It is rare to see a body that is free on stage. It is beautiful, inspirational and intensely moving. Katerina Andreou invents her own rules, imposing personal constraints on herself. Drawing inspiration from the ‘free dances of 1900, certain urban dances, and on-stage behaviour from concerts of the 1980s’, she performs a dance of contrasts, one that is both perfectly mastered and committed. It is funny, bold and very refreshing. When the music starts (that of Chevreuil then the Beatles) she frees the body even more, she liberates it, strengthening the complicity with the spectators. A battle starts that attacks our convictions and certainties, pushes back our boundaries and tests our acts of cowardice and our compromises. One of the central issues of Katerina Andreou’s work is the way we submit to authority. ‘A question that always disturbs me is the one that revolves around the constant threshold of negotiation between autonomy and authority. In exploring this obsession, my work has focused on approaches that called into question at a given moment the decision-making mechanism. There is an illusion of ‘free will’, albeit one that is staged but which results in a constant immersion in action. An illusion of freedom.’ Offering neither words nor discourse, but developing a physical reflection through the body and movement, the choreographer and performer subverts our relation to rules, our obedience and our influences. A Kind of Fierce is a dense experience that reawakens our power, that reminds us of our value and trusts in our courage.

Updating June 2017

Katerina Andreou is a dancer, choreographer and musician. Born in Greece  and now based in France, she is a graduate of the Cndc in Angers and  has worked as a performer with, among others, DD Dorvillier, Emmanuelle  Huynh and Lenio Kaklea. Awarded the Jardin d’Europe prize at the ImpulsTanz festival in 2016 for A kind of fierce, she has since created the solo BSTRD (2018) as well as the duo Zeppelin Bend (2020) with Natali Mandila.

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).