2023

Description of project:

“The Sisters’ Project” (working title) is a theatrical dance performance addressed to all, from 8 to 108 years old. Set in a dusty attic, The Sisters’ Project unfolds the relationship between three sisters exploring the concept of loss. From the loss of loved ones and loved objects, to the loss of contact between them and the loss of time itself. How do three young women find support and comfort from each other, while developing their own identity.
Through humour and poetry, acrobacy, mime and an imaginative scenery (consisting of wooden objects and fabric), The Sisters’ Project takes you on a imaginative journey where there is space for complexity: for laughter and tears, anger and acceptance.

Open presentation: Sunday 08 October 2023
20:30, Free Entrance

The journey of lost things: a children’s workshop on loss
Saturday 07 October 2023, 17:30-20:30
Free submission

Ismini Slijper

Born and raised in Amsterdam, Netherlands (1999) Ismini Slijper started dancing at the age of 8. Later on she studied BA Contemporary Dance at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp of which she graduated in 2020.
Together with her former classmates she founded SIDEWARDS-collective (www.sidewards.be). A dance collective that creates and supports dance productions and organizes culutral events. Under SIDEWARDS Ismini co-created the dance performance ‘If you want, maybe not’ (2021) and organized FountainFest: The Festival of Femxle Pleasure (2022).
She also worked as a dance teacher in her hometown Amsterdam at Het Amsterdams Lyceum and for cultural education organization “Op de eerste rij” (2021-2022).
During the last year she has been based in Athens where she has had the opportunity to work with dance group Artogether. A dance group for people wit hand without disabilities, lead by Katerina Gevetsi. Whilst also co-creating two own performance projects : “The Sisters Project” and “Co-habitance”.

Aggeliki Sakellariou

Born and raised in the small island of Syros (2000), Aggeliki Sakellariou has been dancing from the age of 10. She started with traditional greek dancing and practiced 6 years of rhythmic gymnastics. She has been a student in Akropoditi dance centre from 2013 and participated in performances and dance lessons as a student (ballet, contemporary dance, jazz). She is an occupational therapist (graduated from University of West Attica) and 3 years now she is a member of inclusive dance group Artogether in Athens. She has participated in multiple (dance) workshops and loves improvisation and authentic movement. She is planning to do a master in dance therapy.

Myrsini Tzavaras

Born and raised in Syros (2001), Myrsini Tzavaras started dancing at the Akropoditi Dance Centre at the age of 8. From the year of 2019 she studies Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art Athens where she also attends different contemporary dance classes from various teachers.

Artisti Diner
Open presentation: 14 September 2023 
from 6 p.m. visit of the sailboat Bise Noire
(Kon/nou Zervaki 5, Ermoupoli)
7:30 p.m. group walk to the Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre
(Ir. Politechniou 84, Ermoupoli)
8 p.m. performance installation and aperitif at the Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre.

The Bise Noire association

The Bise Noire association, based in Switzerland, was founded in 2019 by Nourya White Khaldi, Laurine Landry & Lucas Verheij.
Since then, it has been inviting artists to share its journey along the Mediterranean coast aboard the sailboat Bise Noire. Artists are welcomed for three weeks for research and creative residencies under the aegis of the Escales! project. Escales is the name of the residency project dreamed up by the Bise Noire association. The idea is to bring on board artists who wish to draw inspiration for their work from encounters and the sea.
www.bisenoire.org

This year, in collaboration with the Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre, the Bise Noire association is proud to present the work of the artists in residency. These four artists have been in Athens and the Cyclades for three weeks, aboard the sailing ship Bise Noire and at the Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre.

Mileva Testas

Mileva Testas is an artist and designer who graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and has been based in Mallorca for the past six years. Her work focuses on artisanal and experimental design, using different materials such as silver, glass and ceramics. Her creations are strongly inspired by the Mediterranean landscape and the organic and mineral forms it offers.
Mileva Testa will present a series of objects and experiments resulting from the research carried out during her residency: objects to be seen or worn, woven from palma leaf, esparto or materials found along the way.

Ludovic Vial

Ludovic Vial studied visual arts at HEAD – Geneva, then at La Manufacture – Lausanne. In his practice, he explores the intersections between what doesn’t seem to be self-evident, navigating between different practices, from performance to movement writing, text and music. He is interested in different constructions drawn from popular culture, the collective unconscious, intimate narratives and gender studies, which he assembles and rearranges to create new subjectivities.
The research presented at the Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre will start from the figure of the mermaid (between Greek literary roots and the Danish fairy tale by Hans C. Andersen) through an exploration of sound, music and choreography. As much a myth as a literal image projected by navigation on Bise noire, this research will seek to take account of the chimera’s troubled identity, and of a form of corporal and vocal transposition.

Nicolas Steulet

Nicolas Steulet is training as a stage director at La Manufacture, Lausanne. He has taught theater workshops for children and teenagers for several years, and enjoys creating shows in which particular attention is paid to light and shadows.
Between two sunburns, during the residency, he would like to write about the gaps in his childhood memory. To fill in these gaps or explore them further. Nicolas Steulet would like to give a reading of some of his texts at the Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre.

Lucas Herzig

Lucas Herzig was born in Zurich in 1988 and grew up in Pura, Italian-speaking Switzerland. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from the Haute École d’Art et Design de Genève (HEAD) in 2011 and a Master’s degree from the Hochschule der Künste Bern (HKB) in 2015.
In his work, he critically addresses issues such as the adaptation of hybrid identities and the creation of new founding myths. He often goes back in time to draw conclusions about the present.
Lucas Herzig intends to create on board a series of small sculptures inspired by the Neolithic sculptural art of the Cyclades. The objects to be shown at the Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre are the result of the artist’s research and collect.

Antara 2.0

Open presentation: 26 May 2023 at 22:00
Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre

In a world that imposes isolation and behavioural rules.
In a world that forbids contact, the next stage of human evolution is born for us.
Thus, a person without desires is born, sterilised, without awareness of oneself, a blank canvas.
Through our solo, we want to address the dichotomy that the new human will experience in the process of their redefinition.
We will seek fragile moments of movement within an otherwise strict physical form.
Fragile moments of movement will consist of uncontrolled outbursts or lack of rhythm.
While the strict framework will enclose limited, careful, and slow movement, without emotion, without life.
In addition, we will re-observe the basic functions of the body, such as joint extensions and balance.
Hoping to eventually come up with a definition that will describe the psyche of the new human.

Words: joints, burnt plastic, broken doll, octopus, awkward hands, bounce, boxing.

Movement Research: Zafeira Sevasti, Nastos Theodoros
Music: Nastos Theodoros, Abstract Soundscape
Performance: Zafeira Sevasti

Fragile bones – Masterclass with Sevasti Zafeira, 22 May 2023 

Sevasti Zafeira
Sevasti Zafeira is a dancer who lives and works in Greece. She was born in 1997 in Syros and graduated with honors from the State School of Dance in Athens. From a young age, she was involved in sports and later turned to dance. She has collaborated, among others, with Christos Papadopoulos, Antonis Foniadakis, Patricia Apergi, Eva Georgitsopoulou, Jenny Argiriou, Evangelos Poulinas etc and participated in performances in Greece and abroad.
She has also worked with various theater and film directors such as Manolis Mavris for “Brutalia, Days of Labor,” which was awarded at the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, winning the Canal+ award for Best Short Film. She has also worked with Thanos Papakonstantinou at the National Opera, Vasilis Kekatos for Korres Campaign (Short Film Series), and she took part in the Dior Cruise 2022 Film campaign, directed by Benjamin Vu.

Theodore Nastos
Τheodore Nastos has a diverse background in film, music, and art direction. His work includes starring in the short film “Melatonin,” which has been screened in various festivals worldwide, composing and performing music for the Yogurt Maybe band, directing music videos, taking part in big campaigns and commercials as a model, and following a 3-month seminar in Direction of Photography. He has also been a creative director for the Yogurt Maybe project, where he has created screenplays, arranged photoshoots, and created artworks. His range of skills and experiences has allowed him to approach artistic projects from multiple perspectives, making him a versatile and adaptable artist.

Project description
OVERFLOW is a contemporary dance and physical theater duet, performed by myself and the dancer Anna-Maria Bayon, which addresses adaptation and survival in society.
Particularly struck by the radical, immediate and contradictory nature of current social dynamics, I asked myself “how do bodies survive between increasingly extreme, increasingly unpredictable laws and events?”
The image behind this creation is that of a ‘contemporary shipwreck’. With a choreographic approach that feeds on an overdose of absurd and zany, naive and poetic imagination, it is an extravagant and staggering shipwreck that I wish to explore. The bodies of two women intertwine, support each other, counterbalance each other, adapt and save each other. Extreme, contradictory and insane like the challenges they have to face.
If on the one hand my intention is to explore the power and beauty of a body that adapts, transmutes, fits together, endures and resists to the point of overflowing; on the other hand, I want to give voice to the humanity that runs through it: its need for the other, for empathy and mutual aid.
Body and voice. Imagination and illusion. Control and laughter. Poetry and surprise.
OVERFLOW is an invitation to resilience through a sensitive, confident and creative look at our society.
with the support of Wallonie-Bruxelles International

SILVIA PEZZAROSSI
I’m an italian contemporary dancer, choreographer and teacher. I’m based in Belgium where I live since several years.
I trained in ballet and contemporary dance in Italy (Zappalà Danza dance school) and Switzerland (ballet junior de Geneve).
Once I arrived in Belgium I started collaborating as a dancer and performer with some local and international artists for dance and circus projects: Keren Rosenberg, Roy Assaf, Lies Serdons, Poetic Punkers collective, Cie Marie Martinez, Lisbeth Gruwez, Dorian Chavez, Krama Dance Company and soon with the circus company Cie des Chaussons Rouges (creation 2023/2024).
I consider myself a curious observer of society and its dynamics.
I am attracted by its resources as well as its contradictions and fragilities. It is from what I live, from what I feel, from what I observe of society that I draw my inspiration to create.
Supported by different Belgian theaters I could make until today three  dance & physical theater creations: Mucyclo, Waiting for the fishes and En attendant que les poissons passent….
All of them share a strong physicality and the use of a performative register that appeals to audience interaction, humour and surprise.
Overflow is my next creation planned for 2024.
Since 2015, I have been developing my own pedagogical practice based on improvisation, DIVE, which is inspired by the principles of Gaga body language (which I studied in Tel Aviv with Ohad Naharin and the Batsheva dancers) but which I extend to a personal research.
DIVE is part of my daily artistic life and I transmit it through classes and workshops in Belgium and abroad (Charleroi Danse, UP circus & performing arts center, Grand Studio/ Nyash dance company, Hybrid Studio/cie bud Blumenthal, Istanbul Fringe festival in Turkey, Dance Days Chania Festival and Kinitira artistic network in Greece).

My name is Silvia Pezzarossi, I am an Italian choreographer, I live in Belgium since several years.
Last march I was invited for two weeks by Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre in artistic residency to continue my creation HABEMUS NAUFRAGIUM (old Overflow).
This is my fourth creation, a duo performed by me and the French dancer Anna-Maria Bayon.
This creation takes as its starting point the social condition of ‘shipwreck’ and the survival that follows. The work thus revolves around the themes of resilience, adaptation and mutual support.
The two performers, two shipwrecked women, rescue each other, support each other, and join forces to move forward together in a stormy sea: a metaphor for a social and contemporary shipwreck.
At the centre of the creation is the body, the main and only choreographic tool.
The residency at Akropoditi proved to be an important opportunity for the work to evolve. The working conditions were very good: large and well-equipped room, friendly and helpful staff, fantastic landscape!
Anna Maria and I also had the opportunity to give a class to local students. It was a valuable opportunity, a rich exchange. The dancers were curious to get to know us and to learn. It was important for us to come into close contact with the artists on the island in a practice of mutual transmission and exchange.
Thank you Akropodites and see you soon I hope!