Butoh performer and choreographer Vicky Filippa is coming to Anafi island this year as a guest of the 1st "Anafi International Film Festival" to give a workshop on the primordial memory brought to our bodies by the depths of the sea.

Breathing, physical and improvisational techniques will be given on the qualities of the 4 elements and the physical imprint of the relationship of mythological, historical and personal memory.
The myth of the "emergence" of Anafi by the god Apollo during the Argonautic expedition will inspire the creation of a coastal and underwater improvisational performance by the group to be created guided by Vicky Filippa, which will be filmed by the festival filmaker collaborators and the material will be screened at the Anafi International Film Festival next year (2024).

The seminar is aimed at everyone and no previous experience with the genre is needed.

A few words about butoh:
Butoh is a type of Japanese performance art that penetrates deep into the primordial (first) movement, starting with the technique of abandoning the self, leaving the body an empty shell.
Unlike Western dances and techniques, in butoh, we begin to notice our body moving, through deep concentration and do not consciously move it by exercising control and executing predetermined forms and patterns.
It is called Shadow Dance because the resulting movement transcends the human and common movement, it springs up our inner self and the body is transformed, with the conscious part of us following our movement, like a shadow.
Through butoh, a path is opened with the movement, having its starting point in the very starting point of life. In our sprinkling into the world, in the embryonic period when the liquid element was our natural environment. Then, through semiotic principles of the movement of the different members and organs of our body, we remember again the strong bond we have or at least had with the rest of the species of existence.
We become tigers, monkeys, insects, etc.
Focused on the breath that moves the threads of our body, we master the multi-layered existence, simultaneously experiencing dynamic contractions of the body in absolute stillness.
A deafening explosion takes place for the butoh dancer, but also for the audience, with simultaneously high aesthetic and sensory vibrations. The special relationship that is created between them and the feeling that prevails, is that of redemption and self-healing through the memory that oblivion brings.
It does not require previous dance experience or any physical skill and is now widely used as a method of drama therapy and kinesitherapy as it has a direct connection to meditation due to the extensive use of breathing passages.

Vicky Filippa | Bio

Vicky Filippa was born in September 1990 in Athens.
She is a choreographer and performer and one of the few
Greek representatives of the Japanese performance art of Butoh.
From 2008 until today, she has been intensively dealing with the BUTOH postmodern dance technique, which since 2014 has been her main focus and means of expression of her artistic research and creation.
She systematically teaches, directs and choreographs, presenting her works in Greece and abroad, while organizing seminars and performances with international artists and teachers of the genre with whom she has signed several important collaborations.
She has studied, among others, with the masters of the genre: Yumiko Yoshioka, Valentin Tszin, Koseki Sumako, Yuko Kaseki, Sainkho Namtchylac, Atshushi Takenouchi, etc.

For the last eight years she has been living and working in Athens, while at the same time she is a poet, holds a degree in mathematics, a master's degree in bioinformatics and she is a PhD candidate of the Medical School of Athens.

In 2015, she founded the group:
Quantum Body-Athens Butoh Dance Group

​

QUANTUM BODY | Bio

Quantum Body Athens Butoh Dance Group was founded in 2015 by Vicky Filippa.
It is an independent group, a butoh community recognized worldwide. Counting over 40 permanent members, and through its actions (weekly intensive classes, seminars in Greece and abroad, performances) it tries to transmit the practices of butoh and bring the Greek audience to greater contact with the genre, while building bridges of collaboration with foreign artists. Her vision, is to offer to the alternative scene of Athens by creating a new vocabulary of movement, acting and speech called "quantum body".