The Thessaloniki Chamber Orchestra presents Antonio Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons, a timeless masterpiece praising the alternations of nature and circularity of time, in a concert that combines music with dancing. The goal is to reconnect audiences with the different sensation that each season of the year should have, through the filter of Vivaldi’s widely-known and emblematic music work.
This production has brought together twelve leading professional orchestra musicians and four music and dance soloists. The work includes what is known as “descriptive” or “program” music. In each concerto, the groundbreaking composer describes one season. The production combines two art forms, music and dance, with the goal of raising awareness on the destruction of the environment that results in the disruption of the natural balance between the four season. Audience members as observers listen to sounds of nature, such as birds chirping or the sound of a storm, and are able to visualize this sensation by watching its artistic manifestation through modern dance.
The Alcedo folk band, a company of acclaimed musicians founded in 2018 by Kostas Konstantatos (founding member of Encardia), presents an original audiovisual musical performance titled The Curse of the Pine Tree, based on Zacharias Papantoniou’s poem of the same title. It is a musical fairy tale that converses with inspired images and videos that will be accompanying the band’s original music and songs. Folk and sophisticated music with stories about nature and the environment from the Renaissance and the Middle Ages in the East and West to the technological world of today. The Alcedo folk band often appears unexpectedly in the videos too. The performance consists of twenty one images, just like Zacharias Papantoniou’s poem.
Giannis is a farmer working his land. He has identified his life with the life of a pine tree, planted there by his grandfather, and has been enjoying its rich gifts for years. However, at some point, he starts cutting the tree for its resin and then completely truncates it and sells the logs. After that, the tree takes revenge on him through its secret power…
Rare military camp exhibits are presented in the historical site of Kodra, in Kalamaria, Thessaloniki. With the help of an experienced guide, audiences will be guided through the different “room cemeteries”. Audience members will be requested to remain silent – the rooms reveal their secrets and desires only upon the condition of absolute silence.
The tour will be followed by the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is the moment when the “Unknown” Soldier will confess the unexpected end of his path to the unknown visitors. Next comes a short stop in front of Johann Sebastian Bach. The only exhibit in the camp that is allowed to talk to birds and barbed wire fences. The end of the trail signals the beginning of a new one. Our hope and wish is that art can cast away the negative energy of what’s dead and peacefully warm up human togetherness in those old military camps in the city that have been patiently waiting for it for years. The former military camps profess resurrection in the everyday eulogy of our cities.
Based on William Shakespeare’s poem of the same title, the performance The Rape of Lucretia(Lucrece) refers to the sufferings of the planet. Noble Lucretia is raped by the
ruler’s son. To save her honour, she invites her friends and relatives and tells them what has happened. Then she kills herself in front of them. Lucretia’s dead body is exposed to public view, the people of Rome revolts, the ruler is chased away and monarchy becomes replaced by democracy. Lucretia in the performance symbolizes the Earth that is constantly being raped by those holding the power and money. The musical and visual setting accompanying the poetic speech underlines the need to find a way to co-exist on the planet through the prism of responsibility, respect and awareness of the consequences of our actions.
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.
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 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.