Five women represent a perfect image of different characters and recognizable situations. You think you recognize these women, but in the pursuit of absolute perfection of their own ideals, they get entangled in a distorted reality. These individual, powerful dancers are challenged to explore the boundaries of their own physicality, of the formal ideal of visual feasibility in different scenes. An aesthetic world soon makes way for an absurd and disillusioned tableau of battle, pain and conflict. [N]EMO BODY invites us to reconsider our everyday perception and unravel the truth within.

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The central point of attention in the practice of choreographer Joost Vrouenraets is that of the virtuosic moving human body. Serendipity, the ability to make fortunate discoveries accidental, plays an immense role in his work and transpires seamlessly into his conceptualization of questions and research. Dance for him is a spiritual vision transformed into a physical from. What is seen, is the unconditioned nature of reality. The perfectly pure essence. He has always been searching for the expressive body on stage; the body that reflects emotions, the body that can be seen as a ‘normal’ human being. As a performer himself and seeing his work being performed by others, he discovered that the attempt of a neutral mind set creates a generator for maximum expression.

 

However, his work is not purely conceptual as he consciously welcomes the wistful feeling of a transient beauty. When he succeeds in approaching art, science and aesthetics with open-mindedness and inquisitiveness, he feels that he increases his expression, giving space to the audience for understanding and meaning.

 

GOTRA

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GOTRA is an international dance company in the evolving art form of modern dance. GOTRA's creativity crosses artistic boundaries and embraces every artistic genre. Ιts work ranges from new theatrical programmes and commissioned art to innovative engagement opportunities for all types of audiences. The name GOTRA means Clan in Sanskrit.  It is believed that the members of a particular GOTRA possess a common essence, the unconditioned nature of all reality and a shared spiritual vision.

 

Choreography and concept Joost Vrouenraets

Dramaturgy: Anne-Marije van de Bersselaar

Dancers: Maïté Guérin, Francesca Imoda, Roshanak Morrowatian, Marika Meoli and Marcia Liu.

Understudy: Asuka J. Riedl, Francesca Piergiacomo

Music: Loran Delforge

Costume Design: Verena Klein

Light and scenography: Joost Vrouenraets en Marc Claessens

Graphic design: Ivo Straetmans

Photography: David Peskens

 

Performance duration: 1 hour and 17 minutes and no interval.

Meeting you was fate is an intimate journey, an exploration of the loving connection between two beings: a work about the present, the lasting and the change of feelings created by their own volatility.

 

The couple stage in its simplicity showcases the connection between a man and a woman, the spark of their meeting, the overflowed thoughts and time in motion that reshapes their destiny every moment. In this show, created by and for Marie-Claude Pietragalla and Julien Derouault, the choreographers deal with the memory that dissolves, leaving space for the memory of the soul.

 

Dance group: Théâtre du Corps Pietragalla-Derouault

Performance title: Je t'ai rencontré par hazard / Meeting you was Fate

Duration of the performance 80 min (no interval)

 

Choreography: Marie-Claude Pietragalla & Julien Derouault

Scenography: Marie-Claude Pietragalla & Julien Derouault

Dancers: Marie-Claude Pietragalla & Julien Derouault

Music: Yannaël Quenel

Have you ever wondered whether you ever forced yourself to stay tied up on things or situations only because it was easier for you to handle? Αlthough deep inside, you knew it was not? Have you ever found the strength to let go, to say “no” and leave? How many times have you concealed your thoughts while facing an unfair situation? Or how many times did you clench your fist to control yourself? Perhaps you have not had the courage to speak or react?

 

I believe, deep inside us, we all know the road to happiness. But many of us act against our own instincts, fearing the social consequences, which are so powerful that make us wonder whether we did make those decisions consciously.

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Fouli Stylianidou was born in Limassol. In 2005 she joined Egribiancodanza Dance Company in Italy with a scholarship and then she was admitted to the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (S.E.A.D.) in Austria. In 2009/10 she joined the SEAD dance group ‘bodhi project’ where she worked with choreographers Roberto Olivan (Spain), Milli Bitterli (Austria), Keren Levi (Israel), Matej Kezjar (Slovenia) and Oleg Solimenko (Russia). In 2010/11, she worked as a dance instructor at the Or University Institute MozartDeum and taught Pilates at the SEAD dance academy in Austria. She took part in the Contemporary Dance Platform in Cyprus with: Over-Under (2011), Inertia (2013), Jodeli Jodeli Doo (2014) and Look at Me (2016). In 2012 she danced at the “Big Dance Festival” in London (Siobhan Kerry) and in Re.Cycle.Dance by Loizos Constantinou in Cyprus. Since 2014 she has been working with the contemporary dance group Asomates Dynameis with choreographer Machi Demetriadou Lindahl for the following productions: A lost moment, Wonderful World, Gate, Antigone, Body Tracers and Iketides. She also danced The Red Hour, a project organised by the European Capital of Culture Pafos2017 by choreographer Alexander Michael in collaboration with the Black Box Dance Company from Denmark and choreographer Melody Putu.

 

Choreography: Fouli Stylianidou

Dancers: Loizos Constantinou, Fouli Stylianidou

Lighting design: Aleksandar Jotovic

ia Haraki is a contemporary artist using the body as a main tool. She is a resident artist at Dance House Lemesos. Her work has been presented internationally in festivals such as: Kalamata International Festival, Julidans Amsterdam, The Athens Festival, Royal Festival Hall London, Bozar Brussels, Unesco Paris, Aerowaves Festival-The Place London, Tanec Praha, Kleines Haus Dresden, Korzo The Hague, Euro-scene Leipzig, Stary Browar Poland,  NiMAC, Halle 14 Lepzig, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco among others. In 2013 she was one of the artists that represented Cyprus in Venice Biennale for Visual Arts (special mention for the Cyprus and Lithuania pavilion) with her solo performance Tune In. In 2016 her project The Performance Shop was selected as one of 25 best practices by the European Dancehouse Network (theperformanceshop.org). It is the third year that she will be presenting her work at the Athens and Epidaurus Festival (2009, 2013) as The Performance Shop will open for a month within its framework. Her pieces Skin and The Active Spectator will be part of the programme.

  

Death is the ultimate theatrical act since it is the epitome of transformation.

Lia Haraki

 

Concept / Choreography / Programme Text: Lia Haraki

Performance: Rania Glymitsa

Music Composition / Sound Design: Stelios Antoniou

Scenography: Yiorgos Yiannou

Camera / Editing / Picture: Savvas Baltzis

 Lighting Design: Aleksandar Jotovic

Technical Manager: Yiangos Hadjiyiannis

 

With the support of Dance House Lemesos

A fascinating journey of discovery, diving into the archeological layers of Inbal Pinto's and Avshalom Pollak's collaborative work. At a controlled distance, together they return towards the familiar landscapes; it is like reopening a letter sent from faraway, from another time, one that dissipates into the present, forging a completely different experience, and reinventing themselves.

 

In the depths of Pinto - Pollak fantastic universe, Ionesco's Chairs come to live in a dance, and the absurd instantly becomes reality. This is a comic-tragic encounter between characters in the search for an author and forgotten beings in a place that is nowhere and everywhere, creating a world made of broken dreams.

 

Choreographers:  Inbal Pinto, Avshalom Pollak

Costume design, Soundtrack and Set design: Inbal Pinto, Avshalom Pollak

Lighting Designer: Yoann Tivoli

Animation: Peter Salzka

Performers: Almog Ben Horin, Zvi Fishzon, Marta Luiza Jankowska, Joy Kammin, Amit Marsino, Moran Muller, Thomas Walschot, Ofir Yanai, Dina Ziv

Rehearsal Director: Dina Ziv

Sewing : Aviv Ron

Music: Dvorak, Chór Eryana, Adam Aston, Stefan Nowita, Jeroen van Veen & Sandra van Veen, Eddie Sauter, Miles Davis, John Blow, Dukes of Dixieland, Arvo Part

Manager: Adva Mainz

Marketing & Fundraising: Zohar Eshel-Acco

Production & Stage manager: Ofer Lachish

Office Manager: Rotem Mizrachi

Lighting: Oren Elimelech

Sound: Yair Rachamim

Master carpenter: Gilad Bonneau

Wardrobe & Hair: Ela Givol

One hundred and seventy-five years have passed since the première of Giselle, a masterpiece of romantic classical ballet created for the Parisian debut of Italian ballerina Carlotta Grisi. Since then, Giselle has continued to evolve with such continuity that theatre audiences of the 21st century can no longer expect an emblematic performance of 19th century European classical ballet: Giselle has assumed a global citizenship; Giselle has its roots embedded in the present.

 

Having commissioned Itamar Serussi Sahar and Chris Haring | Liquid Loft to choreograph Act 1 and Act 2 respectively, Balletto di Roma does not merely present a new version of the traditional story of Giselle. Instead, the new Giselle offers a profound exploration of the madness of a young girl betrayed by her lover (Act 1) and the sepulchral result of her suffering in the underworld (Act 2).  Giselle, which premiered on 16th July 2016 as a result of a partnership between Liquid Loft, Operaestate Festival and Civitanova Danza, is far more than an exploration of the juxtaposition of life and death within the personality of the title role; the new choreography expresses the multifaceted mood of the whole community of bodies on stage. Giselle’s identity is no longer incarnated in a single role, but serves as a lens through which we are all invited to observe the world around us. The focus of the dancers of Balletto di Roma has been to embody the spirit of Giselle in their improvisations, not by analyzing her personality and identifying its individual parts, but rather by deconstructing Théophile Gautier’s libretto and exploring the possibilities offered to bodies and sensitivities of the present.

 

For the first time, Giselle involves an international team of artists and associates, with different artistic identities and original creative approaches, coordinated by Peggy Olislaegers, former artistic director of the Dutch Dance Festival, dramaturg for many companies like Rambert and artists such as Alessandro Sciarroni. Richard Van Kruysdijk and Andreas Berger’s profound rearrangement of the music of Adolphe Adam underlies both acts of the ballet, enabling the dancers to generate new rhythmic and gestural evocations, which let each spectator create his or her own story.

 

Itamar Serussi Sahar’s choreography of the first act expresses a strongly physical, almost erotic power: the bodies are stripped off the pantomime dress, which traditionally characterizes the opening scenes of the ballet, enabling the dancers to offer themselves to the audience in a way that reveals the true objective of their dance, the original intention of their movements. The earthly setting of the 19th century archetype is expressed by the humanity of the dancers and the way in which they are changed by reality, moved and shaken by vital pulses as they explore the spaces offered by the set, expressing a sense of belonging to both life and death. In contrast with the way in which the vitality of the first act underlines the individuality of each of the dancers, Chris Haring’s choreography of Act 2 presents a more collective approach, reminding us that nothing is more common to all humans than death.

 

The idea that revenge can lessen the pain of loss offers a last twitch of human sensitivity, a last absurd hypothesis to Giselle before the bodies confront one another in a definitive clash. Interrupted only by a number of incursions into the real world, this confrontation is pervaded by a gradual decrease in visual density until, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the performers and the audience are brought back to life.

 

Austrian choreographer Chris Haring has worked with choreographers and companies such as DV8 Physical Theatre (London), Nikolais/Luis Dance Cie (USA), man act (GB), Nigel Charnock (GB), pilottanzt and others.Together with multimedia artist and composer Klaus Obermaier he created the video-dance performances D.A.V.E. and VIVISECTOR, which have been successfully performed all over the world. Some of his main sources of inspiration for the performances, such as Fremdkorper (awarded as the best performance at the Dance Biennale in Lyons in 2004), are science fiction and the human body seen as a cybernetic landscape. Since 2005 he has been the artistic director of Liquid Loft. He choreographed performances such as Kind of Heroes, Running Sushi, Talking Head and The Perfect Garden series. In 2007 he created the Posing Project Series and his Posing Project B – The Art of Seduction won the Leone d’Oro for best performance at Biennale di Venezia. In 2010 he received the “Oustanding Artists Award” for performing arts by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Culture (BMUKK). He was responsible for the opening performance of the Austrian Pavillion at the Universal Expo in Zaragoza (2008) with Liquid Loft. He also created choreographies for international companies such as Jin Xing Dance Theatre (Shanghai), Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo (F), Dialogue Dance (RU), Staatstheater Kassel (GER) and Ballett Moskau (RU).

 

Amsterdam resident Itamar Serussi Sahar (Israel, 1978) began his dance training at the age of fifteen at the Israel Arts High School and School of Bat-Dor Dance Company. In 1998 he became a part of the Batsheva Dance Company. From 2006 he has been developing his own personal style, as well as experimenting with physical boundaries through humour and improvisation, in an attempt to go beyond traditional dance. His work is playful, light and elegant and his choreographies are the result of a synergy between his surroundings and his dancers. Between 2010 and 2012 he was the resident choreographer for Danshuis Station Zuid (Tilburg, NL), where he created a number of short works, such as Phenomena, Undo, Ferrum, Lust and the long performance Mono. The latter was nominated as “Best dance production – season 2011-2012″ at the Swan Awards  in Nederlandse Dansdagen, Maastricht. Itamar’s choreographies are striking both for the audience and for the performers and are regularly performed across Europe (Czech Republic, France, Slovenia). Itamar also creates for dance companies in the U.K., Austria, United States, France, Denmark and Belgium and, since the summer of 2014, he has also been the resident choreographer of Scapino Ballet (Rotterdam, NL).

 

Choreography : Itamar Serussi Sahar for act I & Chris Haring / Liquid Loft for act II

Concept Development: Peggy Olislaegers

Original music: Adolphe Adam Musical (re-working: Richard Van Kruysdijk, Andreas Berger)

Α living system of ten dancers, pulsating and coordinating, attracting and repulsing, tracing orbits that follow the mechanisms of nature. Christos Papadopoulos, the new star of choreography rising in Europe, poses questions about the human nature on the Main Stage of Onassis Cultural Centre. We are all ions out there, electrically charged. Christos Papadopoulos’ minimalist, poetic, artistic universe is a place you may inhabit. Ion is a performance that focuses on the microphysics of motion, the volume of detail that can derive from a kinetic pattern allowing the eye to wander, to travel through the boundless field of human relations.

 

The flight of birds, the coordination of fireflies, a series of microphenomena that comprise the world of nature become a starting point for the kinetic research of Christos Papadopoulos.The choreographer does not merely represent the aforementioned enchanting coincidences; he moves on with a reductionist approach to kinetic patterns encountered all around us. In a minimalist language, a feature of his work, he looks for the mechanisms or the algorithm that lies behind the function of coordination. A living system of 10 dancers tests our powers of observation with imperceptible changes and noiseless transitions, in order to reveal the fragility of human relations that validate the pace of life, the natural order of things. So, while the title refers directly to the phenomenon of ionization, the performance tends to work by association, highlighting elements that transcend form, the mechanism of choreography, the rigor of a system. Besides, what fascinates the choreographer is not the Empire of Signs, but how they connect, creating a unique cosmos. The appeal of coordination lies in the brevity of the phenomenon, its transience, the impression of randomness and the expectation of recurrence.

 

With his new work, Ion, Christos Papadopoulos submits a multisensory experiment, which does not exhaust itself in easy attention-seeking mechanics. The choreography aims to foreground the minimal, the ecstatic serenity, like that crack through which light enters before the splendour of the skies is revealed to us. Christos Papadopoulos focuses on the repetitiveness of kinetic motifs, on stage space clarity formed by lighting and action. The choreographer relies on the primal elements composing his work: rhythm, movement, place and time. Still, the way he weaves the acts allows us to gradually discover the interaction of movement with other elements, light showcasing the movement of the bodies and the effect of music on the sound environment, which does not merely guide but also converses with the choreography.

 

Concept & Choreography:  Christos Papadopoulos

Dramaturgy: Tassos Koukoutas

Music: Coti K

Lighting design: Tasos Palaioroutas

Costume design: Angelos Mentis

Set design: Evangelia Therianou

1st Assistant Choreographer: Katerina Spyropoulou

2nd Assistant Choreographer: Ioanna Antonarou

Production Coordination: Theodora Kapralou

Dancers: Maria Bregianni, Nontas Damopoulos, Nanti Gogoulou, Amalia Kosma, Hara Kotsali, Giorgos Kotsifakis, Dimitra Mertzani, Ethymis Moschopoulos, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Alexis Tsiamoglou

 

Produced by: Onassis Cultural Centre Athens

With the support of: Fondation d'entreprise Hermès, New Settings / Fondation d’entreprise Hermès within the framework of the New Settings programme

Co-production: Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Le Lieu unique, Scène nationale de Nantes (Nantes)

 

In collaboration with: Dublin Dance Festival (Ireland)

ZICK ZACK PUFF

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Creatures with extremely diverse qualities meet in this dance piece. Through their joint experiences they slowly begin to realise that there is opportunity in diversity, if they join forces and complement each other. Together they succeed in overcoming obstacles and discover new perspectives on even the trickiest of situations. The three company members tumble their way through a colourful range of concise episodes and images that draw their character from the imaginative and varied stage design, the props and, in particular, the costumes. It only requires balloons, tights and – above all – heaps of paper to realise it. It is just unbelievable how much you can do with it! No doubt – after this performance the children who have watched the piece will leave the theatre with tons ideas to develop and incorporate into their own play.

 

Company MAFALDA

 

The multi-layered worlds with which the Zurich based Company MAFALDA, directed by the choreographer Teresa Rotemberg, fascinates its audience, is of a very particular character. At times narrative, at times abstract, the company combines sophisticated, often highly virtuous dance elements with all kinds of theatrical devices. MAFALDA's cosmos is full of funny, whimsical, thoughtful and poetic images and scenes; comedy and tragedy are often close to one another. Over and over again the company strives to question realities; the continuing theme is the acceptance of deficits, diversity and change. MAFALDA's creations are designed to appear lightweight and ironic, but repeatedly deal with the big questions of our life and coexistence.

 

Choreographer: Teresa Rotemberg

Performers: Diane Gemsch, Yamila Khodr, Fausto Izzi

Technical Manager: Laurent Castella

Music: Tanja Müller

Costumes: Tanja Liebermann

Lighting design: Heinze Baumann

Dramaturgy: Ralph Blase

Manager: Nicole Friedman

This workshop gradually introduces the children to explore movement routines and dance techniques by the principle of "learning by doing".  An invitation to stimulate the imagination and to merge into the dance world, where the children can themselves turn into extraordinary creatures by trying out the movement language and explore with materials.

 

Children 4-12 years old. @ Dance House Lemesos