point Deborah Hay 
No time to fly

As Holy Sites Go

How can choreography exist simultaneously as movement, as language and as a way to rethink the presence of the body in space? With the program point Deborah Hay, the Athens & Epidaurus Festival turns its attention to the work of a choreographer who ranks among the defining figures of the American avant-garde. This hommage invites us to reflect on the radically critical point of reference that her work constitutes today, presented for the first time in Greece through an expanded invitation.

Associated with the Judson Dance Theater, the collective that marked the emergence of postmodern dance in New York in the 1960s, Deborah Hay fundamentally renewed the way we perceive choreography. Instead of approaching choreography conventionally, as a composition and sequence of predetermined steps, she turned to language, writing scores that are activated through hypothetical questions, transforming the body and perception into a site of experimentation and investigation.

At the core of the program are two works that clearly illuminate Hay's research. The liminal No Time to Fly (2010), choreographed and performed by Deborah Hay herself, is actualized through the original written score. As a solo, it condenses key elements of Hay's practice of performance: attention, inner awareness, and the decoding of experience as it unfolds. This is followed by As Holy Sites Go (2011), the duet by Jeanine Durning and Ros Warby, which is an adaptation of the same score. Designed to produce multiple singular responses without losing their structural character, Deborah Hay’s scores allow other performers to personally confront and adapt her choreography. Through the presentation of both works in an evening-length program, the audience has the rare opportunity to experience how the same choreographic score produces multiple singular responses.

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