Van Legakis, Unity Space and this summer’s “Interdisciplinary Festival of Embodiment” East Point West
East Point West (EPW) is not a dance intensive. It’s not a movement lab, choreographic workshop or summer study program, but instead EPW is something very different, and quite appropriately described as an “Interdisciplinary Festival of Embodiment”. I’ll give you a moment to take that in…
Peculiar, right? Well, it would be difficult to break this idea down without telling you where the concept came from, and in order to do that I’ll have to start by introducing you to Vangelis Legakis and his platform for artistic integration called Unity Space.
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of having a rather brief but still very profound conversation with Van. It was a great opportunity to get to know him and how his philosophy on life and movement transpired from his personal experiences. It says something about a person when they carve out the time to connect with a complete stranger in order to explain the heart of their life’s work to you.
Van started his journey with movement through martial arts, qi gong and meditation at the early age of 13 but didn’t begin dancing until he was twenty-two. It’s surprising to know that, even with his later entry into the world of contemporary dance, he earned both his BA in Dance Theatre and his MA in Choreography from Trinity Laban – not to mention, directing and choreographing for his own company (The Van-L Dance Company) and studying alternative healing modalities all at the same time. Clearly, this is a man with an intense passion to learn and to share his discoveries with the world.
© Your World in Pictures – Jac Price
He was living in London – having graduated from Trinity Laban in 2006 and working with his dance company – when he found himself needing something more from his approach as a dancer and creator. In 2011, he decided to travel across Asia to invest more deeply in his research with energy work, yoga, qi gong, martial arts and healing. His first visit was India, where he participated in several artistic residencies as well as in yoga and vipassana meditation; then Thailand where he was mentored by masters who guided him on his inward journey of self-reflection and mindfulness; but it was in China that he found something sacred…something unequivocal – a true sense of belonging.
This feeling of being at home would entice Van to return regularly throughout the following year in 2012. He was connected with Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts through a colleague at a dance forum in Taipei and was welcomed to teach dance workshops for the local community during his visits there. Even though this opportunity granted him the fortune of spending time in China, his relationship with energy work and meditation was growing richer – so much that he was experiencing a connectedness that was lacking in his dance and choreographic life. What fascinated Van about Hong Kong was this marriage of eastern and western movement influences. Inspired by this coalescing of cultures and his own significant personal shifts, he was motivated to integrate dance with these eastern modalities that were becoming more deeply embedded in his practice.
In 2014, he enrolled himself in another Masters program, but this time for Buddhist Studies at Hong Kong University, and shortly after graduating in 2015 Unity Space was born. His goal with Unity Space was to give back to the community in Hong Kong which had welcomed him with open arms and so powerfully impacted his way of life. Thus, Unity Space became a platform for interdisciplinary projects, festivals, residencies and workshops – a space for artistic and wholistic expression, with the firm purpose of harmoniously integrating eastern and western disciplines.
Ever since, Unity Space has flourished into a living organism of its own which provides breath and space for many different kinds of work to welcome the exchange of arts and culture worldwide. Van has curated many events through Unity Space, which brings me back to East Point West – an experience that follows through with this same philosophy. Hosted by Unity Space from July 4th to July 14th and held in the beautiful studios at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPAC) in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, East Point West offers an amalgamation of practices as a part of their ten-day experience. Yes, there is an emphasis on movement with most classes being based strongly in either dance or other forms of physicality like yoga and martial arts, but EPW takes the notion of integration one step further.
The festival truly is interdisciplinary in that classes involving painting, dance on film and massage are also offered in the program schedule. Separated into performance workshops, and elective classes, participants are given the freedom to build their own experience by selecting from the diverse line-up of guests. Each artist in the performance project series will be sharing their individually developed processes: Anton Lachky with Puzzle Work, Edivaldo Ernesto with Depth Movement, Judith Sanchez Ruiz with Your Own God, Inaki Azpillaga with Powerful and Fragile and finally Vangelis Legakis with Embodied Unity. These performance workshops will take place over the course of the festival with a showing at Damansara Performing Arts Centre (DPAC) on the final day.
When talking with Van about his own approach – Embodied Unity – I realized that the concept is more than just another entry point to improvisation, dance technique and creation. Embodied Unity is a pathway to experience a kind of interconnectedness. It’s about being in communication with oneself and their surroundings and equally prioritizes healing as an essential daily practice, rather than as a means to fix a problem. It feels to me that Embodied Unity is after a feeling of cohesion and vitality and does this by honouring and integrating the pre-existing ideologies of eastern cultures with contemporary dance.
It’s safe to say then, that this is also the premise of this summer’s East Point West program. This “Interdisciplinary Festival of Embodiment” is in pursuit of all that lives at the core of the Unity Space mission and values; that of collaboration, integration, synergy and unity. In an age where summer workshop experiences are in excess it can be difficult to narrow down the differences between what to apply for, but East Point West exists to share something that isn’t being offered anywhere else.
Links
Unity Space: www.unityspace.org
The Van – L Dance Company: www.thevanldancecompany.com Currently looking for dancers, more info at: The Van – L Dance Company is Excited to Hold an Audition for Their New Production 2018-2019
FB Unity Space: https://www.facebook.com/unityspaceaspaceofintegration
Email: [email protected] and [email protected]
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