A music and dance performance in collaboration with the Athos Danellis Shadow Puppet Theatre and Kyriakos Gouventas’ musical company, which will attempt to showcase the musical and dance tradition of Asia Minor through a journey across the time before its destruction, the subsequent uprooting of its inhabitants, and the transformation of their tradition in the new setting of Greece of the time.
Asia Minor has always been a crossroads of nations and cultures, a melting pot of musical traditions of the West and the East.
The folk songs and tunes still surviving to a great extent to this day are known to be an age-old legacy coming to us from a region that is at once so close, yet so far from us: Asia Minor.
After the Smyrna Catastrophe, around 12.000 refugees from Ionia, Thrace and Pontus arrived at the city of Volos. In 1923 the creation of a refugee settlement began, which was later called Nea Ionia (New Ionia) and evolved into a small community. Most of the refugees were working in tobacco factories, while they soon began establishing football clubs. One of them was Niki Sports Club, whose story begins in 1924.
Part a: Dressing-Room
In the in-between space of the team’s dressing-room, we follow the journey of the refugees and their arrival at Volos, their integration into the society and the creation of Niki Sports Club.
Through the use of complicated technological media, multiple sound sources, contemporary electronic music inspired by traditional Smyrna songs, speech and movement, we follow the journey through the sea until the first couple of years in the new land.
Part b: The Match
In the football field now, the struggle for survival, the competition with the native people, the promotion to the premier league and the integration into the new environment, is depicted through a choreographed football match along with usage of multiple cameras and site-specific projections as the court fills with fans, that is, the descendants that interact with the stage action.
On the occasion of the centenary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, this concert will be based on two emblematic works of Apostolos Kaldaras released in 1972-73, “Byzantine Vesper” and “Asia Minor”.
Apart from Apostolos Kaldaras’ songs, the concert will also feature covers of emblematic songs from the countries of origins of present-day refugees. The set surrounding the orchestra consists of five large paintings by Kostas Kaldaras inspired by the 2015 refugee crisis, while it will also include screenings of historical documentary material and photographs having as their theme refugees over time – a selection made in collaboration with the Photographers of Trikala Team.
Andreas Karakottas and Ioanna Giannopoulou sing accompanied by a seven-member orchestra. Arrangements are by Sakis Kontonikolas.
The performance is set against the backdrop of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Choristers, as passengers of a boat sailing in the Eastern Aegean Sea and heading to the Greek coasts, narrate – each one in their own musical language – memories of their past and homelands.
Rich and poor, old and young, daughters and mothers, some from Constantinople and Smyrna, others from Cappadocia, Pontus and the coast, one by one they all share known and unknown aspects of the everyday life they’re leaving behind.
In an abstractly natural space and using bodies and voices as a vehicle, the boat turns into an “arc” saving diverse musical references associated with a powerful common experience: the painful migration, the uprooting, the journey in search of a better life. The anticipation for the new land, the new motherland, a second chance at life.
The production approaches the Asia Minor Catastrophe through poems written by poets from Asia Minor, whose verses are marked by a strong lamenting mood, proportional to the tragic nature of the 1922 events.
The collective trauma of the loss of “Paradise” echoes across the poems of the refugee-poets, becoming a link to respective contemporary situations and also to the lamentation over the loss of people, places, hearths, relationships and freedoms in a wider sense. The performance aims at creating a safe context for a different lamenting ceremony but also an open space for reflection on the questions of loss and refugeeism.
Focusing less on the detailed narration of the events revolving around the Asia Minor Catastrophe and more on their emotional perception and symbolic representation, Stage 22 presents a grief-lifting ceremonial event that praises peace and life.
In its new production summertime, the bijoux de kant company uses poetic speech to talk about the issue of climate change and all those things that the senses of the body have long perceived while the mind has yet to fully grasp.
A young tourist guide. A radio producer at a provincial radio station. A strange encounter at the mercy of an unending, unyielding summer at the ruins of an archaeological site underneath a vicious sun. He’s waiting for winter to come to cool off. She anticipates November so as to live the love of her life under the rain. For as long as autumn becomes but a story and summer heats up, the return of the old succession of seasons, as we knew it, becomes the new utopia. A futile expectation. Lost in their conversations, Tereza and Chronis suspect that their need for coolness and rain will probably not be met and start taking their first timid steps towards awareness.
Natalia Kotsani and Tasos Kofodimos, two of the most active and acclaimed performers and creators of the modern Greek music scene, join their forces once again by setting and performing Bergadis’ poem Apokopos, in an original musical production. With their compositions, voices and musical instruments as a vehicle, they present a pioneering setting that is inextricably linked with the roots of the Greek musical tradition and elements from traditional idioms of the Mediterranean. They propose a modern performative approach of the vocal idioms of the Greek tradition, through original and special orchestrations. Visual artist Natalia Manta illustrates the narration in real time through live visuals that are screened on the stage. Alongside them, three acclaimed musicians and collaborators, at times experimenting and at times improvising, enhance this synergy with their own temperament and artistry.
Little Heroes in Crisis is a production based on an original text that tells of the adventures of two siblings who, in their effort to save their city’s river from destruction, come across creatures they never expected to find. A work exploring how society often assigns a “disadvantage” to a person that may actually prove out to be a blessing in disguise, and in this case, the comparative advantage of a child who will save the world.
Little Heroes in Crisis is an educational prοject built on two main thematical axes: the way a child can emotionally handle the climate crisis and the way a child can get acquainted with the rules of eco-theatre – a major trend in theatre that has unofficially started in the 1970s but has only gathered active participants creating companies in Europe and worldwide over the last decades. The show is directed by the children themselves, during the educational programme, confirming thus its key objectives.
The IONIA Orchestra and Chorus of Nea Ionia, Volos present the music theatre performance The Curtain of the Earth, based on original texts by Regina Kapetanaki, co-creator of the legendary children’s radio show Edo Lilipoupoli. It is an original performance combining Karagiozis, shadow puppet theatre and traditional music with the modern visual technology of videos and 3D projections, while commenting in a contemporary manner on Nature and climate change. Takis Vamvakidis in the role of Karagiozis will be narrating and commenting while transforming himself into different characters – from a shadow puppet to an actor on a real stage and then to a digital animator on a video wall – holding the audience’s attention. Greek songs, which are a vital part of the show, will be performed by the IONIA Orchestra and Chorus and acclaimed singer Thodoris Kotonias.
In Larissa, at an ancient theatre among modern blocks of flats, in a place where the past and the present have to co-exist, a new life will be born. Starting with music, dancing and Seferis’ poetry, a celebration will be held. Through repetitive dance motifs, drawing inspiration from pop culture, Greek tradition and Walt Disney’s cartoons, a rebirth ceremony will be held in a place where time is reset to zero. Five persons will meet. They will wait. A sixth person will come and they will welcome him. They will bid him farewell and resurrect him. They will dance with him in the dark. Nature will die and will be born again. Man will die and will be born again. Again, in the dark. Music. A New Life. – Antonis Antonopoulos