A Little More Than Nothing

The performance “A Little More Than Nothing” is an exercise in sharpening our senses through movement. The aim of its creator, the visual and performance artist Christos Mouchas, is to achieve unmediated communication, a rhythm shared by bodies in the silence, so that the passivity stereotypically involved when watching an action is overturned. Our participation, through the improvised bodily reaction to the stimuli of others, proposes – first and foremost – that we reappraise the theatrical experience, comprehending the invitation to dance as interactive.

Each individual is called upon to pinpoint the meaning of this coming together within their own selves as they experience it, since the performance is designed to be open to all and remains incomplete if we don’t communicate amongst ourselves. So let’s go beyond the barriers of the mind and let our instincts and emotions do the talking.

Photo: Hara Kalliontzi

The active participation of audiences – or a re-evaluation of the ways in which they are called upon to watch a performance – brings us back to the familiar roots of interactive activities and rites in earlier forms of social organization. Overturning the passivity of viewers and audiences does not mean that personal experience ceases to exist, but that individual experience is diffused with, and shaped alongside, the experiences of others.

Christos Mouchas draws inspiration from the work of the polymath composer John Cage, and specifically from the ways in which he made use of “silence” as a formative element of acoustic and auditory experience – that is, as a tool that allows for reflection and enriches the perceptions of audiences. It is a dynamic relationship that, at the same time, reminds us that the meaning of a work is not static and univocal, but rather an open associative and interpretative domain.

The “performative turn”, as it’s known, and the convergence of dance and performance disciplines has been considered by many as the expression of a political and aesthetic symbolic system, since the transition to body-oriented works also brought about debates concerning the body as “experiential locus” and the body as “surface”, the content of which is constantly being transformed, enriched, and re-evaluated.

New texts on dance: "A Little More Than Nothing"

Biography

Christos Mouchas

Credits

Concept, Dramaturgy & Performance
Christos Mouchas
Special thanks to
Alexis Vassiliou for his valuable help in shaping the performance, as well as to all friends and associates for their participation at the play’s rehearsals