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.
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.
The three artists offer a musical and poetic presentation of the relationship between Kalomiris and Palamas, a rare phenomenon of osmosis between two leading exponents of the Greek letters.
In his autobiography, the great composer from Smyrna, Manolis Kalomiris, recalls his life against the backdrop of Asia Minor, and also how he had dreamt since childhood to become one day the shaper of Greece’s musical language – a “Palamas” of contemporary Greek music. This music-theatre rehearsed reading is based on Tina Malikouti’s idea to combine the composer’s piano works with K. Palamas’ poem “The Twelve Lays of the Gypsy”, which had left a defining mark on M. Kalomiris’ entire artistic career, capturing the nature of the modern Greek soul.
Smyrna, Constantinople, Vienna, Athens. Images from the life of a cosmopolitan Greece spread over the East and the West.
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.
Christos Stanisis’ shadow puppet theatre presents the performance Karagiozis and the Beasts of Climate Change for young and older audiences. The folk idol, the timeless hero next door, Karagiozis, is the most appropriate ambassador to present the catastrophic effects of climate change to the audience. Watching what’s going on around him, all those things that affect the environment, Karagiozis fears for the future and what is yet to come. With these thoughts in mind, enveloped by sleep’s wings, he “experiences” the nightmare of climate change. He fights against the elements of nature, the mutations taking hold in animal populations, and comes face to face with the horrific earthquake (Enceladus). The music parts are performed by a traditional instrument orchestra, while a group of traditional dancers performs during the change of sets or puppets.
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.
The cultural organisation Polygreen Culture & Art Initiative (PCAI) presents an original two-day long programme of visual arts events and performances in Delphi that has been inspired by Dimitris Pikionis’ environmental concerns, as expressed through his architectural and artistic oeuvre, as well as his essays, such as Gaias Atimosis (1954) and Emotional Topography (1935). The events will take place at the former Pikionis’ Pavilion, now known as “π”, in Delphi, the recently restored monument of modern architecture designed by the leading Greek architect and his son, Petros Pikionis, in the late 1950s.
The visual and performance art events commissioned from PCAI as part of the programme are new interpretations of the prominent creator’s prolific work, in which modernity and respect for nature often cross paths with folk tradition and Japanese architecture. Acclaimed visual artists, poets, soloists and performers take part in the programme, inspired by the history of the architectural monument – a landmark in the area – and the natural landscape of Delphi, with the goal of bringing out crucial environmental issues and raising philosophical and social considerations about environmental protection issues, art and architecture.
*The programme’s title is the English rendition of a haiku poem by Matsuo Bashō (1689), translated by academician and Japanese scholar Helen Craig McCullough (Classical Japanese Prose. An Anthology, 1990, p. 539).
In the new original work The Oracles of Water, director and choreographer Apostolia Papadamaki creates a modular, interactive and participatory site-specific performance connecting climate change and the global water crisis with the mythical background and worship of Apollo in Delphi. Through a trajectory of meanings, she aspires to put together scientific discoveries and findings, historical facts, mythical entities and high concepts, by associating studies on the effects of climate change in the wider area of Delphi and the consequences of human intervention in its water table with the global water crisis. The performance transcends traditional boundaries, using the power of art to attract audiences both spiritually and emotionally. It serves as a reminder of humanity’s responsibility to protect the planet’s most valuable resource and encourage collective action to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Every performance consists of two parts. The first part takes place between 6.30-7.30, at sunrise, at the Temple of Athena Pronaia and the second part between 20.00-21.10 at the archaeological site of Delphi. Attending both parts is mandatory.
The musical group In excelsis presents a finely-tuned performance called Εις την Πόλιν – Istanbul, exploring the multiple and diverse aspects of the musical, artistic, and spiritual landscape of “Ottoman” Constantinople. Through this landscape, painted with the colours of sounds, speech, and movement, the goal is to capture the atmosphere and ambiance of that era – sometimes dreamlike and spiritual, other times filled with conflict or sacredness, yet always colourful and diverse.
Hymns from the Byzantine music repertoire intersect with the sacred music of the Dervishes (specifically the Mevlevi order), alongside typical orchestral compositions reflecting the intellectual secularism that dominated the Sultan’s Palace and Constantinople for centuries following its Fall. At the same time, “military marches” blend with excerpts from folk lamentations about the Fall of Constantinople, complementing the most important musical compositions related to Constantinople during that time.