2025

Description of project:
Akómi is the first collaborative research project by choreographers Ermira Goro (Athens) and Ildikó Tóth (Leipzig). The work explores how individual perception and emotional experience are shaped—and often silenced—by dominant collective narratives. Drawing inspiration from Christa Wolf’s Kassandra, a fragmented monologue on isolation, suppressed truth, and the burden of knowing, the artists investigate how these psychological and social tensions are embodied, transformed, and shared.
A second point of reference are the Spedos figurines of Cycladic culture, whose folded arms and featureless faces symbolize self-protection and withdrawal. These archetypal postures inspire a minimalist movement language rooted in stillness, pressure, and latent resistance. They are reimagined through improvisational frameworks to explore how bodies absorb internalized pressure and unspoken knowledge.
During their residency at Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre, the artists will work on developing Akómi’s choreographic and spatial framework. The research process will culminate in a public showing that offers audiences insight into the evolving dialogue between movement and perception. Akómi becomes a choreographic inquiry into fragmentation and resilience – asking how the body holds, absorbs, and reimagines collective narratives and what forms emerge through the fragile negotiation between individual perception and collective meaning.

Masterclass
Saturday November 1^st 2025, 17:00 – 19:00
Free submission

Open presentation: Wednesday November 12^th 2025
13:00, Free Entrance

Ermira Goro

Ermira Goro is a choreographer, performer and movement director. From 2007 to 2018, she collaborated with the renowned DV8 Physical Theatre as a performer, teacher, and Research & Development / Choreography Assistant. In 2022, she was nominated for Outstanding Performer at The Bessies – The New York Dance and Performance Awards. Alongside creating and performing, Ermira has been invited by international organizations to develop choreographic works. Over the years, her work has been supported and presented at numerous festivals and venues in Greece and around the world, earning critical acclaim for its imaginative and distinctive approach. She is an Aerowaves Twenty25 Artist.
www.ermiragoro.com

Ildikó Tóth

Ildikó Tóth is a choreographer, performer, and dance educator based in Leipzig, Germany. She studied at Codarts University in Rotterdam and pursued postgraduate studies in New York with a DAAD scholarship. She performed with artists such as Bill Young/Colleen Thomas, Susan Marshall, and Kota Yamazaki before joining The Forsythe Company (2012–2015). Her choreographic work centers on interdisciplinary collaboration and improvisation and has been presented at LOFFT – Das Theater Leipzig, Schaubühne Lindenfels, and other venues. She teaches Forsythe improvisation across Europe and in the US.
www.ildiko-toth.com

Project Overview & Research Focus
From October 22nd to November 13th, 2025, choreographers Ermira Goro (Athens) and Ildikó Tóth (Leipzig) conducted a three-week research residency for their new collaborative project, “Akómi,” at the Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre on the island of Syros, Greece.
The purpose of this residency was to establish the foundational choreographic and spatial framework for Akómi. The work investigates how individual perception is shaped by dominant collective narratives, drawing conceptual inspiration from Christa Wolf’s  book Kassandra and the aesthetic minimalism of the Cycladic Spedos figurines.

Residency Process and Methodology
As this was the first time the two artists collaborated, the residency provided the essential studio time required to develop a shared movement language and identify common choreographic interests without the pressure of performance expectations. This dedicated research phase was crucial for exploring the project’s core themes—internalized pressure, stillness, and latent resistance—and translating them into a minimalist movement vocabulary.
The use of a video camera served as an additional tool in the research, enabling the exploration of the moving body through different angles, frames, and excerpts—including close-ups, frog, and bird views. This approach was vital for not only documentation and reflection but also for deliberately distorting conventional visual perception and investigating new forms of physical intimacy and fragmentation within the developing material.

Public Engagement
At the end of the residency the local community was invited to an open presentation on Wednesday, November 12th, 2025 (13:00). This event offered the public direct insight into the evolving dialogue between movement and the core conceptual concerns of Akómi.

Conclusion
The time spent at Akropoditi successfully established the artistic foundation for Akómi. The residency allowed for a focused, deep dive into conceptual sourcing and material development, providing both artists with the groundwork necessary to transition the research into a full-scale production phase.

Description of project:
Sull’uscio is the title of an ongoing research project by Apolvere, developed within the framework of performing arts. The collective began this exploration during a brief one-week residency in May 2025, where they initiated work on physical movement, soundscapes, musical composition, and text. Currently, in collaboration with Svesda (Santi Perez), the company is continuing its research with a two-week residency at Akropoditi Dance & Performing Arts Centre.
At the core of this new work lies an interest in the principles of recycling, resisting, and insisting. These concepts serve as guiding coordinates across multiple layers of the process. They shape the company’s approach to movement, spoken and recorded text, and musical composition. Conceptually, they also frame the project’s engagement with the theme of resistance in the context of contemporary European politics and broader Western policy.

Open presentation:
Saturday October 4^th 2025
20:00, Free Entrance

Masterclass
Saturday September 27^th 2025, 18:00 – 20:00
Free submission

Apolvere

Apolvere is an emerging dance/performance duo created and co-directed by Arianna Bonacina and Martí Ramis Muñoz. They are coming respectively from Italy and Spain and they met in their education in Salzburg. During their staying in Austria, they started creating together after realising they shared a common vision for scenic art. Their work is centred on creating fragmented realities where detailed dynamics of human actions and interactions are analysed and portrayed through the use of different medias. They mainly treat topics that have solid connection with the socio-political context they come from. This starting point generates a base for transversal reflections as they believe that art forms are deeply interconnected with societies and politics. Their long-term goal as a duo would be to be able to bring their work in different contexts as a way to open up spaces of confronting and discussing about cultural baggage and its implications in ones’ approach to collectivity.

Reflection on artistic residency in Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre
Apolvere and Svesda: Arianna Bonacina, Martì Ramis, Santi Perez

From the 22nd of September 2025 to the 5th of October 2025 Apolvere Collective, in collaboration with sound artist Svesda (Santi Perez), had the pleasure of conducting an artistic residency in the wonderful space of Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Center, in Syros. The collective, co-funded and co-directed by Arianna Bonacina and Martì Ramis, is currently working on the development of the dance piece ‘Sull’uscio’, a choreographic work where dance, performance, music-sound composition, and text merge together to become a poetic-visual poem. The main thematic axes of this work are voice and resonance of an individual in the collectivity and liminal spaces, areas of transition and ambiguity where images and metaphors can carry the narrative. The residency in Akropoditi was the second encounter the group had after a brief residency of one week in April 2025 in Spain. The group was looking for a place that could allow them to fully dive in the research, far from the usual context where they live (Barcleona, Spain), where they could benefit from different inputs deriving from a new framework and establish new artistic connections. Akropoditi was the perfect match to their interests, especially considering that the residency took place in a very delicate moment of the creative process, where the three artists were busy with the establishment of a common artistic language between dance and sound and the research of suitable materials for the piece.

During their first week in the centre Apolvere and Svesda investigated different musical and rhythmical schemes combined with different movement qualities. This research was conducted through long improvisational sessions in order to understand what influences had one discipline on the other, and viceversa. By the end of the first week Apolvere offered an open level workshop to movement artists and amateurs of the island where they guided a two-hours session using the tools they had been working with. Sharing their practice was an enriching experience that allowed for exchanges and clarified their working principles to themselves as well as.
During the second week of residency the group delved deeper in the research started the previous week and began a process of reviewing and evaluating the materials emerged. The analysis and evaluation of these materials remained an open and active collaboration between Apolvere and Svesda, following a work- dynamic fluid and organic, from which choreographic landscapes and sonic textures blended and complemented each other. On the 4th of October they had a public informal sharing of their work, from which relevant and interesting feedbacks derived. Overall the group felt extremely welcomed and supported by the team of Akropoditi, they established enriching artistic connections as well as lovely friendships with the members of the company and they really look forward to possible future collaborations and encounters!

Description of project:
Reading a beloved book, from comics to literature artworks, something touching rises that gives us the feeling of being related to it. How does the sense of what is «hidden» behind the lines become dance? This project explores how dance is born through the internal movement caused by the texts we read.
Extracting fragments out of passages that move me on such as theatre plays, poems, letters etc, i will record words, phrases, situations and conditions that emerge from every selected piece of writing. Through analysing, experimenting in practice and searching, the extracted elements will be filtered in various, registered dance maps. I imagine a solo of a dancer, passing from one cosmo-map to the other, creating senses of different situations and synthesizing a reality, which is constantly changing, formulating a tour of personalities, of various spaces and times, of perspectives, intentions and desires.
The whole idea is triggered by the curiosity about how dance is being born and how it acquires its meaning.

Open presentation:
Saturday May 31^st 2025
21:00, Free Entrance

Improvisation workshop: Drawing inspiration and elements from our favourite books
Sunday June 01^st 2025, 11:30-14:00
Free submission

Dimitra Mertzani

Dimitra Mertzani is a graduate of National School of Dance (KSOT), Athens, Greece. She was granted a fellowship and attended the ICD-International Contemporary Dance Programme in Turin, and she is a senior 4th year student in the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of Athens. She works as a professional dancer, choreographer’s assistant, movement director in theatrical performances and teaches contemporary dance and improvisation. She has collaborated with choreographers such as Tzeni Argyriou (Hotspot, Phrasis, Praxis, Meetings, Synthesis, Anonymo), Christos Papadopoulos (Ion, Opus), Kitt Johnson (Synthesis), Rootlessroot: Linda Kapetanea and Josef Frucek (Stones and bones), Ermira Goro (Thirst, You, Dandelion), Hannes Langolf (Dandelion), Aria Boumbaki (I’m too sad to, Running Dry), Kat Valastur-Leon Eixenberger (Ajativada-black rain), Katerina Delakura (Re-volver), Kyriaki Nasioula and Argyris Angeli (Loom), Patricia Apergi (Cementary), Mina Ananiadou-Guest Project (Lakes,4 episodes and the Sunset), Christos Xyrafakis-Andi Xhuma (Exhibition at Palais de Tokyo) and Hellenic Dance Company (Open frontiers) giving performances in dance festivals in Greece and abroad. She regularly taught and gave seminars at the Professional School of Dance Aktina (2021,2022), as well as in open studios in Athens and she completed her internship in theatre education at various schools in Athens. Since December 2024 she has been working for the Kalamata International Dance Festival as the personal associate of the artistic director, Tzeni Argyriou.