Troy. Smyrna. The face. The mother. The land. The motherland. The Queen. Hecuba. She crosses time. Like a curved arrow.
Ruins. Corpses. A city. Troy. Smyrna. Lost motherlands. Lost lives. Whose walls are ruined. Burnt down. By the fire of war. Thousands of people. Becoming refugees. They saw their port turning into a river of blood. They buried there a piece of their soul. Their heart hasn’t forgotten. The body was tortured, to put down roots elsewhere.
The story of a city. The destruction of the “cradle of civilisation”. Troy is still on fire.
The Music Theatre Company Rafi collaborates with the Oros Ensemble, composer Apostolis Koutsogiannis, poet Marios Hadjiprokopiou and visual artist Petros Touloudis to create a musico-visual cantata that illuminates moments from the life of Koutaliani, as strongmen from Asia Minor used to be called, over different historical periods: from the late 19th century to the postwar era.
The legendary life of these persons also serves as an allegory for the transition from the late-19th-century world to the successive displacements of the early 20th century, the Asia Minor Catastrophe, and the suffocating borders of the modern Greek state.
The work features the legendary Panagis Koutalianos and his descendant Dimitris, Charis Karpozilos and Giannis Keskelidis or Sampson, the giant of the Greek catch known as “Attilio” or “the Asian” (sic).
A musical performance that engages in a dialogue with the digital painting of George Kordis, who digitally creates a series of murals depicting refugee processions titled “Anestii” (Hearthless). Fenia Papadodima converses with the works, following George Seferis’ journey to Cappadocia, testimonies of refugees, and poems.
With her voice she travels across hymnody, singing, improvisation, speech. She leads audiences to an inner approach of the tragedy of the hearthless people of all eras.
From the person to the loss of the person.
Composer Sofia Kamayianni’s new music theatre work invites us to raise our awareness about our connection with nature, and more specifically, trees. It is a one-act children’s chamber opera to a libretto by Giota Vasilakopoulou. Through the tender and moving relationship unfolding between a boy and a tree, the work foregrounds their similarities as entities and reveals the great secrets of the life of trees, above and below the earth’s surface. The enviable system of mutual help and support of trees that has been studied by scientists in the recent years and has led to wondrous discoveries, stands at the opposite end of man’s “uprooting” from their natural environment.
“Because people cannot see the colour of words, the tints of words, the secret ghostly motions of words (…); is that any reason why we should not try to make them hear, to make them see, to make them feel?” – Lafcadio Hearn
Japan and Greece – two cultures conversing in the new music theatre work titled Tsunami that will be presented with a script and directed by Elpida Skoufalou. On 11 March 2011, a catastrophic earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, triggering a gigantic tsunami, which not only had huge cost in human lives but also caused the biggest nuclear accident after Chernobyl. When disaster struck, poet Mayuzumi Madoka organised haiku composition sessions with the survivors. She collected 126 haiku poems that served as inspiration for the “Tsunami” of this musical performance. With speech, original music – drawn upon the encounter of Japanese musical traditions with those of Greece – and dance as a vehicle, this work focuses on climate crisis and its detrimental effects on our lives and souls.
The IONIA Orchestra and Chorus of Nea Ionia, Volos present the music theatre performance The Curtain of the Earth, based on original texts by Regina Kapetanaki, co-creator of the legendary children’s radio show Edo Lilipoupoli. It is an original performance combining Karagiozis, shadow puppet theatre and traditional music with the modern visual technology of videos and 3D projections, while commenting in a contemporary manner on Nature and climate change. Takis Vamvakidis in the role of Karagiozis will be narrating and commenting while transforming himself into different characters – from a shadow puppet to an actor on a real stage and then to a digital animator on a video wall – holding the audience’s attention. Greek songs, which are a vital part of the show, will be performed by the IONIA Orchestra and Chorus and acclaimed singer Thodoris Kotonias.
The music theatre performance Perhaps We’re Brothers In The End by Fenia Papadodima is based on Indian Chief Seattle’s earthshaking letter, written in 1854 as an answer to the representative of the government in Washington asking to buy their land. “If we sell you our land, remember that it is sacred…” The goal of the work is to shape a common conscience dictating a truth that is yet to be fully grasped: to stop the destruction of Nature, we first need to change our very worldview. A musical journey around the Red Church in Voulgareli, built in 1280, where scattered paintings by Giorgos Kordis narrate the transformation of man and the planet, from the fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden to this day, conversing with the happenings.
The original composition also includes text excerpts from Clive Ponting’s A Green History of the World and Philip Sherrard’s The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology.
In the Fortified Troupakis-Mourtzinos complex in the Old Town of Kardamyli, a monument that serves as a testament to the story of the last members of the Palaiologos family, Fenia Papadodima takes us on a tour across the land of the Nykliani. A land and a world that is at once cruel and fascinating. A place where death is constantly present.
Through her original music, the portraits painted by Giorgos Kordis on stones hanging on the walls of the tower, and the texts – Mani by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Homer’s Nekyia, as well as folkloristic and philosophical studies, and oral traditions –, the performance explores a woman’s position within a harsh, patriarchal family. Her weakness and strength. Her cry and lullaby. The boundary between life and death. In this misty, hovering “in-between” realm of Mani. Alongside her performing – an ensemble of renowned musicians.
Odysseus, this mythical yet modern and complex figure, is above all, the symbol of enduring resilience. The one who constantly engages in conflicts, both internal and external, and consistently faces challenges that surpass their abilities.
In Odysseus’ Tarot we revisit Odyssey through the Marseille Tarot Cards. These cards explore the human condition, much like Myths, Poetry, and Music: by delving into the innermost layers of the self, the aspects shielded from time, place, logic, and certainties. Every “picking” of a Tarot Card gives the heroes of the Odyssey ambiguous “oracles”, hovering between morality and desire, logic and emotion. A cross-temporal dialogue between two cultures opens. On the one hand there is the Renaissance and Humanism with the Tarot Cards, and on the other, ancient Greek thought with the Odyssey – in their most playful, poetic, and archetypal form.
*The performance will open with the Experimental Stage of Milos. It will be based on an Odyssey-inspired original libretto by Pavlina Pamboudi, taught by Kalliroi Myriagou.
Inspired by a folk legend of Epirus, director Konstantinos Markellos (author of the works The Abduction of Tasoula, Dancing Plague, and Two Oranges for Christmas) created a folk-style text following the Paraloges (a type of Greek folk narrative songs) model, written in verse and in the local Epirus dialect.
A group of actors-musicians perform sometimes as Narrators and other times as Acting Characters. They also sing original compositions inspired by polyphonic songs from Epirus, under the guidance of Vasoula Delli and Natalia Lambadaki, who are members of the vocal ensemble “Pleiades”.
The old woman Itsa played a special role in the community of the village Aetomilitsa in Konitsa. She had the traits of a good witch, spreading around her relief mixed with fear. In July 1974, when general conscription was declared, she gathered the girls at St Nicholas church to perform a primeval, apotropaic dance. A reverse dance, counterclockwise, with the dancers’ faces not towards the center of the circle but outward. As they danced, they rhythmically repeated the words: “It’s nothing, dear, it’s nothing. The enemies are in the sea and children at home”.