As Above So Below: an experiential performance designed for the Kabeirion of Lemnos, the oldest known Greek Sanctuary connecting the spiritual heritage of the Asia Minor refugees with ritual memories of antiquity and the worship of Cabeiri. Sacred Fire, the element of destruction and regeneration, becomes the thread connecting Greeks with the Light and the greatness of the Universe.
The creator of the first underwater performance in Sounio and the vigil night in Fygaleia, director and choreographer Apostolia Papadamaki, connects cultural heritage with performing arts in a performance-ritual by renowned artists Savina Yannatou, Thanasis Efthymiadis, Maria Papageorgiou, professional dancers, and local volunteers under the full moon.
The music is composed by Trifon Koutsourelis.
Apotypoma negotiates the conceptual dimensions of being uprooted, accepted, and integrated, and by extension of the respect for diversity. How would our life be, if we accepted the experiences of the persons living next to us? Where is our fear of the Other, the Foreigner, based?
The fear of that which is different and unknown is the catalyst in a psychological process based on the principle of similarity. The ones who are like us belong to the same group, therefore they are harmless.
But it is this moment of danger, these meetings, that build one’s personality, there where one overcomes their fear, separate themselves from the group, and explore life through their senses. It is from these meetings that the authentic self emerges.
A search for the paths of events, images, and ideas, through time: Die Wolke art group presents Ichne (“traces”), a contemporary dance performance that sources its materials from interviews, focusing on the workings of memory and oral communication towards the development of imagery originating from the Asia Minor cultural identity.
Movement, along with musical and sonic compositions, approaches the inherent subjectivity of descriptions, low fidelity, gaps, and negative space that reveals the dimension of time in poetic imagery, thus focusing on the intersubjectivity of narrative refractions.
This work involves collaboration between contemporary dance and original music and it is inspired by images and emotions emerging from the texts of well-known authors and poets (Sotiriou, Venezis, Seferis, Hemingway, et al.) who wrote about the Asia Minor Catastrophe.
The despair, sorrow, terror, pain and the struggle for survival and inclusion of the Asia Minor refugees are dramatized through contemporary dance choreographies, which are enriched with contemporary music compositions and songs interlacing electronic soundscapes with Asia Minor music scales and rhythms. The lyrics of the songs are inspired by images and emotions emerging from the texts.
The goal of this work is to highlight the ability of the Asia Minor refugees to transform pain and sorrow into art.
“If you can’t flourish in a certain place, start thinking that maybe it’s the environment’s fault, not yours…” Stereo Nero Dance Co. follows the life of the inhabitants of Mastichochoria in Chios and analyzes their connection with the life cycle of the “weeping tree” (mastic tree). Through poetic imagery and motion motifs, the company observes the unique characteristics of the local micro-climate and explores the formation of a respective culture. Focusing on the constantly changing weather, The Teardrop raises questions about the vulnerability of the symbiosis of the human with the non-human, and about the loss of the inscribed collective experience. Studying the present condition, through accounts, archival material and cultural references to Chios, and through the prism of the ongoing climate change, the performers create a community with new characteristics that is coming from the future. The familiar interweaves with the unfamiliar, as man tries to find his place in the emerging environments.
A Dot of Eutopia is based on the relationship between our perception of the time and space distance separating us from climate crisis on the one hand and the development of positive emotions and internal motivations for individual and collective commitment to slow down climate change on the other. Choreographer Zoi Efstathiou explores the concept of distance, by creating relationships of interdependence, autonomy, and collective effort. The dancers focus on positive emotions and associate them with the commitment of both individuals and society to address climate change. More specifically, they follow movement paths and develop persistent interactions driven by intrinsic motivations, that can lead them to a research of collective action. As shown by the title, the production seeks and creates – through the arts of dance, multimedia and modern electronic music – a eutopia, an actual place and way of slowing down climate change through positive emotions.
NEMESIS, the new production conceived and directed by Giorgos Christakis, founder of Dagipoli Dance Co, explores the relationship between the human body and the environment, the ecosystem and climate change, and points out the key role played in maintaining the balance among them by the human factor, that is, human behaviour.
If one projects the role of the climate change-burdened ecosystem onto the human body, one notices that the degeneration of both of them is mainly due to human behaviour. Taking into account the social, economic, class, national, and psychological considerations and effects of climate change, NEMESIS explores the spectrum and the processes of effectively addressing it in relation to man and his body and, more specifically, the disabled body. That is why the work proposes ways to address the effects of climate change and the issue of human behaviour in association with these two vital notions (body/disabled body) by drawing connections, pinpointing identifications and developing interactions between them.
The new choreographic work The Breath of the World by Mariela Nestora / YELP Dance Co. focuses on breathing as an experiential relationship of the body with the world. In a climate-changing world, plants are our most important co-habitants. Our relationship with them is based on reciprocity. We breathe in the oxygen they exhale and they inhale the oxygen we breathe out. How can we reinforce the ecological affinities that cultivate the concepts of care and reciprocity?
Three dancers and three musicians weave together a creative project that brings out breathing as a biological, psychological, existential and spiritual crossroads, while exploring ways to co-exist and interact with different bodies. The world’s breathing is timed with sunset, it awakens empathy and highlights every audience member’s unique perception. The performance’s ephemeral “organism” becomes perceived as part of another greater ecosystem, while the world’s breathing mechanism becomes activated as an experience but also as a gathering of different species.
The Dancers of the North present Commedia Divina, a new production choreographed and directed by Tatiana Papadopoulou. Commedia Divina is a stage transcription of Dante’s journey across the three borderline destinations of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, seen through the prism of climate change.
The emblematic work of world literature, Dante’s Commedia Divina is a modern environmental allegory. It fascinatingly captures man’s unbreakable relationship with nature. The poet’s journey across the three Kingdoms of the dead of the Catholic worldview includes “travellers’ accounts” of the Underworld. Modern-day communities feel the rising environmental pressures and seek a way out, just as the poet is looking for an exit. Passing from the overheated Hell to Purgatory, where nature is “normalized”, he ends up in Paradise, the place of absolute harmonization, where man is reconnected to nature.
The body is earth. It carries rivers. Their water masses move inside of us, run through us and move us. Water is nothing but us. It is our first relative and the first medicine to which we turn. As long as we continue to poison and exhaust our water resources, how will we be able to clean our wounds?
Running Dry invites audiences to a dance performance, where water returns as a Fury, as a primeval urge. The Furies cannot exist in the absence of the wild. This is what they invoke: the untamable, defending the wild landscapes of the soul. A Fury is water shortage, drought, flood, the rising of the sea level, the rivers that dry up, the wrinkling skin. She is not a punishment; she turns into knowledge. Dancing bodies return to the water – their oldest wild relative –, and through motion waves, voices, confessions and gestures they unfold personal water maps of physical memories and weave a world of bright co-existence.