Dance Umbrella Presents The UK Premiere Of MOS By Ioanna Paraskevopoulou For The 2023 Festival

Dance Umbrella has announced the first show in the festival programme for 2023. MOS, by Athens based choreographer Ioanna Paraskevopoulou will be at The Pit, Barbican from 11 - 14 October. The Festival, which will be a hybrid live / digital programme will run from 6 - 31 October, with further programme announcements to follow.

Witness the stage transform into a cinematic soundscape, as two performers create a captivating audio-visual experience.

Using everyday objects: umbrellas, plungers, and coconut shells, MOS evokes the movie sounds created by foley artists in the days before digital effects. The physical act of generating audio while following the film becomes an energetic dance, with tap numbers turned into recordings that are looped, distorted, paused and intensified.

Making her Dance Umbrella Festival debut, Athens-based Ioanna Paraskevopoulou is an award-winning dancer/choreographer who focuses on the interplay between movement, sound and imagery, and whose past collaborators have included DU Artist Dimitris Papaioannou.

Dance Umbrella Artistic Director Freddie Opoku-Addaie said 'We're thrilled to get our first show for 2023 announced, and to be returning to, and working in partnership with, the Barbican as part of our 45th Festival across London. Ioanna Paraskevopoulou is a very unique artist and I am looking forward to presenting her DU debut with this UK premiere. Look out for more programme announcements in May and June.'

Ioanna Paraskevopoulou is a dancer and choreographer based in Athens. She graduated from the Greek National School of Dance and is currently studying at the Department of AudioVisual Arts (Ionian University).

Her artistic practice focuses on the relationship between audio-visual media and movement, reconfiguring the expansion of the choreographic field. She has collaborated, among others, with Iris Karayan, Christos Papadopoulos, Dimitris Papaioannou and Alexandra Waierstall.

She was awarded the Best Performance prize for the dance film Sans Attente by Konstantinos Rizos at InShadow International Festival and second prize for her performance in mneme [action] 21 by Maria Koliopoulou at International Dance Festival, Algiers. She was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2019-2020.

Her choreographic video project All She Likes Is Popping Bubble Wrap was created as part of Onassis New Choreographers Festival 8. ALSIPBW was selected by several video art festivals and awarded Best Sound Design at FIVideodanza Festival, Mexico and Best Video Art at MIFVIF, Venezuela.

MOS premiered at Onassis New Choreographers Festival 9 and had its European premiere at Julidans Next. She presented Coconut Effect at the 7th Danse élargie competition and won the Young Jury award. She was selected to present MOS at Aerowaves Twenty23.

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