017). The result distorts the songs' origins and creates a hybrid space of disorientation. Within movement and transit, meanings and signifiers melt in a commemoration of recent heritage. Annual anthologies reflect the past decade, while monumentalizing the power of moving forward.
These annual pop mash-ups are an essential part of Anthology because they are a selection of the best moments of all songs in a particular year. In the same way, the choreography is composed of movement phrases and characteristics of dance styles from different times and places. Anthology thus offers a distilled impression of memories and situations, told in the here and now. The pop mash-ups are also a symbol of our times. Their overwhelmingly high tempo and abrupt cuts in the songs are a reflection of life in today’s socio-political maelstrom and the endless cycle of change that characterizes our world.
Moreover, pop music is also a coin with two different sides. On the one hand, it provides a sense of unity - singing along connects us and brings joint satisfaction. On the other hand, pop music has become a product of a capitalist machinery that keeps on (over)producing and demands a constant investment from us; our money, our time and energy, all just to be happy. Anthology invites us to think about the deeper questions: how do we want to move forward? How can we seek pleasure in an inclusive and responsible way? How can we reconnect more with each other? The world will always be overwhelming, frightening but also beautiful and constantly changing. Skipping becomes a tool with which we accept the dynamics of life and find our own way through it.
SKIPPING TUTORIAL
Nederlandse Dansdagen 2022
For longer version take a look here.
Skipping - as in skipping down the street
Skipping is a historical motion for the human body and it relates to a physical experience that everyone knows. Our force and urge to move, to understand and cover distance, that has originated in our childhood, in the backyards and streets of the city and has moved through folk, street and club dances, is utilised in this practice to create a continuum in which the body invests against gravity and orientates through a stream of rhythm.
Whereas during childhood a child uses skipping as a form of play, Andreas sees the many opportunities that the practice of skipping brings in the art of dance. By playing with speed, movement and direction, and by accurately plotting outlines in space, Andreas already exposed the potential of the practice in the duet The City and the group piece Tremble, and received the Moving Forward Trajectory '18, the Young Artsupport Amsterdam '19 and the BNG DansPrijs '20. He studied the rhythmic and architectural parameters of the movement and the tension that the joy of skipping brings with it. Inspired by visual artists and musical compositions, he approached movement as a unit that can build up structures, textures and dynamics.
Below you can find information and videos from previous skipping pieces:











And the city was a dream on
the pulse of your feet (2022)
Produced by Nederlandse Dansdagen
More information here


