Eifo Efi
by Mandafounis & Mazliah
In Eifo Efi, the performers offer their understanding of two persons, as more than the sum of what two people can be. The performers fill the performance space with versions or echoes of themselves. While only two bodies appear, reflective elements and diverting strategies enhance the visual to stimulate the senses, making the ‘just two’ reveal other presences. The multiple is not automatically a multiplicity. Composition by addition, layering, or simple juxtaposition would not achieve a multiplicity. Nor would a coherent compositional whole suffice. This piece is a distinct alchemy of juxtaposition—an assembly of theatrical elements, multilayered movement, and spoken language that is unusually ripe and potent for differentiation.
Emerging from a body of choreographic work that explores (among other things) the perception of appearances and the production of visual paradox, Eifo Efi names the urge to speak specifically from within theatrical constructions and to find new modes of intertwining the experience of the audience with that of the performers.
Returning to the format of a duet, Ioannis Mandafounis and Fabrice Mazliah use their close relationship as collaborators to produce a performative realm of doubled doubles: multiplying the perception of two bodies via dimensions of imagined reality and reflections in the actual material of the set. At once whole and multiple, the piece invites untangling the who and where of the spectacle. The Deleuzian movement of thought, as multiplicity, rendered unpretentious, fleshy, and even (gasp) entertaining!