News
Dancers learn to dive for underwater performance
In what is being billed as a world first, 14 dancers have donned scuba gear for an underwater performance, complete with specially composed music, to an audience submerged to a depth of approximately 5 meters in Cape Sounion, southeast of Athens, beneath the ancient temple of Poseidon.
The performance is the brainchild of Greek choreographer Apostolia Papadamaki and French choreographer Sophie Bulbulyan, whose dance group in one of Paris’ poorest neighborhoods includes disabled dancers.
The two, who are recreational divers, met three years ago during a dive.
“We liked each other and then we started talking artistically, exchanging ideas,” Papadamaki explained. They had “the very impulsive idea one day after a fun dive: Let’s make an underwater performance. Let’s see if it’s possible. An underwater dance performance.”
It was possible – but not easy.
“This project is like going to the moon on a bike,” said Bulbulyan. “There was an enormous amount of difficulties.”
For a start, dancers – including those with mobility problems – had to learn to dive, and control their buoyancy through their breathing to the point where they can hover upside down and sideways, or rise and fall without moving a muscle. Seventy percent of the performers were dancers who became divers – all in the last year.
Then there were the logistics: diving gear, transport, financing, the vagaries of the weather and political upheaval in Greece, complete with banking restrictions and early elections.
“I’m bringing a French dance group from the poorest neighborhood in France, which has handicapped people in its group, to Greece, a country in chaos, and we’re doing something without limits,” Bulbulyan said. “It’s all that together, with crazy logistics.”
The music needed special consideration. Composer Trifonas Koutsourelis researched and tested the transmission of sound frequencies so his score could both be heard clearly and choreographed in water, where movement slows down.
It took him two and a half months. “I haven’t slept for the last three weeks at least,” he said.
For the dancers, especially the disabled, the experience was “beyond words,” said Papadamaki.
“They feel equal. For the first time they can move without a wheelchair, without the restriction of somebody having to carry them.”
Irini Kourouvani, who uses a wheelchair, has been a dancer for 15 years but was wary of the water as she needed a flotation board to swim.
She was hooked from her first dive.
“I forgot to be afraid and to get scared because I was so entranced by what I was seeing,” Kourouvani said. “I felt like I was floating in space, like I was on earth and the wind was coming and lifting me up.”
Now, she said, the deep is something “I won’t part with. Because now I carry it within me.
News
Dive Worldwide Announces Bite-Back as its Charity of the Year
Over the next 12 months, specialist scuba holiday company Dive Worldwide will be supporting Bite-Back Shark & Marine Conservation with donations collected from client bookings to any one of its stunning dive destinations around the world. The independently-owned operator expects to raise £3000 for the UK charity.
Manager at Dive Worldwide, Phil North, said: “We’re especially excited to work with Bite-Back and support its intelligent, creative and results-driven campaigns to end the UK trade in shark products and prompt a change in attitudes to the ocean’s most maligned inhabitant.”
Bite-Back is running campaigns to hold the media to account on the way it reports shark news along with a brand new nationwide education programme. Last year the charity was credited for spearheading a UK ban on the import and export of shark fins.
Campaign director at Bite-Back, Graham Buckingham, said: “We’re enormously grateful to Dive Worldwide for choosing to support Bite-Back. The company’s commitment to conservation helps set it apart from other tour operators and we’re certain its clients admire and respect that policy. For us, the affiliation is huge and helps us look to the future with confidence we can deliver against key conservation programmes.”
To launch the fundraising initiative, Phil North presented Graham Buckingham with a cheque for £1,000.
Visit Dive Worldwide to discover its diverse range of international scuba adventures and visit Bite-Back to learn more about the charity’s campaigns.
MORE INFORMATION
Call Graham Buckingham on 07810 454 266 or email graham@bite-back.com
Gear News
Scubapro Free Octopus Promotion 2024
Free Octopus with every purchase of a SCUBAPRO regulator system
Just in time for the spring season, divers can save money with the FREE OCTOPUS SPRING PROMOTION! Until July 31st SCUBAPRO offers an Octopus for free
with every purchase of a regulator system!
Get a free S270 OCTOPUS with purchase of these combinations:
MK25 EVO or MK19 EVO with A700
MK25 EVO or MK19 EVO with S620Ti
MK25 EVO or MK19 EVO with D420
MK25 EVO Din mit S620Ti-X
Get a free R105 OCTOPUS with purchase of the following combinations:
MK25 EVO or MK19 EVO with G260
MK25 EVO or MK17 EVO with S600
SCUBAPRO offers a 30-year first owner warranty on all regulators, with a revision period of two years or 100 dives. All SCUBAPRO regulators are of course certified according to the new European test standard EN250-2014.
Available at participating SCUBAPRO dealers. Promotion may not be available in all regions. Find an authorized SCUBAPRO Dealer at scubapro.com.
More information available on www.scubapro.com.
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