(a)chronic fractures is a community dance performance project with and for mature women aged 65+ from the local community of Chania commissioned by and in collaboration with the International Dance Festival Dance Days Chania (GR) 2024.




the performance

The piece (a)chronic fractures appears as an allegory and a rite of passage - individual and collective. The mature female body becomes a vessel of an arcane call towards solidarity and transformation. It searches, it excavates the anatomy of memory and skin. Of its blind spots, its hurt and emancipated ones, its spots full of pleasure. It mourns. It calls us towards an individual and collective release to give birth to life through our ashes. Penetrating into the layers of our individual body, we find whispers of the collective body. Palpating our body, we palpate the state of our individual soul and collective coexistence. Together the women invite us to weave resistances to a society that remains blind to sensation and the creation of meaning together. Blind to age groups that challenge the notion of production. Perhaps daring the demolition of what does not serve us anymore, we can excavate and listen to the fractures of sensation and coexistences we have lost. Perhaps we find threads that connect the then with the now and after in order to empower the timeless collective journey through life, death and rebirth in our personal structure - the body - and our collective - the society.

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Concept - Choreography: Polena Kolia Petersen

Performers - Co-creators: Anna Pantrani, Despoina Kontadaki, Eleni Drakaki, Claudia Vasnek, Margarita Garbo, Marianna Dimitrakaki, Maria-Ras Kapsalaki, Chryssa Katsipi

Production: Dance Days Chania Festival

Music/Sound collage and voice improvisation: Polena Kolia Petersen

The music pieces are from Philip Glass’ album Koyaanisqatsi and Antoinetta Aggelidi’s movie Thief or Reality.

The piece was created during a 9-day creative residency with the community.

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the reseach & development

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The project (a)chronic fractures takes its offset in the anatomical, biological and psychosocial transformations of the maturing body, in order to tangibly explore the notions of fracture and of resilience, of bodily change, of empathy, of care and the stunning ability of the body to transform and embody the impacts of time, to stay alive and inspire its continuation. What does the maturing of the body teach us about loss, recomposition, the whisper of οur timeless need to coexist?

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Τhe piece (a)chronic fractures continues the collaboration between the contemporary dance festival Dance Days Chania and creator and dancer, Polena Kolia Petersen, on community dance activities and dance with and for mature adults 65+. With a need to facilitate participatory projects of longer duration for the visibility and strengthening of the accessibility of the 65+ communities to movement workshops and creative processes, this project proposes a series of movement workshops and the creation of a final dance performance to be presented at the upcoming Dance Days Chania Festival in the summer of 2024.

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Aiming at offering opportunities to the local community of mature adults in Chania and the kinetic enactment of their creativity and participation, the project proposes an action model with a double function:

– movement workshops: on one hand participants get to acquire knowledges and experientially explore the anatomy of the maturing body through touch, breathwork and movement (bones, muscles, fascia, ligaments, mental capacities in relation to the function of organs and bodily systems). Meanwhile, we map tools with which each body unfolds its mobility and expressive capacities. Two fundamental questions support the unfolding of the workshop: How do I listen to my body and its movement in the now, as if I was sensing it for the first time, like a blank canvas? How do I let go into movement, in order to listen to my anatomical body and unlock the archive of my embodied memory and expressivity? The aim is to nourish the awareness and sensing of the movement beyond pain and restriction, and on that ground support the personal acceptance and movement choices of the mature body, eventually reviving the daring and expressive confidence in the now.

– choreographic composition: furthermore we will be applying those explorations and tools into a choreographic research for the creation of a new dance performance. The anatomical explorations of movement and breath will lead to the creation of movement material circling around the topics of time, sensation, breath, restriction, giving in, silence, bodily memory, mental and physical endurance. The creative interaction of the group will be enriched by the sharing of autobiographical experiences around the experiences of change, decay, loss, acceptance and the ability of the body to insist and share to ensure the continuation of life. We dive into issues of performance and mobilize creativity amplifying the diverse and specific abilities of mature bodies to express on stage and immerse the audience into a scenic world, where the body communicates through the honesty of its movement motivated by its empathic ability towards self and others. The final performance will be activating the participation of the audience in the experience beyond a passive reception.

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The participants may choose to take part only in the movement workshops or/and in the choreographic composition for the creation of the final performance. The project aims to offer a variety of inclusion and participation options, but also to create a community of creative exchange, where the participants can feed back to each other: those who take part in the movement workshops can act as an external eye in some rehearsals, supporting with their feedback, and those participating in the choreographic process as well informed by their interactions with their co-dancers in the workshops.

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The project approaches the biological changes and the vulnerability of the body as a source of strength and empowerment of our psychosocial webs of care and mutual support, in order to reverse the equation between degeneration and exclusion of the maturing body. Instead the project ascribes a transformational power to our ability to accept the passing of time, to listen to the changes of our bodies and to treat them as new invitations with a deeper existential offset. Because the mature body reminds us not only of the fact that the human is fascinatingly resilient and insistent on living, but also that this insistence is a scream about the importance of our social bonds and coexistence, in order for the cycles of life to carry on. The project keeps drawing on the thread of the deeply humane and sensitive work in the collaboration between Dance Days Chania Festival and Polena in dance with and for mature adults, that unravels on the narrative pillars of the personal stories of the participants. This time, however, the project finds a kinetic offset, in order for the body to move the stories it has stored in its bones, muscles, mind, emotions.

You can find more information in the following link:

https://dancedays.gr/portfolios/polena-kolia-achronic-fracture-performance-project-with-and-for-mature-adults-65/