The music theatre performance In the Labyrinth: Accounts and Poems by Incarcerated Women brings to life poems, thoughts, and accounts of women who have been imprisoned, as well as those who have been released from prison.
The emotional fluctuations, internal conflicts, and mental struggle of these women are brought to the foreground through the performance of traditional songs from various parts of Greece and Southern Italy. Seven female artists – five musicians, an actress, and a dancer –join forces on stage to create a poetic, musical, and visual representation of the Labyrinth.
A contemporary ritual that blends storytelling with live music and dance, creating a performance that is both dynamic and ardent, while also embracing a more traditional (“doric”) approach to presenting various stage expressions, with the goal of vividly portraying on stage the Labyrinth found within the minds and souls of incarcerated women. A hymn to every individual’s personal journey towards the much-desired freedom.
We are the first to be part of a “co-habitation” arrangement between humans and machines. Experimentation no longer focuses on the dialogue but on the new content itself, along with the urgent, burning question: “We instead of Them or They instead of Us? Are we with Them? We as Them or They as Us”. The confrontation takes place at the only spot allowing room for a pause, in the uncharted space where artificial intelligence meets emotional intelligence.
Artificial Confidence is a musical techno-noir piece. The allegory running through it like a beam of light, and the ritual of an anthropo-mechanic event combine elements of music theatre with the norms of spoken word theatre. The libretto and stage direction emphasize the ambiguity of each Test without concrete data, while the musical composition constantly comments on the mechanics of modern mediation, where no one knows whom or what they are called upon to mimic – do creations mimic their creators or vice versa?
The international performer Erini presents the music and dance performance “Malés,” in which the thematic axis of “conflict” is drawn from the Cretan “mantinada”. In the Cretan dialect, “Malés” means quarrel/fight, and in this particular performance, it challenges the audience to view conflict not only as a destructive force but also as a source of creation and inspiration that emerges from cultural osmosis. Erini collaborates with Manolis Manousakis (music director) and Aristoula Toli (dance director) and interprets traditional Cretan songs in interesting orchestrations of an ever-evolving tradition. At the same time, the performance highlights the interconnected relationship between music, song, and dance, the threefold event, a dynamic phenomenon with performative power that constitutes an integral part of the artistic and cultural expression of the local Cretan culture, while emphasis is given to the content and meanings of the words. The conflict and its various aspects are depicted, visualized, and questioned through the “female gaze” in Cretan music.
Season is a participatory music theatre performance with an original dramaturgy focusing on the conflict between employers and employees in the food services sector.
During a gala in the courtyard of an archaeological museum, an unexpected fight between the owner and the catering employees will break out behind the scenes. The conflict will soon be transferred to the event venue, and the stage will transform into a political forum about tourism and seasonal work.
A frenzied performance aiming to shatter the facade of tourism, the promotion of a polished image, and the harmony of the music, in order to shed light on the underlying internal conflicts. A tribute to the hardworking individuals, those who pay and are paid for under the Greek Sun. Based on interviews, the performance transitions to pure fiction before returning to an artistic interpretation of reality.
The musical performance Nephelococcygiae and Chirping by Michalis and Pantelis Kalogerakis and Tonia Tzirita Zacharatou explores the relationship between humans and birds. In this stage production, poetic language that has been set to music intertwines with fragments of scientific facts, ornithological findings, and stories about birds.
Original musical compositions inspired by poems penned by Miltos Sachtouris, Napoleon Lapathiotis, Jacques Prévert and others, are presented live by a group of musicians and two performers, as they struggle to investigate the possibility of coexistence between humans and birds in a present that is marked by continuous conflicts. What does survive today from the utopian city of Aristophanes’ Nephelococcygia? What stories are hidden behind seabirds flying to the land in search of food, migratory birds colliding with airplanes, or pigeons in city centers? What songs lie within their flying lives?
The new piece by Yannis Belonis Journey Across the Balkans for Symphony Orchestra, Mixed Choir, and Narrator focuses on the conflict that influenced the cultural dynamics among the Balkan peoples: while chauvinism of nation-states “enforced” the enhancement of national identities, the frequent mixing of populations along with numerous, consecutive border shifts often led to a fusion of traditions and deep intercultural interactions. Therefore, musical cultures that developed in Southeastern Europe, with their distinct differences and similarities, have created a particularly interesting and colourful musical mosaic that keeps evolving through modern sounds, illuminating the complex and often unexplored aspects of the cultural fermentations that have occurred within the Balkan peninsula throughout the centuries.
The music of all the Balkan peoples was processed uniformly to create a performance involving a symphony orchestra, mixed choir, and a narrator. The latter, through the reading of Harris Sarris’ well-documented texts, will shed light on the conflicting and interconnected cultural identities of the people in the region. The performance’s musical journey begins in Greece and returns to its starting point, after traveling through all the states of the Balkan Peninsula – Bulgaria, Turkey, Albania, Serbia, North Macedonia, Romania, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The musical piece SOMNIA PACIS: Dreaming Of Peace is a collective platform, where music and speech come together to expressively interact. Starting from war conflict and moving towards its gradual impact on individuals, communities, and eventually the world, the piece is an artistic search for peaceful coexistence. It combines both classical and traditional timbres, sometimes using complex and other times simple expressive forms. The narration sometimes complements and other times enhances the themes evoked by the music, maintaining a balance between the horror of war and the dream of peace. The collective vocal and rhythmic interplay with the percussion, accompanied by the narration, and complemented by the orchestral ensemble, which both follows the score and improvises, creates a cross-artistic tapestry. This tapestry not only aims to evoke emotions but also to stimulate the audience’s senses, and provoke them by introducing them to an unprecedented musical experience.
Two leading pieces from the literary heritage. Two iconic female characters from Greek literature, Georgios Chortatzis’ Erophile and Kostis Palamas’ Trisevegni, come together on stage.
Trisevgeni is “a person who doesn’t reflect and can’t be subdued, a person of her own mind, and a daredevil”. She doesn’t fit in with the suffocating social environment around her. She is a creature stubbornly defending her own nature – which means, a tragic heroine. Erophile watches her as she tells her story and tenderly accompanies her. She comments, interprets, and feels for her. She is the fairy of the cistern, her dead mother. Until her singing becomes one and the same as Trisevgeni’s, as she says: “My own song always, which is sung by my whole life. To my own tune”. A story tightly interwoven with a singing tune.
The multi-level musical performance The Language of Sea Shells, featuring Thodoris Voutsikakis, a prominent singer from the younger generation, and Marina Kalogirou reciting, presents the musical idioms of Mediterranean cultures along with excerpts from their written works, evoking emotions. Alongside them performing will be the Municipality of Patras Plucked Strings Orchestra “Thanasis Tsipinakis”, conducted by Anastasios Symeonidis.
The performance focuses on the contemporary Mediterranean Individual, who longs to move beyond historical divisions and find the shared inner ground that unites them with their neighbouring peoples, providing them with a strong sense of hope for the future. Morocco, Egypt, Spain, Tunisia, France, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Greece, Algeria, Turkey… The Mediterranean, this known yet unknown region, a palimpsest, a mosaic of people, cultures, religions, languages, customs, habits…The sea that gave birth to civilizations, embraced differences, the sea with the many faces that both connected and separated lives, has always been a cornerstone for its inhabitants, their struggles and dreams, as well as a source of inspiration and tranquility.
In the end, does the Mediterranean serve as a line that divides or unites the countries watered by it and their peoples? And what would happen if this sea didn’t exist – would these nations remain separate or would they potentially never come together? The people have often managed to heal their wounds and bridge the gaps dividing them through common ground or simply by accepting the cultural elements of those “opposite” them.
Three mahallahs (Turkish word for districts) are situated in the three corners of a village, each one far from the others. Each one has their own square, stores, tombs, and festivals. And each of them naturally believes their own are the best, ensuring that the rest of the world is aware of this… In a dystopian village, a female singer accompanied by video projections and otherworldly or completely tangible sounds, is called to explore three communities, inside a mosque. Songs and images come together to clash, fight, and leave their pieces behind. The singer collects all that is left to create a new, harmonized, modern space, that nobody knows whether it will stand the test of time or not. In the end, are these mahallahs as different as they thought they were?