The New Buffer Zone
It is there and it keeps on emerging every single day.
Elias Klark
Location: Frascati 4
Dates:
- GENRE: Dance, Performance Art
- THEME: Dystopia / Utopia, History Re-told, Speaking Bodies
- LANGUAGE: Language No Problem
- Attention: a lot of sensory stimuli (light and/or sound), Smoke / Fog machine
- Toilet for wheelchair users: no, Wheelchair accessible: yes
duration of the performance: 25 min
A microcosm fertilizes itself with ghost blood. In the absence of human interaction, the Cypriot buffer zone facilitates the regeneration of a new life. In his solo performance, Elias explores a vision of the post-apocalyptic dead zone of his homeland through an audiovisual synthesis. An anamorphic shadow depicts the dance of an uncultivated territory, abandoned and haunted by a perpetual truce between North and South. “The New Buffer Zone” is an attempt at self-conciliation, marked by desires that transcend the divide and represented by the sensuality of the progressive evolution of an endless rhythmic organism.
Biography
Elias Klark (b. 1999, Nicosia) is a dancer and performance artist from Cyprus. His artwork reflects themes of established colonies, national diasporas, and militarized states. Oscillating between a self-existent agency and the paradox of its failure, his research traverses the complex geopolitical issues of his homeland and the experience of his compulsory service in the Cypriot National Guard. Inspired by the Buffer Zone of Cyprus, he works with boundaries, limitations, and liminal spaces, conceived as empty fields to be filled and transformed into creative territories through communal collaborations. By investigating problems collectively, he assembles tools to enhance relationships and form liberated bodies, disposing of a creative world for one another. The landscape plays a central role in Klark’s research and is approached in a conceptual way, where somatic practices and Tai Chi disclose harmonious compositions, stressing the beauty that can be found in slowness, and transmitting the sense of blurriness that embodiment brings. Light and sound design are part of his fields of performative exploration. Klark will graduate from the Amsterdam University of the Arts in 2026. He has shown his work at Diverse-it Arts Festival , On Bodies Festival and Summer Dance Festival.
