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“Creating experimental work is like creating a proposal or suggestion, or a patchwork of ideas, more than a product that adheres to spectacle.” — Demetris Charalambous
I met Demetris Charalambous on a cold Monday evening a few months after moving to New York in a space wherein I’m certain many such friendships have begun: Judson Memorial Church. We were work-studying at Movement Research, a program which is a bit of a rite of passage for young, curious dance artists. I’m honored to know them, and certain their career is going to be an important one.
On one of those Mondays, Demetris ran lights for two performances, and performed in the third with Company [REDACTED], a dance company for which they are also Associate Director. Judson is a relatively low-tech venue, and that night, the audience was spilling out onto the floor and into the performance space. To be clear, I won’t review the performance — Judson performances are not open for review! — but I will say that I was struck by Demetris’ ability to world-build with their movement alone amidst a sea of street-clothed audience members. They were somewhere else, and they took me right along with them. Wherever they were, I was there too.
And then they were running lights again, back in the material world with the rest of us.
The Edge of Desire Has a Way of Curving by Demetris Charalambous and Riven Ratanavanh. Photo by Elyse Mertz
A graduate of the NYU Tisch Department of Dance, Demetris is a talented movement artist, and a brilliant mind. They started dancing at fifteen, which most of us in the field know can feel quite “late,” but they cite this as a benefit. They might not remember “dancing since they were two,” but they do remember being interested in many different disciplines that have all informed their artistic career.
At 23, Demetris’ impressive body of creative work is committed to both breaking free from established conventions and rekindling traditional forms to conceive new possibilities.
Demetris’ 2022 film BODYAS depicts a process of remembering, their body a weary, ever-enduring conduit for intimate personal memories, illustrated by nudity and physical contortion. The film gave me space to consider the possible responsibility of “trained” dancing bodies, especially those of talented artists like Demetris, as uniquely adept containers for information and knowledge.
Still from SEER by Demetris Charalambous with Tony Wang for NOWNESS
Evidently ever-curious about the idea of “body as archive,” Demetris’ work SEER (another gorgeous film, premiered with NOWNESS Asia) deals less with enduring and more with retrieving. Embodied memories are destined to erode over time — we know this — but how can we still approach them with curiosity and tenderness? What do they become over time? How do we grapple with their corrosiveness? Important questions indeed, which Demetris and collaborator Tony Wang ask smartly and softly.
I WANTED THE EARTH TO OPEN UP AND SWALLOW ME WHOLE, curated by Karen Elizabeth Phinley for the Morphology Exhibition at NYU Kimmel Windows in March 2022, is a striking example of Demetris’ capacity for imaginative, interdisciplinary, and durational work. Shedding light on regulations imposed on Queer individuals by society, and the discomfort that arises from their uncensored visibility, this work confronts the complexities of body politics. Durational work allows Demetris to thoroughly transport audiences to other worlds and experiences—something their movement quality does in a more immediate way. This way of making suits their ideas well, to me, and I’m hopeful that they’ll make more experiential work. Of I WANTED THE EARTH, Demetris writes, “creation itself can become the ultimate medium for immortalization, celebrating the transformative power of art.”
The Edge of Desire Has a Way of Curving by Demetris Charalambous and Riven Ratanavanh. Photo by Elyse Mertz
Most recently, Demetris presented a work in progress titled The Edge of Desire Has a Way of Curving with their collaborator Riven Ratanavanh at the Center for Performance Research and Performance Space.
As impressive as Demetris’ body of their own creative work is their performance resume, which includes work by Luis Lara Malvacias, Jeremy Nelson, Company [REDACTED], and more commercial-based work with Toogie Teresa Barcelo and Official Rebrand for New York Fashion Week.
When we spoke, I learned that Demetris’ admiration for the postmodernist dance philosophy of the Judson Dance Theater era drew them to New York in 2019. While studying at a conservatory program in Scotland, they felt a pull to not only the city, but to a more academically rigorous environment that would inform their artistry as a maker. Thus, they arrived at NYU Tisch and planted roots in the New York dance scene.
“The postmodern dance philosophy is so radical, especially when it happens in a context such as New York and the U.S., where everything feels so hyper-capitalist and all about spectacle. The work [my community and I] want to make is so radical because it antagonizes capitalist values, and it attempts to simulate the very particular philosophy of that very particular moment in time, while co-mingling with contemporary cultural conversations in search of a new sort of era. It’s about lack of narrative. Creating experimental work is like creating a proposal or suggestion, or a patchwork of ideas, more than a product that adheres to spectacle.”
Demetris Charalambous for Four Acres Zine. Photo by Jordi Perez Courtesy of FourAcres Lab, LLC
When asked what feels most important to them right now, they replied, “to receive information, allow my body to metabolize it, and see what comes out.” How reflective of their already existing body of work, which is already forging a language of its own.
