The performance The Roots of the Orange Tree is an artistic ritual that brings the female experience, as a carrier of memory, resilience, and creation, into the foreground. Traditional and electronic music, live performance, audiovisual media, and shadow puppet theatre intersect to recreate enduring women’s stories, forming a live audiovisual web where silence becomes significant and voice emerges through the body.
The female figure functions not only as a symbol but also as an active subject that reinvents tradition. Inspired by Chrysostomos Tsaprailis’ work Women Who Return and Fotis Varthis’ engravings, this performance transforms individual experiences into a collective narrative, reclaiming space for women in history and art – not as a shadowy memory but as a vibrant breath that propels the future forward, transforming silence into voice and experience into action.
Inspired by remarkable poems by great Greek creators that they have set to music, the legendary band Ypogeia Revmata (Underground Currents) will give a special concert, showcasing all these exceptional and original compositions, both old and new, specifically adapted for this “secret” event. This concert is intended to lay a foundation for discussing, inspiring, and developing the logical connection between our classical heritage and contemporary artistic expression. At the same time, visual artist Rena Papageorgiou exhibits her works, which depict portraits of renowned Greek male and female poets in her uniquely abstract yet utterly respectful and intriguing style. The performers, along with the set poems and visual portraits, view the past as a creative source of inspiration for this tribute to poetry and artistry, through an atmospheric concert that will offer audiences a unique experience.
Peramatisma is a cultural proposal inspired by the timeless ritual of weaving on a traditional loom, known as “peramatisma” – the process of interlacing threads according to each weft’s pattern and style through the loom’s instruments. As a concept, peramatisma becomes a tool for understanding the intertwining of the local with the global, tradition with innovation, time with space, and humanity with matter and technology. Presented on Mount Psiloritis, at the Idaean Cave—a place of special significance and strong symbolism in Crete—this work aims to blend cultural memory with contemporary creation, focusing on the role of the human creator. Through Peramatisma, the dynamic of weaving emerges as a gesture, a symbol, and a cultural code; as an intersection of traditional arts with new technologies and digital forms of expression; as an interlacing of different musical idioms that lead to a new listening experience.
Iconography 2.0 is a groundbreaking cultural project that aims to redefine the dialogue between traditional iconography methods, technological innovation, art, faith, and aesthetics.
The event culminates in an original visual art installation at the Holy Monastery of Our Lady of Akrotiriani and Saint John the Theologian in Toplou, Sitia, where light, image, and sound create a hybrid phygital setting that unfolds throughout the spaces of the Monastery and transforms the visitor’s experience into a multi-sensory journey between the past and present.
Byzantine music and the natural soundscapes of Crete engage in conversation with modern musical compositions and poetic texts, supporting the visual works that will be created as part of the three-day educational and artistic programme preceding the event. This polyphonic dialogue among sound, image, and speech allows for the co-existence of tradition and innovation, creating a new, vibrant space for cultural expression, where art becomes the language of faith, memory, aesthetics, and collectiveness.
* As part of the event’s agenda, workshops will be held in Crete (20-22/8), alongside tours, experiential research, and educational tourism (25-27/8).
The music theatre performance In-Between / Εν-Διαμέσως weaves Cretan music together with modern, diverse sounds and free dance. Primeval sounds of Crete are brought to life today, blending with sounds of contemporary Western European music and special effects soundscapes. Traditional musical instruments such as the souravli, mandoura, bagpipe, lyre, and lute are creatively combined with effects pedals and flutes, including the soprano, alto, Indian bansuri, and Chinese bawu. At the same time, in a space of free improvisation and experimentation, dance succeeds in harmonizing contrasts, bridging the past with the present.
This music and dance performance will highlight the coexistence of the old and the new, the traditional, the modern, and the groundbreaking. In an imposing space closely associated with our cultural heritage, the audience will engage with nature, history, tradition, and contemporary artistic creation.
“If only I could get out of this body and have a different one”.
The Reading of Transformations is a musical performance that explores the timelessness of destiny and its connection to both individual and collective choices. Through the stage narration of three myths by Ovid – Echo and Narcissus, Erysichthon, and Phaethon – in Theodoros Papangelis’ Greek translation, the eternal fluidity of earthly bodies comes to the foreground. An orchestral instrumental ensemble engages in dialogue with the narrators and a percussion ensemble, creating lively soundscapes and narrative timbres. Sometimes it accompanies storytelling, while at other times, it takes on a leading role, transforming sound into a carrier of action and meaning, thereby illuminating the dynamics of the collective body. Two vital questions emerge from this performance: Is destiny inevitable, or is it a result of our decisions? How do classical myths embody modern reality?
The common elements that will compose the core of the project is the relationship between disability and asylum, through their current dimensions, regarding the oppression experienced by refugees, the freedom of action given to them by societies, and their integration into the social web.
Taking into account social, economic, class, ethnic, psychological parameters and influences, we explore the spectrum and processes of integration and acceptance of these populations, through authentic narratives, and their role in the evolution of culture.
A redefinition of art, of the “different other”, of the refugee, of the disabled, of life itself, of the self, of emotions, of the relationship with one’s own body, mind and soul.
A performance that attempts to bring out the abrupt and violent process that turned Asia Minor refugees into infectious agents and a danger for the society. Asia Minor refugees were exiled, abandoned, or they died in quarantine hospitals that were set up in various regions of Greece.
The performance treats this historical phenomenon in a multifaceted way using contemporary scientific approaches: it explores – among other things – the power structures that cause it, its social and political considerations, and the concepts of morbidity/normality, “purge”, threshold, transition, and marginalisation as records of historical/social connotations…
The dramaturgical material is composed of real life testimonies and original fiction texts. The work is performed in an open space and at sea. It focuses on the body, its movement, the songs, sounds and voices of the actors, who blend with the audience from the beginning to create a community.
Supplicant and the ritual of Supplication (Hiketia) were unwritten laws of divine origin and their guardian was the king of 12 gods Zeus, the divine refugee who was rescued as an infant after his mother Rhea fled to the most sacred of Cretan caves, the Idaeon Andro.
In this emblematic place, in the heart of Psiloritis, through an artistic and scientific partnership, the timeless concept of Ikesia as a refugee and Plea is approached in the context of the 100th anniversary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. At an altitude of 1550 meters, a symbolic thematic cycle will be attempted from Smyrna waterfront to the foothills of Xenios Zeus, which will include two thematic contributions, a theatrical excerpt from Aeschylus’ tragedy Icetides and the musical-theatrical improvisation
Refugee (part of Metartum a Cultural – Augmented Reality Project). Finally, the event concludes with a musical performance by the band of the Cretan artist Vassilis Skoulas.
Philoxenia/Hospitality in ancient Greece was a sacred obligation and an unconditional right. Since then and until now, the phenomenon of forced mass displacement of populations is not unprecedented. However, in recent years the way we deal with this phenomenon is unprecedentedly harsh.
How things have changed over time in Greek society? What did the refugees experience on their way from Asia Minor to Greece and how did they cope? How were they received by the natives? How did the Greek government deal with them? And on the other hand, how are the refugees treated today by the Greek government and the Greek citizens?
A musical narrative theatrical performance inspired by the testimonies of refugees of then and now, in combination with ancient texts, literary texts, audio documents, physicality, poetry and live music.