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 modern dance performance ACROSS TIME by Die Wolke Art Group explores the concept of conflict. Its building blocks are references to familiar images, texts, and sounds spanning from ancient to contemporary times, resonating with the audience.
The piece follows an original script, created by combining new texts with textual and directorial excerpts from works such as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Euripides’ The Bacchae, and many other references across different time periods. Moreover, snapshots from cinema, music, painting, and mythology inspire the direction and choreography of the piece, adding an element that is equivalent to intertextuality in the performance art.
ACROSS TIME includes original music, a tetraphonic surround sound design, and surtitles with the Greek translation of the texts.
The new theatre performance One thousand reasons to argue by the Tik Tak Do theatre company invites us to embark on an imaginary journey of exploring and recognizing emotions.
Markos, a young man, is constantly angry, finding a thousand reasons to get into fights. He faces everything happening around him with anger. He always keeps a shield and a wooden sword close to him. When he loses these objects, he will be forced to order new ones… “Mr Markos, Sword & Shield company thanks you very much for your order. With this letter we announce that starting this year, there have been changes in the process of delivering swords and shields. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience. In the map enclosed in the box, you will find four marked points corresponding to four castles. These castles need to provide their seal for your order to be dispatched. Please, do not overlook any of the instructions. Best regards, Sword & Shield AMC (Anonymous Monopoly Company)”.
Conflict is the situation where individuals or groups involved have differences with each other. These differences may be real or symbolic, and they could manifest as cultural or societal norms, goals and expectations, values, areas of interest, beliefs, perspectives, views, and interests. Disability and the disabled body are in themselves foreign, unknown, and therefore conflictual. And here is exactly where the conflict arises. The unknown causes fear, threatens the cohesion of identity, and creates disruptions in the prevailing normative setting. It seems that over its twenty-year course (on its 20th anniversary that will be celebrated this year), DAGIPOLI DANCE Co., has created a disruption, which is the precondition for a necessary change to come. Conflict is the starting point and the means, through which others can change, toxic and stagnant relationships can come to an end, and new, vibrant, groundbreaking, and inclusive interactions can be established.
The Wondrous Story of Hor-Hor Agha is a shadow puppet music theatre performance inspired by the 1875 operetta Leblebici hor-hor agha (The Chickpea Seller). It features original music for two singers and musicians from the Oros Ensemble, along with a new reading of the work, focusing on the tensions between the present and a past that is forever gone.
Searching for his daughter in the streets of a big city, the central hero clashes with a strange and at first hostile world, while his journey leads him to a path of transformation. Expanding its technical boundaries, the shadow puppet theatre form (featuring Eirini Mastora) transforms into the stage setting of a contemporary fairy tale. The music creates the background of sounds where the characters develop, while the text establishes a new story by combining folk and art traditions, oral and written language.
Three vocal ensembles, Isokratisses from Greece, Lot Kurbeti from Albania, and Abagar Quartet from Bulgaria, invited by WOMO and the female vocal ensemble CHÓRES, leave their mark on the musical performance BALKANIA, unfolding their expressiveness and aesthetics through their local musical traditions.
The repertoire selection aims to highlight the intersections and differences among them, creating a diverse canvas of Balkan colours and polyphonic styles. The elements of conflict include highlighting and distinguishing each national identity through language, the differences in musical structure, instruments, and details in musical execution, as well as in aesthetics.
The unique characteristics and influences of each of the musical traditions featured in the concert reflect the historical background and the challenging experiences deeply rooted in the collective memory of the nations mentioned above, during the 20th century. They also mirror the political will that shaped both the form and impact of these traditions on a global scale. Within a context of cultural exchange, the concert gives space to the differences that bring out the musical diversity, distinctiveness, and individuality of each region.
An Iphigenia, a Pylades, an Orestes, and some Anton Chekhov cross paths in an atemporal setting. They will carve out concentric circles in an everlasting clash with themselves and the others. All of them are descendants of the historical figures whose names they share. Their name is their heritage… An unbearable burden on their shoulders… How can they shake off all the heavy loads that history has placed on them? People change over the years, they become unrecognizable to their own selves, and they clash with anything that they instinctively recognize as a carrier of this amnesia…. To change everything… To become who you long to be… To declare your own identity… And then what? How can the sound of your breath fit inside the bustle of a war?
The story unfolds in a troubled period, somewhere around Crimea, near the Azov sea, in the suffering city of Mariupol, at a port called Taganrog (known as Taiganio by the Greeks who lived there), the birthplace of the renowned Russian writer Anton Chekhov. The war is raging, filling people’s souls with terror. It is the circle with the longest diameter in a system of concentric circles of conflicts.
The production Lucky Luke Is Afraid, written and directed by Taxiarchis Deligiannis and Vasilis Tsiouvaras, uses the form of musical to enhance the hero’s inner struggle with color and poetic immediacy.
The storyline is as follows: Andreas (19 years old) and Antigone (17 years old) are in an online relationship using the nicknames Lucky and Betty, without ever exchanging their real names or photographs. Andreas is experiencing a strong internal conflict between his true, sensitive self, whom he only presents online, and his image of a restless, tough boy, which he only shows to the outside world. His love for Antigone gradually frees him from his fears and gambling addiction, enabling him to reveal his true self. Like Alcestis in the ancient myth, Andreas “returns” to the outside world, leaving the virtual world to which he had surrendered himself until then, behind.
The exhibition explores the concept of conflict through water’s transformative power. Highlighting the dynamics of its unifying function, it connects two cities, Thessaloniki and Rome, while inviting visitors to an experience that includes all senses.
The River, a grand-scale mosaic by Christina Nakou, is presented within a soundscape. The installation draws inspiration from the Roman mosaic floors in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. Through this traditional art form, it attempts to demonstrate handcrafting as an experience of lived-out time, sound as the vibrant imprint of the process, as well as the importance of touch in our connection with the natural world and other people.
The exhibition opens with two performances by Anna Pangalou, titled Voicing Water, which explore the mythology of water, giving voice to the present moment. The mythological narratives about fountains are connected to hydraulic technology, its role in creating musical instruments, and the natural flow of water.