Latest Project: Dance Film - Tales of a Lost Self (2021)
The dance film titled "Tales of a Lost Self" explores the collaborative practice between fashion and dance performance.
The theme is based on the Japanese subculture “Lolita”. Lolita was introduced in the early 80s and was a movement Japanese women lead in order to go against the dominant social norm, using their own unique style of clothing and social presentation as a form of self-expression. Dressing up was not done on a daily basis, but as part of social meetings, particularly through tea parties, were individuals would show-up in different outfits that they felt correspond to their identity, returning to “reality” and to their similar “uniforms” after the meetings were complete. The purpose was not social change but individual happiness.
The way these women used their bodies as a visual to rebel through society inspired me and my collaborator as both dance and fashion also use the body to represent an ideology or individuality, and that is why throughout the film, the character we have created has “fits” or “bursts of anger” in order to represent resistance. Furthermore, using different outfits, each exhibiting a different “mood” through colour, length and embroideries, distinguishes between clothing the body just as a cover, and clothing the body in order to present an idea, emotion and social presentation.
Another concept that further inspired the creation of the character in the dance film created was David Hume’s “Bundle Theory of Self” written in his book “Treatise of Human Nature”(1739), where he explores how a person is made up of several impressions, none of which are the same or homogeneous. Each impression or emotion varies constantly claiming that the creation of self is just an idea as it is ever-changing. Furthermore, Hume discusses how as persons we construct perceptions of everything we stumble upon and are essentially made up of all these perceptions we create. In particular, he claims that “mankind… are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” He additionally continues to compare the mind with a theatre, where a performer keeps altering facades into endless conditions.
The character, just like an idea or thought, keeps transitioning from one situation to the other, smoothly destroying the perception of an identity, making each action spontaneous and seemingly unplanned. This, coupled with the constant changes in outfits, further represents the idea that the self is not something constant and cannot be defined by one thing or the other. It is only the creation of our imagination that labels someone as something certain.
Duration: 6 minutes
Credits:
Concept by: Sarah Dameh & Stella Stylianou
Choreographer & Dancer: Sarah Dameh
Fashion Designer: Stella Stylianou
Director of Photography and Editor: Nefeli Kentoni
Music: George Demetriou
Photographer: Sergio Vaccaro
