Performing the Artists’ Body: How Do We Understand it as Audience?

Lia Haraki & Arianna Economou
Vasileia Anaxagorou (Artist & Researcher)

 

This round table discussion will explore the role of performance art, examining how audiences engage with it, ways to support and preserve it, and how we can appreciate its intangible nature.

 

Lia Haraki

https://www.liaharaki.com/

Lia Haraki is an interdisciplinary performance artist and "moving poet," working across performance art, devised theatre, choreography, song, spoken word, and her signature form, repetitive poetry. Her practice engages deeply with identity, community, ecology, and value, using art as a catalyst for shifting perceptions toward a more equitable world.

 

Born in Limassol in 1975, Haraki holds a BA in Dance Theatre Studies from London’s Laban Centre. Over two decades, she has created over fifty works presented internationally, including at Julidans Amsterdam, Athens Festival, Royal Festival Hall London, Bozar Brussels, UNESCO Paris, and the Venice Biennale (2013), where she represented Cyprus with her solo Tune In (curated by Raimundas Malasauskas, earning a special mention for the Cyprus-Lithuanian Pavilion). A two-time winner of the Cyprus Dance Platform choreography award (2003, 2005) and an Aerowaves shortlisted artist (Evergreen, 2004; Pretendance, 2009), Haraki interrogates the body’s sociopolitical dimensions through movement, sound, satire, and self-sarcasm, dismantling normative constructs to reveal their fragility.

 

Her work spans staged performances, site-specific installations, one-on-one encounters, sound art, stand-up comedy, and musical collaborations. A pioneering project, The Performance Shop Concept(2016), explored performance’s value in daily life and was named among Europe’s 25 best practices by the European Dance House Network (EDN). Marina Abramović praised it as "a very fresh and good idea." Haraki has also choreographed for Cyprus’ National Theatre (THOC), notably for The Persians(dir. Aris Biniaris), performed at ancient theatres like Epidaurus and the Herodion.

 

Arianna Economou

Arianna Economou (@ariannaeconomou)

Arianna Economou is a pioneering interdisciplinary dance artist and performance innovator whose career began in 1983. Returning to Cyprus that year, she introduced New Dance to the island, revolutionizing movement vocabulary with anatomical release techniques, contact improvisation, and pedestrian movement in fragmented, interdisciplinary narratives.

 

In 1989, she founded Theatre Collective, Cyprus’ first devised theatre group, creating works like Etsi, Topos, and Mountain Song (dir. Joe Richards). She established Echo Arts Living Arts Centre (1996) and co-founded Nea Kinisi (2004), advocating for contemporary dance infrastructure. Her efforts led to Dance Gate Lefkosia (2008), Cyprus’ first EDN-member dance house, fostering European connections. As its director (2011–2021), she developed residencies, workshops, and No_body Festival (2009–2021, now ON BODIES, Cyprus’ first performance arts festival.

 

Economou’s ecological focus inspired Sites Embodied (Akamas, 2017) and Nature Embodied (Pafos ECOC 2017). Her intercommunal projects (2003–2017) bridged Cyprus’ divide, collaborating with Dorinda and Peter Hulton on works like One Square Foot and A Far-Off Land (archived at Routledge). She co-directed Extended Mobility (1997) with Steve Paxton, integrating able and disabled performers, and produced Urban Bodies (2005–2007), a video-dance series with Yiangos Hadjiyiannis.

 

Honored with the Tefkros Anthias Theodosis Pierides Award (2005), her work has been presented in Sweden, Holland, Armenia, Greece, Germany, and England.

 

Vasileia Anaxagorou

https://www.vasileia-m-anaxagorou.com/

Vasileia Anaxagorou is an artist and researcher based in Cyprus. Her interdisciplinary academic background includes a BA (Hons) in Politics from the University of Nottingham and an MA in History from Goldsmiths College. She later pursued her artistic education with a BFA in Fine Art at the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MFA in Fine Art (with distinction) from the University of Oxford. Currently, she is undertaking doctoral research at the University of Cyprus, where she explores Cypriot feminist subjectivities in the works of Lia Haraki and Arianna Economou, focusing on what she terms the “seascape of trauma”—a framework examining the intersections of trauma, performance art, and visual culture in Cyprus. 

 

Anaxagorou’s research and artistic practice traverse multiple mediums, including painting, writing, moving images, and performance, engaging deeply with feminist and queer theory. Her academic contributions include the publication of Building Resilience: The (New?) Politics of Grief and Mourning at the Time of the Pandemic in Contemporary Art Practices in The International Journal of Social, Political, and Community Agendas in the Arts. This article critically examined the politicized dimensions of the pandemic, particularly its impact on migrants and refugees, through visual representations that challenge dominant socio-political narratives.

 

She has also published in The Cyprus Review, coining the term “seascape of trauma” in her article Re-visioning the Political in the Performance Works of Arianna Economou: The Context of the Seascape of Trauma in Cyprus. This research investigates Cyprus’ complex historical landscape—shaped by colonial legacies, the 1974 Turkish invasion, displacement, and socio-political divides—and how Economou’s avant-garde performance art challenged conventional artistic and political discourses. The study situates Economou’s practice within broader European performance art movements, addressing the barriers faced by performance art in Cyprus and its role as a form of political activism and intercommunal dialogue.

 

Anaxagorou has actively exhibited her work internationally, including in London, New York, Portugal, Athens, and Cyprus, and has presented her work in four solo exhibitions in Cyprus. Her artistic research and curatorial projects remain committed to challenging historical narratives, exploring embodied memory, and engaging with decolonial and feminist methodologies.