Collateral Damage (2011), part of THE ANTIGONE PROJECT, developed the work on The Silence of Eurydice further. Supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture, Cyprus, it was presented to a public audience in Nicosia (April 2011); as a keynote event to an international audience of artists and scholars at the DANCE/BODY AT THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES Conference (June 2011); and subsequently as a studio performance in the buffer zone, open to the general public from both sides of the divide.
Research and performance work with Dorinda Hulton and Peter Hulton.
Peter has been the director of Dartington College of Arts. Also, a teacher of Arianna of Theatre Studies at Dartington.
With Dorinda Hulton, a dramaturge, writer, theatre director/maker, Arinanna has been working together since 2003.
"I found their input tremendous gift to Cyprus. No one here quite understood the depth of this work and achievement, where art comes to mend." - Arianna Economou
The work was to honor the missing people and their families on both sides of the divide. Work followed for Pafos 2017 with audiovisual installations and inter generational bicommunal performances.
- RUSTOM BHARUCHA, writer, director, cultural critic, and plenary speaker:
"It was a deep privilege for me to experience the performance installation of COLLATERAL DAMAGE - THE SILENCE OF EURYDICE in Cyprus as part of the conference on Dance/Body at the Crossroads of Culture. Rarely does one get to see a piece of artistic work within the framework of an international conference that actually honours the politics and complexity of its location. Even more rare is the opportunity to witness the very process of a work of art which has engaged with a specific location over a period of time. COLLATERAL DAMAGE captures both the immediacy of Cyprus’s communally divided location and the unfolding of an artistic process over a period of time.
In addition to the sheer eloquence, density and pain of silence, which was embodied by Arianna Economou in a stark solo performance, I was particularly impressed by the clarity of Dorinda Hulton’s dramaturgy and the sheer power of the visual images provided by Peter Hulton in the mise en scene - a triptych representing three different states of Eurydice’s being. I think it is a brilliant idea to intersect the enigma of silence invoked by Sophocles in his representation of Eurydice with the more political silences of those persons in contemporary Cyprus whose loved ones have been declared as ‘missing.’ Without literalizing this connection, which is often the case in ‘contemporary’ reinterpretations of Greek classics, we witness a more alchemical process by which the figure and grief of Eurydice melds into the multiple silences of our times.
Scrupulously sensitive to the border tensions of Cyprus, COLLATERAL DAMAGE affirms a quiet boldness in the video footage of the performance, which shows Arianna Economou performing on both sides of the buffer zone in Cyprus, and in the interstitial space of this protected zone itself. The very inscription of the body in such a politicized space contributes deeply to the vulnerability of the performance and the possibilities of art in re-inflecting the official discourse and protocols of border zones.
I would also highlight the tremendous care given to the multiple linguistic dimensions of the performance piece, which at no point succumbed to the platitudes of political correctness. COLLATERAL DAMAGE does not celebrate a specious plurality; rather it has the courage to explore a language, immersed in the contrapuntal energies of an inter-arts aesthetics, which dares to engage with the poetics of difference.
I look forward to seeing the next beat of this performative journey. Where might Eurydice be relocated? And what would happen to her silence? And ours?"