Dimitris Papaioannou, INK Review ★★★★★

We last saw work by the Greek dancer, choreographer and director Dimitris Papaioannou at Sadlers Wells as part of Dance Umbrella 2021, when his extraordinary Transverse Orientation assaulted our senses with a succession of weird, wonderful and often bemusing tableaux, suffused with references to European myth and legend.

Now he is back with his 2020 work, INK. We filed it under ‘dance’, but only because there is no ready made category that neatly encapsulates Papaionannou's very own concept of theatrical performance.

The artist himself describes this succession of seemingly disconnected, often nightmarish episodes performed under constantly gushing water by himself, in his return to the stage at 59-years-old, and the much younger German actor, Šuka Horn, in the nude, as ‘a play for two.’ Hyper-visual surreal performance would, perhaps, be closer to the mark.

Papaioannou started life as a painter, and INK is punctuated by often arresting painterly imagery.The stage is surrounded by a semi-circular plastic curtain, which throughout the show’s 65 minutes will constantly waver, at times reflecting and refracting light amid the general gloom.

The curtain goes up on Papaioannou standing still with his back to the audience under an intense shower of water that pours from a pressure hose. He attempts to tame the water :he fills and empties a large fish bowl with a life of its own, which is one of the various recurring props, including a rubber octopus put to bizarre uses, such as a loin-cloth, various ropes and lengths of hose, and a doll, part-baby part-octopus, which he gently cradles and pretends to breast-feed.

A water creature – Šuka Horn – slowly slides on beneath a stiff plastic sheet, which initially gives the illusion of a giant manta ray. The Papaioannou character wrestles him in a vain attempt to prevent him emerging; and from then on what develops is a confrontational relationship between the two characters, often bordering on sado-masochism.

Dimitris Papaioannou INK feat. Šuka Horn, Dimitris Papaioannou © Julian Mommert
Horn is a very physical presence, his control at times suggesting new configurations for the human body, as when he stands on his head holding the large fish bowl between splayed frog-like legs.

All this takes place to David Blouin’s sound design, where original music by Kornilios Selamsis blends with brief snatches of Vivaldi, Isham Jones and Sofia Vempo, among others, with large stretches of silence where water, alternating between shower, geyser or sometimes just a trickle, provides the only, increasingly unnerving, sound.

In a moment of intense beauty, Horn brings on field of golden wheat, whose very immobile dryness provides momentary respite from all that restless, suffocating water.

Papaioannou says his works are deliberately fragmentary and obscure, so that audiences can find their own meanings or connections. Despite a few early walkouts, on opening night INK, the title a reference to the ink secreted by the octopus (yet another idea that is left unexplored), held its audience pretty rapt, its powerful images no doubt awakening in viewers their own memories, dreams and nightmares.