Region: Central Macedonia

Mother Spider

The work Spider Mother is a visual, theatrical, and musical event, featuring twelve contemporary pieces of textile art selected and curated by distinguished art historian and curator Iris Kritikou.

These twelve wefts are crafted by the prominent textile artists Irini Gonou, Maria Grigoriou, Stathis Katsarelis, Eleni Krikki, Maria Kotsou, Anastasis Madamopoulos, Pandora Mouriki, Ioannis Papadopoulos, Ismini Samanidou, Hermione Syrogiannopoulou, Ioanna Terlidou, and Argyris Chatzimallis. Fixed on unevenly-sized frames, these pieces serve not only as representative samples of contemporary textile art, but also as a standalone, total work of art, which constitutes the performance’s setting.

The texts, selected and dramatized by Giorgos Giannarakos, who also directs the show, span the last three millennia and reference Greek textile art through epic poems, mythology, theatre, literature, legends, and poetry. The songs, including both adapted traditional tunes and modern creations, all tied together by the thematic “thread” of the performance, highlight the continuity of music and the importance of textile artistry across time.

Shattered Ground

Shattered Ground draws material and inspiration from the mythical figure of Persephone, reimagined to be reaching an uncertain present and heading towards a “shattered” future. Being a suspended soul in an Odyssean wander, she descends into the present moment tasked to rebuild it anew. Two selves, the light and the darkness, reflect Persephone’s division between the living realm and the underworld. A passing from one place and time to another that nurtures change and transformation.

Choreographer and Performer Athanasia Kanellopoulou choreographs a hybrid music performance in collaboration with Composer and Pianist Konstantina Polychronopoulou and Soprano Peny Deligianni. Three women compose a scenic universe where dance, live music, and various soundscapes, all converse on stage, floating between the mythical and the real, the earthy and the supernatural, and aspiring to – potentially – redefine the identity of modern humanity.

Mother Goose: A Modern Musical Fairytale

Mother Goose: A Modern Musical Fairytale is a musical performance by the Oros Ensemble based on an original text by Dimitra Kationi, featuring a score by Ismini Bek, and narrated by Maria Tsikara. It aims at creating a new form of musical fairy tale, drawing inspiration from Maurice Ravel’s classical work, Ma mère l’Oye (My Mother the Goose). By combining elements of tradition and Greek folk fairy tales, this performance aspires to revitalize the genre and place it in a contemporary context. The Oros Ensemble adapts Ravel’s original piece for a small ensemble, engaging in a dialogue with poetess Dimitra Kationi’s original musical fairy tale Without. The goal is to harmoniously blend the past, present, and future of fairy tales into a musical performance for all audiences.

Byzantium After Byzantium – The Byzantine Heritage in Contemporary Music and Literature

Byzantium After Byzantium explores the enduring influence of Byzantine tradition on the lives and cultural works of the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean peoples after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. It features original musical compositions and songs created by Kyriakos Kalaitzidis, the artistic director of the musical ensemble En Chordais, with lyrics by Vasiliki Nevrokopli and texts by notable Greek literary figures that highlight the impact of the Byzantine legacy on modern Greek intellectual creativity.

Kyriakos Kalaitzidis’ approach is the ripe fruit of his extensive experience with Byzantine music as a cantor, as well as his profound knowledge as a researcher, with a strong scientific background. His pieces have been presented at some of the world’s top music venues and released by record labels in Greece and abroad. Byzantium After Byzantium is a musical performance that creatively engages with the Byzantine past as both a historical heritage and a source of inspiration for contemporary art, offering an artistic answer to the question: “Why Byzantium?”.

How Many People Fit on My Balcony

Drawing inspiration from Sakis Serefas’ multi-awarded book A Dinosaur On My Balcony, the music and visual performance How Many People Fit on My Balcony invites children and teenagers on a dreamlike wandering adventure through Thessaloniki across space and time: As little Giannis, who has climbed onto the head of a rare friend, the dinosaur Saurus, wanders through the city, he discovers “how old, continuous, and diverse Thessaloniki’s history is and how the things one experiences as the present will become a valuable testimony for future generations”.

Live onstage music, presented as both an original composition and a creative reimagining of Thessaloniki’s diverse musical tradition, interacts with visual art (video) and storytelling, offering the audience the chance to gain an experiential insight into Thessaloniki as a vibrant blend of cultures and also realize the importance of preserving and respecting cultural polyphony in our daily lives.

*The performance will be preceded by a music and visual workshop for children aged 6 to 12.

The Dimension of Iphigenia

What happens when a theatrical Iphigenia engages in conversation with a poetic Iphigenia and an artificial one? A dialogue between Artificial Intelligence, timeless texts, and original music.

In the music theatre performance The Dimension of Iphigenia, the audience will be introduced to three different versions of the female character of Iphigenia. Each actress, through her own monologue, will shed light on a different aspect of the same figure, adding a new dimension to the development of the plot.

More specifically, Evangelia Keramari will portray Euripides’ Iphigenia, set against a backdrop of exile within a dystopian world. Ioanna Efthymiadiou will take us on a journey through Yiannis Ritsos’ Iphigenia. Markela Zerdali will perform as the Artificial Intelligence Iphigenia, rejecting the realm of emotions in favour of logic. Composer Angeliki Zoe will offer her own musical dimension to the show, with original music that highlights the inner worlds of the three performers.

Axion Esti

Axion Esti (1960) – based on the poetic composition of the same name by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Odysseus Elytis – is presented through the timbral palette of 6 pianos and the sonic homogeneity of the interpretation of 12 pianists from the Piandaemonium Ensemble on 30 and 31 July 2025 at the Hellenistic Theatre of Dion.

The iconic work, set to music by Mikis Theodorakis, constitutes a hybrid sound, combining a symphony orchestra and choir on the one hand, with a cantor and narrator on the other, at a crossroads where spoken music meets tradition. The deep discussion of the expressive loads of heterogeneous musical traditions is carried out on the canvas of Elytis’ high poetry, aiming to express a modern and multidimensional Greekness, and aspiring to communicate its collective message directly to a large audience. This distinctive sound acquires new life through the original conception and performance of the unique Piandaemonium Ensemble, which, with its twenty-five years of experience, attempts a modern sonic reapproach to a work that still carries the symbols of a culture that is constantly renewed.

[ voskόs ]

A woman who is being pursued arrives in a small village. The Priest, the Mad Man, Sifis, the Teacher, and the Gossiper appear terrified, through their cries and deafening whispers, before the “public danger” posed by the stranger. Years pass. A young shepherd learns to walk a tightrope. The village is afraid. The blessing of being able to strike a balance on a stretched rope, high above cliffs and against raging winds, seems a sin to those who are easily pushed around, stumbling breathless on the ground. The ability to gaze like a vampire, both here and there, at the living and the dead, at strangers and your own people, at the just and the unjust, comes at a price: exile.

What perceptions of justice arise from folk tradition, and how have they endured to this day? What shame does the unknown bear? What is just, what is unjust, and what lies between them? Is the desire for justice linked to humanity’s eternal longing for happiness? This performance features a musical dialogue among words, verses, traditions, and fairy tales from this land and its history.

Catch (19)22

Catch-22 – the title of Joseph Heller’s novel – means “vicious circle” and has become established as an expression denoting the irrational of human existence, the irrational of war, where success and disaster are inextricably linked.

For what else is war but one more Sisyphus rolling his rock up the mountain and then repeating the process all over again? Catch (19)22 explores the Asia Minor Catastrophe, through the irrationality of war and dares to contrast it with the peak and decline of the Macedonian civilization. There, over the tombs of the great kings, where grandeur and death are the two sides of the same coin.

The site-specific performance Catch (19)22 unfolds in the archaeological site of the Royal Burial Clusters of Aigai, based on a collection of oral and written testimonies about life in Asia Minor and with the artistic contribution of students of the 1st Junior High School of Veria.

The Town Aloft

A land of rebirth, a place of co-formation, an old café with contemporary music. Spectators, habitués, refugees, residents, leaving back their memories, keeping personal narratives as a legacy.
The performance crosses the historical paths with theatrical tools, but also with the use of our mobile phones, our smartphones, our modern technological need, which can finally allow us to create our own personal narrative with new media, to find our place in this world.
The story can be shaped, if we are a part of history.