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Region: Central Greece

Father & Son A Dialogue Through Jazz – The Weight of Legacy

In the musical performance titled Father & Son: A Dialogue Through Jazz – The Weight of Legacy, internationally acclaimed saxophonist and composer Dimitris Vassilakis, along with Nestor Vassilakis, a representative of the new generation of musicians, converse through music, exploring the relationship between tradition and innovation. The concert programme features a selection of jazz standards and original compositions from both father and son, engaging in a constant poetic dialogue that also allows for the use of artificial intelligence as a real-time oracle to bridge the generations.

Τselementés

“Tselementés,” the Greek synonym for cookbook, grandma’s old and cherished item, represents an heirloom of significant sentimental value. Browsing through it, we begin to feel a sense of nostalgia. However, as we delve deeper into its pages, what starts to emerge before us is the repression of a perhaps not-so-distant time.

The performance, inspired by the introductory texts of Nikolaos Tselementés’ Cookbook, the most iconic manual of Greek cuisine, serves as an invitation to reflect on gender roles and societal expectations.

Four performers, “good housewives,” use the Tselementés as a storytelling tool, taking turns in the roles of narrator, commentator, and acting subject while calling upon us to engage with the past and contemplate women’s position across time. Through flavours, smells, humour, and satire, we follow the story of an entire generation, along with the thread that connects it to our own.

*The performance is accompanied by Sandra Domvrou’s visual exhibition titled “Good Housewife.”

Konstantinos Vita: Space and Memory

PCAI presents its new exhibition by acclaimed artist, musician and composer Konstantinos Vita titled Space and Memory, curated by Kika Kyriakakou, PCAI artistic director. The exhibition and accompanying live performance respond to the central thematic axis of the Ministry of Culture 2025 programmeAll of Greece, One Culture: The Reception of the Past – Today Viewed as Tomorrow and Yesterday (Andreas Empirikos).

This original programme aims to occupy musically and visually the historic Pikionis Pavilion—now known as “pi”—and to engage with the important architectural heritage of the monument, the historical weight of the Delphi region, and the surrounding natural and energetic landscape.

The title of the project is inspired by the first poetry anthology of major post-war poet Nikos-Alexis Aslanoglou (Difficult Death, 1954). Vita’s prolific work over the years spans musical composition, lyric writing, poetry, drawing, and painting. This exhibition of Vita and PCAI is triggered by Empiriko’s quote and enters into dialogue with Aslanoglou’s poetry, exploring artistic connections to the past, memory and the present. In this context Konstantinos creates a series of new paintings (oil, pencil and acrylic) accompanied by a live music performance. These works are in tune with the unique natural and energetic landscape of Delphi and the architectural character of the Pavilion, inviting visitors to experience and interpret them during the event.

Konstantinos Vita states: “Memory in the poetry of Nikos-Alexis Aslanoglou is not only individual, it is collective, historical and deeply Greek. Through his writing and personal experiences, the wounds and transformations of postwar Greece emerge. Aslanoglou’s Greece is a country of memory—marked by existential anguish and reflection. While reading his poems, I felt the need to create certain images. His poetic voice becomes a space of nostalgia, loss, and awareness, reflecting the soul of contemporary Greece”.

Kika Kyriakakou, artistic director of PCAI notes that: “The visual language of Konstantinos Vita is a marvelous expression of his multi-dimensional talent. As part of the exhibition and the music that accompanies it, his work harmoniously converses with Aslanoglou’s poetry and the Delphic landscape, offering us a return to the poetic self”.

Athanasios Polychronopoulos, Polygreen CEO and PCAI Founder, states: “It is a great pleasure to collaborate with the Ministry of Culture’s programme “All of Greece, One Culture” and with the prominent and highly respected artist and musician Konstantinos Vita”.

Playing in the Neighbourhoods of Asia Minor

An experiential event for children, with elements of dramatised documentary and narrative performance and with original music, revolving around the games in the neighbourhoods of Asia Minor, which “tell” in their own way the everyday life of the communities prior to the 1922 Catastrophe. Games that seem forgotten, played without ever being told, left to perish along with the hope for the return to the motherland.

The thread of collective memory unfolds through a story that travels in time, through playing with children games that were passed down by those who saw pain in refugee yards, along with the smile of a carefree childhood.

Stories of integration and rebirth in a new land as well as ways used to express resourcefulness, the grace and imagination of a people, will be presented with the help of contemporary audiovisual means and restored old toys.

From Asia Minor to Northern Evia

Seventeen refugee settlements were integrated into Northern Evia. Four out of these transformed into separate refugee villages that took their names from respective regions of Asia Minor: Neos Pirgos, Neo Mousarli, Nea Egin, Nea Sinasos.

Refugees from Prokopi of Cappadocia, Makri and Livisi, Marmara, the region of Smyrna, Ardassa in Pontus, Michaniona in the area of Kyzikos in Propontis, and Yosgati in the far reaches of Asia Minor, settled in Northern Evia, bringing along their traditions and know-how, and breathing new life into the place.

A performance combining the screening of stories of present-day descendants of refugees and archival photographs with the live presentation of original compositions based on the rhythms and melodies of Asia Minor, attempts to capture the contribution of refugees to the shaping of this place’s new identity, taking the audience on a journey across a past yet recent space-time continuum.

PARALLEL TEXTS or THE VISITORS

What a sweet summer evening… Everything you need for a soirée, a reception, a garden party at least. This is how paradise must be like, don’t you agree? A place of recreation perhaps. A heavenly city. And then nothing.

At the Eretria Museum refreshment room, four visitors drink soft drinks, eat chips, and through the museum’s audio tour of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, they become connected to history, memory, the meaning of the city, cosmopolitanism, extermination and destruction. As time goes by, the questions from the loudspeaker, the songs and the dances alternate with the historical information, the meaning of Hellenism, History, the mythical cities, the conditions that changed the world, the literary narratives and the image of Smyrna.

Finally, what should one remember from the world memory? And what should one erase?

HECUBA STRINGS / Bygone Troys

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.

Asia Minor: Everything Here Exists to Bring Memories

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.

Of the HEART and of the MIND

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

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.

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