In the 1980s, Dimitris Papaioannou was showing his performances in a squat in Athens. By 2004, he was choreographing Greece’s Olympic opening ceremony in the city. Ten years ago, at the age of 50, he suddenly found himself the darling of the international arts scene. It’s not a journey Papaioannou could have predicted when he ran away from home at 18 to train as a painter, but it’s led him to create a genre of performance unlike anything else you’ll see on stage.
“It’s not dance and it’s not theatre, and it’s not performance. I don’t know what the hell it is,” he says, over a video call from Greece. In his works The Great Tamer and Transverse Orientation, both previously seen in London, bodies transform in shifting shapes and images, often referencing fine art or figures from Greek myth: a scene might coalesce to reveal Botticelli’s Venus, or the Minotaur, or Jesus on the cross, or Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson. But there’s also humour, illusion and flights of fancy, all modelled with care, craft and precision.
There’s no plan, it all depends on what materialises in the studio. “You’re just fishing in the unknown and things start to compose themselves,” he says. In Papaioannou’s latest work, the images that emerged are less Rembrandt, more Ridley Scott. “I realised sci-fi horror was the language I was speaking – there was a lot in common with Alien, one of my favourite films,” he says. The duet Ink, which he performs with Šuka Horn, actually started with an irrigation system they were experimenting with, spraying water over a studio covered in plastic, and Papaioannou was fascinated by the effects. “The way it reflects and refracts light, the way it produces sound, the way it transforms people, and the constant struggle to control a natural element.” That struggle for control is a recurring theme of Ink. “Controlling the elements, controlling each other, controlling the self, controlling the outcomes of things. It’s a process of failing, in a way.” Such is life, I say. “Exactly!”
This tour is probably the last time Papaioannou himself will perform on stage. “I’m 60 now. Touring right now for me is exhausting,” he says. “There are elements of joy [in being on stage],” he says, “and elements of fulfilment. But mainly it’s the agony of not liking myself and never being satisfied with what I’ve done. It’s an exercise in disappointment, accepting the limitations of talent, of stamina. An exercise in failing again.”
A self-critical artist he may be, but Papaioannou’s story doesn’t read like one of failure. He grew up in a working-class family, his mother a hairdresser, his father a plumber, carpenter and electrician, “one of those men that know how to do things with their hands”. There was no art in the house, only an encyclopedia in which Papaioannou found black and white pictures of paintings that he would copy. His parents worked hard to pay for their gifted son to go to a good school, where his artistic talents were encouraged. He focused on painting and studied with the artist Yannis Tsarouchis.
But that wasn’t the path his parents had intended. “I was not allowed to be an artist and not allowed to be a gay man,” he says. So at 18 he ran away from home and supported himself through art school by painting portraits and religious icons and illustrating for magazines. As part of the Athens underground scene of the 1980s, Papaioannou became co-publisher of a queer punk fanzine and wrote graphic novels. He stumbled upon contemporary dance and tried that, too. “Once I ran away from home it turned out I did not have any kind of taboo on self-expression. Without ever making a plan I just ended up manically creating graphic novels and manically training for contemporary dance.”
He and some friends squatted in a building in the centre of Athens. “We transformed it with our own hands into a small theatre and started creating our first productions there. People were lining up outside to come into this illegal theatre, celebrities of the arts were coming to these uncomfortable seats to see us.” It happened almost by accident. “We didn’t know what a press release was back then.”
Papaioannou is, he says, “a better painter on stage than on paper”. While in paint he dealt in literalism, his performances are wide open to interpretation. “It means something to me,” he says. “If it means something to you, that would be my dream – but it won’t mean the same thing.” There’s no hidden answer to find. “I’m struggling to be as clear as possible in order to be a reflective surface so [the viewer] can project their own things,” he says. “It’s a celebration of human imagination.”
Ink is at Sadler’s Wells, London, from 28 February to 2 March
