Chara Kotsali on dance and politics: “It’s not enough to complain”

After Chara Kotsali's hit play "It's the End of the Amusement Phase" you can't really get up and move on. It is a tour de force through history, both of dance and of political catastrophe - at a time when the future has been overtaken by the past.

taz: Chara Kotsali, I haven't seen such a historical work as your dance revue for a long time. Your list of style references must be extremely long. 80 dances? 100? Have you counted them?

Chara Kotsali: No, I'm bad at this kind of counting. I accumulate, I move from one thing to another. Maybe that’s a neurodiverse trait in me. I don't know, I haven't had it checked yet. I don't belong to the generation that has such things checked out in a timely manner.

Kotsali: At least I would definitely be able to find something!

was born in Greece in 1984. She studied dance, choreography, theater studies, social and cultural anthropology in Athens and trained professionally as a percussionist. After years of experience as a contemporary dancer, she made her debut as a choreographer in 2023. The European breakthrough came almost immediately; since 2025, her trio “It’s the End of the Amusement Phase” (together with the dancers Sofia Pouchtou and Christina Skoutela) has received great international response. In Germany it was shown at the Berliner Tanz in August, the next stops are Düsseldorf (12th and 13th September, Tanzhaus NRW) and Freiburg (21st November, Theater Freiburg/Kleines Haus).

taz: To be able to perfectly master all these dance styles from the 1920s to today's Tiktok dances is incredible!

Kotsali: A great challenge. This gives us an insight into an attitude to life, into the texture of bodies.

taz: How do you manage to find dancers who can absorb such amounts of material?

Kotsali: Okay, I'm proud of my country for a second and only in this respect: There are really excellent dancers in Greece. Not only are they trained to physically handle any material, they are also mentally and intellectually super strong.

taz: Why does your sampling span an entire century?

Kotsali: This is initially about the period in which dances are documented in the media. It also seemed important to us as a team to study the public dances before, during and after the Great Depression of the last century: How did people try to experience pleasure through the body? The history of the pleasure of dancing has undergone great changes since then. A rough outline: First the ballrooms, which were primarily about couple dancing, then the discos and clubs as dancing together, then the raves as coexisting or dreaming together, then the dances in the frame of a screen, physically created to circulate disembodied.

taz: Looking at your choreography it becomes clear that dance also has a grammar. When bodies are very well trained, they develop intuitions for the structures.

Kotsali: Absolutely. When we go through so many dance styles, the sense of grammar and syntax of the dances becomes even stronger through the mash-up. It also becomes clear that the body organizes itself, that is, links itself, in relation to the content and meaning of the movement.

taz: I find it fascinating with today's children how good many are at learning dance clips. There is enormous dancing ability circulating.

Kotsali: Yes, these are often surprisingly complex dance movements.

taz: On the other hand, children are completely focused on hits from social media. For example, if you're not allowed to use Tiktok, you have no chance of getting involved.

Kotsali: Nevertheless, we act as if such media platforms constitute a public space. They are private commercial enterprises and literally devour human flesh. They need bodies and faces. If you put a drawing on Instagram, it will circulate much less.

taz: Through your sampling you show how the boundaries between pop culture, art and political propaganda can blur.

Kotsali: It is fascinating and shocking to explore how totalitarian regimes appropriate the dances of an era. There is no genre of “totalitarian dances”. Her aesthetics always draw on different genres. In the 20th century this was folk dance, but the popular dances of the time also played an increasingly important role, an example would be the dances in honor of Tito after his death. But more abstract aesthetics also come into play, as in the case of Joseph Goebbels, who was to a certain extent fascinated by the dance innovator Rudolf von Laban. A totalitarian production is always a mixture of the aesthetics on offer.

taz: Media fashions are certainly a main influence on today's political propaganda?

Kotsali: We already live in implicitly totalitarian times, but I don't want to go too far out of the window with an analysis. However, when I follow the big dance events like the Super Bowls or the Olympic Games, it is definitely clear that dances from media popular cultures have a great importance and that material from diasporic and sometimes also from trans cultures is also used. And that we will continue to rely on big names from the arts for national representations.

taz: Your dance revue is accompanied and interrupted by a highly political spoken word text. For me, the first hurdle when crying about the state of the world would be the question: Where to start?

Kotsali: I have always had a lot of respect for words, but in recent years I have dared to explore writing as an artistic medium. It has become a necessity to raise my voice. It helps to dance with my voice too - that means experimenting with rhythm and sound in a spoken word style until I'm on a track that carries the content. I think it is important to also recognize these non-thoughtful parts of language.

taz: There are many quote-worthy verses like “Go, go west, and fuck the rest,” or “a human progress full of tears and fears and fierce frontiers,” which show that your words are sharp and catchy. But what do you expect from it in a world that is not ready to change?

Kotsali: It sounds naive, but I need the opportunity to address the new European and global fascism. I need the opportunity to reclaim the concept of migration as something that has always been and will be vital to humanity. It's not enough to complain, because everyone is doing that right now - although I value crying and complaining as feminist practice. However, what makes me a political subject is giving concrete expression to my sadness.

taz: You belt out: “There is nothing like the Great Depression, nothing great about this sadness” – has sadness replaced “amusement” for you?

Kotsali: Dealing with my own sadness was triggered by a text about the so-called productivity paradox, the “failure” to increase economic power through technological progress. The phrase “the end of the amusement” caught my attention, which I associate with the experience that technology has not managed to free people from unsatisfactory work, to free up time, in short: to lead to more satisfaction. The media scientist Geert Lovink, on the other hand, describes in his book “Sad by Design” the sadness that has arisen from the hyperactivity already created in so-called social media due to the corresponding platform designs.

taz: But sadness is often not something that is expressed publicly. It would be too intimate. But anger and frustration.

Kotsali: Anger is of course great political fuel. But the problem is that it is inarticulate, that is, when it is not possible to identify the reasons for the anger. So, for example, sadness. If we, whoever this “we” is, acknowledged this, we could come together for collective mourning rituals. That would be a start. Nevertheless, it is important to get to the bottom of this feeling. When feelings have no basis, they become a problem.