"There is a thin line between artistry and humanity, therefore invest time in life experiences"
Eliana Stragapede is a creative, beautiful dancer who has been working as in Club Guy&Roni, Tanzmainz and now with the prestigious Peeping Tom.
You have a really great career, working as a dancer in Club Guy&Roni, Tanzmainz and now with the prestigious Peeping Tom. What is the key to your successes?
“I think success was never the main drive in my life. I find the process of it more interesting and important personally. Success for me can also be into a little achievement during the day. One of my biggest fear would be reaching a very successful stage in life where curiosity, creativity, hunger to learn, need to question things/yourself fade away and everything is reduced to a sort of comfortable routine. Art offers infinite possibilities and it would be a waste to stop exploring them. I feel lucky and privileged because my job is something that inspires me and I enjoy doing it every day. This has always been my motor. I see success more as a consequence of this with the combination of hard work and the "right" moment. I believe giving time to things to happen naturally rather than forcing them is crucial in life.”
You worked with really different choreographers. How could you always be able to adapt yourself in every specific work?
“Working with different choreographers is challenging but it pushes you to dig into yourself finding new, interesting ways to approach movement. The moment you allow yourself to be a bit more exposed and vulnerable is of course scary but needed if we really want to make a step further. After all, overcoming struggles and uncertainties will leave you the most satisfying aftertaste ever.
At the same time, what personally always helps me through the different processes is staying faithful to myself, collect the new information and digest it in my own way.
As a result of this I feel I'm developing more and more a sort of vocabulary I can draw from, keeping my qualities and colors as a common ground.”
How were you able to develop your artistry as a dancer?
“I think in dance as in life being open and curious, questioning yourself, observing and absorbing from others is surely a good and fertile ground to build something on.
I also find important to invest time in different interests, passions you have in life and let them inspire you, eventually they will feed your artistic side as well.”
What fascinates you about the connection between dance and theatre?
“When dance and theater come together, the line between real life and performance becomes thinner. Even without acting skills in fact, we can bring on stage our own personal experiences through the combination of physicality and intention. Movements are produced more as a result of an inner urgency rather than aesthetic canons and become, in my opinion, more interesting and genuine.
As a performer you surrender your mind and body to emotional states, giving yourself fully to the audience in an energetic exchange.
Consequently, as a viewer you will probably feel closer to what you are watching, without any need of dance knowledge.
This capacity to shorten the distance between audience and performers through an empathic channel, is what fascinates me the most about the connection between dance and theater.”
Where does your passion for movement come from?
“Moving for me is a way of reacting to vibrations provoked either by music, people or nature.
I enjoy the way it opens up my senses, how quickly can make me feel strong and fragile at the same time.
It is like entering a bubble of amplified sensations and get lost into them.”
How do you work in the creation process with Peeping Tom?
“Triptych was originally created for NDT so it has been more a restage of the trilogy rather than a new creation.
Despite the short rehearsal time and the unusual working conditions due to covid, as a new group we connected faster than expected. Nevertheless we still had a lot of room to explore and add our own color and personality to the characters of the piece.
The process has basically been a combination of learning existing material and creating new one.
Some parts of the piece are less set, therefore we spent some time in the studio improvising on some specific tasks in order to find and explore certain movement qualities. While working on the extremity and refinement of the movements, the importance of the intention behind them became clear quite soon.
The intention in the piece it’s indeed what keeps it alive, fresh, exciting and versatile. As a performer you will not get bored, you will experience it every time slightly different.
Beside what happens on stage, for me it has been very surprising and interesting to realize the amount of work that is going on in the backstage. For these kind of performances precision and timing of stagecraft carry a lot of weight towards the success of the show.
This demands a lot of concentration and trust within the crew from the dancers to the technicians. But I have the feeling it connects us even more by giving us the sensation of a full, intense experience. “
What fascinates you the most about this beautiful company?
“I think the use of scenography and the cinematic approach to it is probably one of the most recognizable and unique features of Peeping Tom's world, beside the strong theatricality and physicality. In their work, they manage to present daily life situations and push them to the extreme by creating a surreal and distorted version of our reality. As a viewer I enjoy being moved by what I see and for me watching PT pieces is like watching a movie, you go through an intense emotional journey. “
How important is the process of improvisation and researching with your body?
“Improvisation is something I rely on a lot for different reasons and situations.
I enjoy doing it for the simple pleasure of grooving on music and reconnecting to myself, my body at a deeper level. At the same time by experience and practice you can find out and overcome habitual patterns bringing you to new, unexplored and unexpected places.
For me it is a really valid tool to create personal movement material as it allows me to be in the moment, enter states and access my creativity.
Improvisation during a performance with a specific intention or task gives me the freedom to be present and spontaneous in my choices. The unpredictability and unrepeatability of it fascinate me. Indeed in these situations we are usually driven by instinct which mixed with adrenaline will inevitability bring us to make different decisions depending on the moment.”
And, on the other side, what is the importance of technique? And how can you define it?
“For me technique is something related to awareness, control, precision of the body. It serves you to know and master your body better before getting lost into the millions possibilities it offers you. Especially during an intense creative process, sometimes I enjoy warming up through a structured class and find pleasure, freedom into the restrictions of it. I don't necessarily limit the concept of technique to ballet or contemporary classes but I see it within any practice that gives me skills for how to use my body in order to create different qualities and textures.”
Why do we need dance in today’s society?
“Especially in this corona times it emerged more clearly how much art is needed in today’s society. It is one of the first things we search for in order to escape and distract ourselves from reality.
Even with this difficult situation I’m glad we as artists managed to reinvent ourselves creating online and alternative platforms. I hope this will sensitize people to come more to the theaters once they will reopen.”
Do you have other dreams or goals you would like to achieve in your future?
“Different cultures intrigue me therefore once it will be possible I would love to travel as much as I can. I wish to meet and keep on being surrounded by inspiring people and gradually investigate more the different art fields.”
Can you give some advice to young dancers?
“Broaden your vision of dance to the different art fields, get inspired and enriched by the diversity of it. Use time to gain skills and knowledge in different studies. Today’s artists need to be versatile and adaptable. There is a thin line between the artistry and humanity of a person therefore invest time in life experiences approaching it with curiosity and challenge.”
Thank you Eliana, it was so nice to interview you!