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The dance piece Thank you for coming by Efrosini Protopapa commissioned and produced by the Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD) for the VERVE Dance Company, was presented at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre and The Place in London in the spring of 2016, and toured other cities in Great Britain and Italy.
The work takes the form of a large party to mark the company’s tenth anniversary. During a series of vignettes based on different choreographic conditions, each scene explores the particularities of social meetings, celebrations and events, attempting to reveal and make fun of the dynamics that often emerge between guests in these situations. To develop the work, which is partially improvised, the performers devised their own materials based on games and rules provided by the choreographer, and also co-authored texts which they present themselves as part of the performance, playing with spectator expectations and attempting to construct a new character each time the work is presented.
Efrosini Protopapa is a choreographer and researcher who lives and works in London. She has presented works in Great Britain, Germany, Holland and Greece. She recently began collaborating with the choreographer Siobhan Davies to create a new piece which will premiere at the Barbican in London in 2017 and completed a European research project entitled ‘Dramaturgy at Work’ with Konstantina Georgelou and Danae Theodoridou, which will result in the publication of a book in 2016. She is Assoc. Professor of the Department of Dance at Roehampton University, where she directs the post-graduate MRes Choreography and Performance course.
