Continuous painting

Continuous Painting premiered on February 9, 1998 at the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse in New York. The choreography takes its title and theme from the painting of the geometric painter Nassos Daphnis. The painting covered all walls of the Leo Castelli gallery in New York when it was first exhibited in 1985.

The choreography is a collage of dance moments and suites that converge into a continuous plot and synthesize repeated versions of the "thesis - antithesis" principle.

Continuous Painting is danced to music by Juergen Knie, Alexander Glazounof, Serge Prokofiev, Giulio Caccini, Dmitri Shostakovich, Steve Reich, Colin McPhee.

This is not the point where it all begins.
Here the line of movement is not erased now.

I dreamt of a round letter of yours
inside which I fit entirely
from the empty zero of the center
cyclically in an equal distance around me
reading your endless message.

In the painter's impenetrable surface
depth is scattered.

Permanent colors, blossoms without
end at the flower of ageless geometry.

Are your asking why live if we are not
immortal? Oh, do not forget me.
Truth is not oblivion, you should remember.
It is not an error to be amended.

Come close to me, stretch your hand
touch me as you used to
at the triangle of the heart.

Light continuously spends itself in light
lending colors and lines
to everything the mirror sees.
Even if it does not look - it is looked at.

Stand, body, do not continue to grow old.
Continue, body, do not stop moving on.

Everything dies if it lives:
Love, friends.
Unmoving ends of the body.
Whoever beauty does not recall.

Come, line, wrap me in your curves.
Stand straight in front of me.

Up here, movement continuously empties space.
She puts her soul to sleep rocking the body.
Remember as you used to, come close, don't forget me.

This is not the point where it all begins.

Yiorgos Chouliaras

"Continuous Painting" by Yiorgos Chouliaras is a "performance poem" for the choreography "Continuous Painting" by Valia Alexandratou with Analysis Dance Company. Translated into English by David Mason and the author, it was read by John C. Hunter, in counterpoint to Astor Piazzola's "Oblivion," during a solo danced by Catherine Cabeen in the premiere.