Lydia Touliatou: ATROPOS

ATROPOS (‘the unalterable’) is a new, multimedia solo work by dancer, choreographer Lydia Touliatou.

According to Greek mythology, the thread of life — our fate — is in the hands of three immortal sisters known as the Moirai, or the Fates. 

The youngest sister, Clotho (the Spinner), is responsible for spinning the thread. Her elder sister, Lachesis (the Allotter), determines the length of the thread, deciding how much time and what destiny we will have on Earth. Their eldest sister, Atropos (the Unalterable/Inflexible), wields a pair of scissors and, without hesitation, cuts the thread when our time is up. 

This performance explores the 'unalterable' and inevitable reality of death—a collective experience that all living beings face and share. Interwoven into this existential condition are the threads of migration and memory, as experienced by Touliatou, a female migrant artist.

The choreography investigates death as another form of migration and migration as a form of death. The dancer’s body becomes the meeting point between cultures, where threads of longing, memories, and grievances are spun into a powerful expression of our shared humanity. 

Lydia Touliatou is a Greek-born dance artist who studied in London and Helsinki, where she now resides. In addition to contemporary dance techniques, she has studied and practised the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam for twenty years.

Structurally, ATROPOS serves as a dialogue between different cultures, practices, and temporalities. The movement language of the piece derives from the narrative principles of Bharatanatyam. The storytelling tools of mudras (hand gestures) and abhinaya (facial expressions) form the foundation of a new kinetic vocabulary that Touliatou is developing as a contemporary dance artist, distilled through her dual training and embodiment of both Eastern and Western choreographic methods.