Posts Tagged :

contemporary dance

angeliafóros – Akropoditi Dancetheatre 819 1024 akropoditi13

angeliafóros – Akropoditi Dancetheatre

Greece

The performance on 14/7 will be followed by an open discussion with the audience.

After the end of a battle, a group of survivors returns to their homeland, burdened with the task of announcing what they have witnessed and endured. Their journey spans an entire night of marching, exhaustion, reflection, inner monologue, intentions, attempts, and questionings—regarding both the message they must deliver and the way in which it should be announced.
Their speech, initially resembling that of a war messenger—bearing news of defeat and destruction—gradually becomes distorted, blending with the content of their announcements, truth and falsehood intertwining, and their very identities dissolving.
The site of the announcement becomes a new battlefield where past and present meet and clash. Through this confrontation, the messengers take on shifting roles: at times, they are soldiers, at others, agents of power, angels, or birds.
The announcement itself shifts between past and present, moving through crimes, wars, uncanny acts, curses, punishments, and misinterpreted truths. Eventually, it reaches the future as prophecy, articulating destiny in an incomprehensible language. Likewise, those delivering the message transform into messengers of ancient tragedies, modern journalists, and ultimately, prophets.

The piece explores the concept and significance of the announcement — from the universally resonant and weighty speeches of messengers in ancient Greek tragedy, to the sensationalism, exaggeration, and indiscretion of contemporary journalistic discourse, and beyond human language, to the mysterious and incomprehensible voices of prophets and angels.

Credits
Concept, direction, choreography: Angeliki Sigourou
Choreographer’s/director’s assistant: Dimitris Baltas
Performers: Angeliki Aggeletaki, Evi Aresti, Timothy Ashplant, Dimitris Baltas, Antigoni Choundri, Josephine Gray, Afedia Kanellopoulou, Ariadni Kitsou, Christos Kollias, Sofia Koktsidou, Xeni Kottaki, Manti Papandreou, Vivi Sklia, Anmar Taha, Konstantina Thanasouli
Music and sound design: Fotis Mylonas
Set design: Akropoditi Dancetheatre
Costumes: Matina Megla
Sketch: Evi Aresti
Graphic design, program and poster design: Vivi Sklia
Texts: Adapted excerpts from monologues of ancient Greek tragedies, excerpts of headlines and news articles, passages from prophetic texts of the Old Testament (Daniel), the New Testament (Revelation) and the Quran (chapter 56), references to the book Fractured Loyalties (Ashplant, Timothy 2007), and texts composed by the company.
Adaptation of ancient Greek tragedies: Angeliki Sigourou, Timothy Ashplant, Christos Kollias

Duration: 70 min.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/1089992293,  https://vimeo.com/1098097081


5, 6, 12, 13 July, arriving time 05:30 (in the morning)
7, 14 July, arriving time 19:30 (in the evening)

The performance is a collaboration between Akropoditi Dancetheatre, historian and writer Timothy Ashplant, and the company ibodies.

Akropoditi Dancetheatre

The Akropoditi Dancetheatre was founded on the island of Syros in 2004 by Angeliki Sigourou. Since its inception, the company has remained a diverse ensemble, featuring dancers and actors from Greece and abroad, as well as community artists from various disciplines.
Among other works, the company has produced the following pieces to date: Glossa (2018), Medusa (2014, 2017), Punishment (2017), Sebastian (2013, 2015), Prayer in 7 Parts (2012).
akropoditi.com/dancetheatre

ibodies company

The impetus for the work of ibodies is based on the fundamental insight that theatre – as an arena in which performance takes place – demands a unique and radical language that is useless and in the disservice of any agenda other than its own primacy as a form of language. As such, the poetics of awareness is an absolute given in their continued search for a radical scenic language.
ibodies are based in Gothenburg, Sweden, led by Anmar Taha and Josephine Gray. Their work has been presented at venues and festivals across Europe, Middle East, North Africa and Asia.
www.i-bodies.com

Timothy G. Ashplant

Timothy Ashplant is historian and writer. He taught for 25 years at Liverpool John Moores University, ending his career as Professor of Social and Cultural History. Since 2013, he has been a Visiting Professor at King’s College London, attached to the Centre for Life-Writing Research.  His research has focussed on the use of life stories by ordinary (non-elite) people to defend their interests and promote their claims for social justice.
His book Fractured Loyalties: Masculinity, Class and Politics in Britain, 1900-30 (2007) examined how men who fought on the Western Front in the First World War tried, through poetry and autobiography, to grasp the enormity of the war, which had fractured the religious and political values in which they had been brought up.  They became messengers to their society, struggling to put into words their – sometimes revelatory, sometimes traumatic – experience of industrialised warfare. He has also had a long involvement with photography. In the 1980s, he was a member of a community arts group in Oxford, for which he took part in several photo projects.  In the 1990s, he was one of the directors of  Oxford Photography, an Arts Council-funded organisation which promoted photography in the Oxford region by organising exhibitions and lecture series.  He also contributed, through one-person and group photo shows, to the annual Oxford Artweeks festivals.  In 2018, with the support of the Municipality of Syros-Hermoupolis and the Syros Photographic & Film Club, he held a one-person show, “Σύρος – Ερμούπολη, η ματιά ενός επισκέπτη 2009-2017”.
Since 2014, he has attended Akropoditi DanceFest and taken part in dance and dance-improvisation workshops.

Future Cargo – Greek National Opera Ballet 819 1024 akropoditi13

Future Cargo – Greek National Opera Ballet

Greece

     

The Ballet of the Greek National Opera, in co-production with the renowned The Place, London, presents Future Cargo, a sci-fi dance show performed in a 40-foot haulage truck. Shows by Frauke Requardt & David Rosenberg, deliver the delicate integrity of a deeply intimate experience within a large-scale dance spectacle. The co-production with The Place and the tour is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.

A truck arrives from an unknown location loaded with a mystery shipment. As the sides roll up, a strange and unstoppable process is set into motion. Silver beings emerge from within the container, revealing a whole new world. Each audience member receives a pair of headphones, which allows them to hear inside the container, while immersing them in the visually striking large-scale set. Audiences seeking experiential and adventurous performances will be captivated by this show’s immersive and experiential nature. As Frauke Requardt & David Rosenberg characteristically note: “We envisage creating an impossible internal space that defies the preconception of the viewer. We want to invite an audience into a world they never thought possible.”

Alongside Frauke Requardt & David Rosenberg, we encounter a team of longstanding collaborators. Hannah Clark designed the set and costumes, Ben & Max Ringham are responsible for the music and sound, and Malcolm Rippeth created the lighting design.

Credits
Stage direction, choreography: Frauke Requardt & David Rosenberg
Designer: Hannah Clark
Sound design & Composition: Ben & Max Ringham
Lighting designer: Malcolm Rippeth
Rehearsal director (The Place): Valentina Formenti
Musician: Jack Baker
Assistant to the choreographers: Rachel Bowen
Assistant to the choreographers (GNO Ballet): Dimitra Laoudi
Dancers: Ektor Bollano, Florian Michalis Pappas, Manex Alberdi, Elton Dimrochi, Marita Nikolitsa, Areti Noti, Stefano Pietragalla, Eleftheria Stamou, Zoi Schoinoplokaki, Yorgos Hatzopoulos

Duration: 45 min.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/opWlArfsOCk, https://youtu.be/mo6DVyOiuEo

 

Lead Donor of the GNO & Production Donor:
STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION (SNF)

REQUARDT & ROSENBERG

Requardt & Rosenberg was established to create dance performances away from the auditorium and studio, either in outdoor locations or within temporary structures. Their performances are highly visible, unique events that engage a wide audience in a distinctive format.
Their productions combine both the spectacle of large-scale dance and the delicate integrity and intimacy of the audience experience through binaural sound, delivered through headphones.
Requardt & Rosenberg’s practice explores the different spatial relationships between audience and performance, the creation of dance works that take architectural constraint as a starting point, and the creation of temporary performance spaces that can tour around the world, providing an alternate touring network for international work.
Their previous productions include the critically acclaimed DeadClub™ (2017); the “ambitious, innovate spectacle” (Financial Times) The Roof (2014); Motor Show (2012); and Electric Hotel (2009-2011).

GOLEM – Compagnie Abis 819 1024 akropoditi13

GOLEM – Compagnie Abis

Belgium

The performance will be followed by an open discussion with the audience.

GOLEM is the extension of the encounter between the dancer/choreographer Julien Carlier and the 75-year-old sculptor Mike Sprogis.
Through this dialogue between two artists of different disciplines and ages, the performance is constructed as the distorting mirror of their journeys, delving into the analogies between their respective practices of sculpture and dance.
One sees dance as ephemeral, moving sculpture; the other sees in the sculptor’s movements and material a dance to be inspired by. Between the two men on stage, there is clay. Manipulated, this material blurs the line between the inert and the living, with the earth becoming human and the human at times becoming lifeless matter.
The title is chosen as a symbol of the concept of duality and to draw a parallel between the creature shaped in the image of its creator and the artistic creation process. It’s a way to represent oneself or the other facing oneself.
In the artistic fusion of these two intense physical gestures, the piece speaks to the passage of time and its challenges on the body and mind. Organic, sensitive, and beautiful.

Credits
Choreographer: Julien Carlier
Performers: Julien Carlier, Mike Sprogis
Dramaturgy: Fanny Brouyaux, Simon Carlier
Music Design: Simon Carlier
Drums: Tom Malmendier
Light Design: Frédéric Vannes
Set Design: Justine Bougerol
Costumes: Marine Stevens

Duration: 50 min.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/308690127

 

A production of Compagnie Abis created with the support of “Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service de la Danse”. Also, with the support of: Charleroi danse, Ultima-Vez, KVS, Centre Culturel Jacques Franck, Centre Culturel de Namur, the TROIS C-L, the Grand Luxe network and Le Grand Studio.
The show has been performed at Dance Base during the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival (UK), Network Internazionale Danza Puglia in 2023 (IT), the Festival CaféKultour in Timișoara (RO) in 2021, and Trois C-L in Luxembourg in 2020. In Belgium, it has been performed in stages such as the Centre Culturel Jacques Franck (2019) and the Namur Theatre (2022). The piece has also received recognition with the AEROWAVES Spring Forward Twenty20 mention.

Julien Carlier

Julien Carlier is a dancer and choreographer with a background in urban culture and breakdance. His creative work, which he has been developing for over ten years, is inspired by artistic encounters and dialogue on stage between different practices and modes of expression. His recent works include GOLEM (2019), DRESS CODE (2021), COLLAPSE (2021), and PAYSAGE (2024). He is one of the artists selected by the prestigious Aerowaves platform in 2020. After being resident artist at Charleroi Danse between 2020 and 2022, he is actually associated with the Théâtre de Liège until 2028. He founded ABIS company in 2017, and ever since, it embraces an experimental approach that constantly blends disciplines and claims a hybrid aspect, situated between multiple forms of aesthetics.
https://www.juliencarlier.be/

GONE – Margarita Trikka 819 1024 akropoditi13

GONE – Margarita Trikka

Greece

The performance will be followed by an open discussion with the audience.

The work “Gone” broadens the choreographer’s research scope on the theme of Defeat, focusing on collective memory. It is a tribute to the stories of our grandparents during Occupation and Resistance.
By incorporating these stories, the work explores the so-called “difficult heritage,” the wound that remains open, the possibility to overcome it or not, and the imprint it leaves on the collective body as well as on the unique individuals comprising it. When old age turns experience into history, the collective body is there to keep it alive.
Four bodies of different ages are placed in a public space, incarnating a moving sculpture, a living monument to the fallen, who will share the story of their trauma. Drawing inspiration from Lenin’s saying, “One step forward, two steps back,” the choreographer applies it as movement material. The group creates a rhythmic score of bodies, through which the crystallized certainties of a monument gradually melt, transform, and become the testimony of those who fought, were defeated, fell in love, dreamed, and are now elderly, one by one, leaving us. They are leaving. What do they leave behind?
Is there a collective physical memory? Can oral history be integrated? Can dance narrate what is suppressed?

Credits
Concept/Choreography: Margarita Trikka
Original Music: Fotis Siotas
Music/ Sound Design: George Melesanakis
Graphic Design: Mavra Gidia
Movement material creation/Costumes: Nikos Kalivas, Loukia Konidari, Katerina Spyropoulou, Margarita Trikka
Performers: Nikos Dragonas, Loukia Konidari, Katerina Spyropoulou, Margarita Trikka
Video: Manos Arvanitakis
Executive Production: Prolet OCD

Duration: 26 min.
Trailer:

* We sincerely thank the film collective “Collective Memory” for providing audio material from the film The Partisans of Athens.

Margarita Trikka

Margarita Trikka is choreographer, performer and dance teacher based in Athens. She graduated from the Professional Dance School “Rallou Manou” and the Theatre Studies department of National and Kapodestrian University of Athens. In 2017 she founded Prolet OCD dance co. and choreographed 4 dance works toured in several festivals in Greece and Europe. The company has been supported financialy by Greek Ministry. As movement consultant at theatre, she collaborated with many festivals, directors and companies: National Opera (Alternative Stage), National Theater, Onassis Cultural Center, Megaron Athens, Arc Gor Dance Festival, Rafi Music Theater Company, D.Maramis, V.Koukalani, E.Fanarioti, K.Papakonstantinou, S.Karagianni, M. Protopappa etc.
As a performer, collaborated with festivals and companies in Greece and Europe: La Fundicion Bilbao, Masdanza International Contemporary Dance Festival, Athens Video Dance Festival, MIR Festival, Dimitria, Bread and Puppet Theater, Chto Delat, Synthesis 347/ Spyros Kouvaras, Aerites Dance Company, Stella Spirou Cie, Artemis Lampiri, Apostolia Papadamaki, Yelp Dance Company, Antigoni Gyra & Kinitiras a.m.
She has been teaching since 2005 contemporary dance, improvisation and History of Dance at dance studios, drama schools, and social institutions. She runs workshops in collaboration with National Opera’s program for women prison at Thiva and Hellenic Theater/Drama & Education Network.

Warning for Contemplation sections – Elenita Queiróz – Basis 56 819 1024 akropoditi13

Warning for Contemplation sections – Elenita Queiróz – Basis 56

Brazil –Switzerland

Warning for Contemplation Sections is a dance manifesto exploring resistance, exhaustion, rebellion, and the inexorable truths of bodily finiteness. Queiróz’s work investigates the interplay of struggle, wildness, collapse, mutual support, and the temporal nature of motion power. The piece confronts the societal demands placed on women, particularly the contradictions of motherhood and the cumulative wear of time, leading to both exhaustion and transformation. It advocates for resistance through stillness, contemplation, and raw expression, defying relentless expectations.
The choreography integrates concepts such as Portrait, Landscape, and Collapse, reflecting the fragility and resilience of aging forms. Performers transform into fleeting landscapes and fragmented portraits, evoking timeless yet finite encounters with the audience. Wildness surfaces as a dormant, untamed force, magnified by the vulnerabilities of aging flesh yet persisting with primal energy.
This work engages performers and viewers in a shared reckoning of connection, and motion’s ephemeral power. Collapse becomes not just rebellion but an acceptance of finiteness, a paradoxical liberation that embraces riot, stasis, and collective vulnerability as acts of profound courage. Through this epic, transformative performance, Queiróz critiques systemic inequalities, offering a vision of collective radicalism and vulnerability as acts of rebellion.

Credits
Concept, artistic direction, choreography, dance: Elenita Queiróz
Co-choreography, dance: Charlotte Mathiessen, Mara Natterer, Léa Thomen
Dramaturgical advice: Ted Stoffer
Music composition: Raoul Alain Nagel
Costumes: Laura Oertle and Marisa Stutznegger – Oema Kostüme
Light design: Patrik Rimann
Production management: Elenita Queiróz – Basis 56

Duration: 60 min.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/elenitaqueiroz/warningtrailer

The piece has been presented at:
13.10.2022 TANZHAUS ZÜRICH (PREMIER)
14.10.2022 TANZHAUS ZÜRICH
21.10.2022 PHÖNIX THEATER STECKBORN
29.10.2022 LOKREMISE ST.GALLEN
30.10.2022 LOKREMISE ST.GALLEN
13.05.2023 ROXY BIRSFELDEN BASEL

Elenita Queiróz

Elenita Queiróz, a Brazilian-born choreographer, performer and cultural manager, combines passion, intuition and feminist themes in her work, most recently exploring the tensions within motherhood and grind culture. Based in Switzerland since 2016, she has collaborated with international artists and institutions and created her own work over 22 years. Recognized with the 2023 WerkbeitragSt.Gallen and the 2021 TanzPlan Ost Choreography Prize, her latest works include Warning for Contemplation Sections (2022) and The Fabulous Ones (2024). Queiróz holds a Master’s degree in Expanded Theatre from the Hochschule der Künste Bern, a postgraduate degree in Cultural Management from SESC São Paulo, and a Bachelor’s degree in Dance and Pedagogy from UNICAMP. She has recently collaborated with Brigitte Walk and Beatrice imObersteg, participated in the Paula Interfestival, Choreolab TPO 2021 and 2023, the IBK Bodensee Conference, among others, and worked with Konzert und Theater St. Gallen, choreographing Der Anonyme Liebhaber (2022) and performing in Breaking the Waves (2021) and Wilhelm Tell (2024).
https://elenitaqueiroz.ch/

Soleil Constant – Louise Baduel 819 1024 akropoditi13

Soleil Constant – Louise Baduel

Belgium

The performance will be followed by an open discussion with the audience.

Louise Baduel invited Pascale Gigon (an iconic dancer from Brussels) to return on stage after 20 years. Together, they question what it means to age for women in our society and reveal with gentleness and sisterhood all their fragility and contradictions to address our relationship to the world, to the passing of time and the anxiety of an inevitable end.
Through movement and textile materials, they create a visual and colorful universe that evokes both the strength of nature and the artificiality of our lifestyles. Can we overcome fatalism and its corollary of climate inaction and replace it with optimism and collective action?
Between fiction and reality, Pascale and Louise shake up our habits with derision and reason.

Credits
Choreography: Louise Baduel
Interpretation: Louise Baduel, Pascale Gigon
Text: collective writing with the valuable help of Sébastien Fayard, Léa Zilber and Donatien de le Court
Voice over: Léa Zilber
Costume designer: Leslie Ferré
Scenography: Donatien de le Court
Music: Marc Mélia
Light: Meri Ekola

Duration: 50 min.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/7iIrU_2Avg4

The piece has been presented at Brussels at the Brigittines 23>27.04.2024 : https://www.brigittines.be/fr/saison-2023-24/soleil-constant and at the festival PROPULSE: https://propulsefestival.be

Louise Baduel

Louise Baduel is a dancer-choreographer based in Brussels. After studying music and dance at the Aix-en-Provence Conservatory, she joined Rosella Hightower’s school in Cannes, then continued her studies at P.A.R.T.S. and at the ULB where she obtained a master’s degree in Performing Arts. It is in this context that Louise created a solo entitled L.BRUISSE. In 2013, she co-founded the company System Failure with Leslie Mannès and together they set up a trilogy: SYSTEM FAILURE in 2013, HUMAN DECISION in 2015 and INITIAL ANATOMY in 2019. In 2021 she created a new solo entitled LOOP AFFECT, in 2024 with Pascale Gigonthey made a duo called SOLEIL CONSTANT and she is currently working on a new show for a young audience, CHROMATIQUE that will be presented in April 25 in Brussels. Her work is distinguished by its multidisciplinary aspect and gives rise to hybrid pieces. Louise attaches great importance to making her choreographic practice accessible to all and try to approach existential or societal themes with simplicity, humor and transparency.

Y Todavía Somos – Julia Nicolau 819 1024 akropoditi13

Y Todavía Somos – Julia Nicolau

Spain

The performance will be followed by an open discussion with the audience.

Y Todavía Somos is the result of an exploratory process whose main premise was to shape and understand what we understand as aging, through the body and dance. This piece aspires to be a living testimony of the intersection between senescence and the cultural roots of my hometown Jijona (Alicante) through choreography, musical composition and words.
Y Todavía Somos combines tradition and contemporary by reinterpreting through contemporary composition techniques, a piece of music from my region. A Levantine pasodoble very representative of the Valencian Culture with the use of a Loop Station, flute and castanets. A sound space created live that is the trigger for this choreographic work.
Movement, articulation and pause are the three elements that support the choreology of this piece and that bring me closer to this de-subjectivation, this silence and this encounter with old age. Movement understood as a desire to rebel and not to perish, not to grow old. Articulation as something that rends and wobbles when old age enters through our pores and expels youth at every crack. The pause as a wait that leads us to tedium, to what stagnates and redounds.

Credits
Choreographer and dancer: Julia Nicolau
Assistant: Francisco Gaitán
Light Design: Miguel Ruz Velasco and Nuria Henriquez Navarro
Music: Jhana Beat and Julia Nicolau

Duration: 26 min.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/cCYTTQydBDo

The piece has been presented at:
12/11/2022: 40º Festival de Otoño, Madrid
13/11/2022: 40º Festival de Otoño, Madrid
19/11/2022: Museo Municipal de Cartago, Costa Rica
20/11/2022: Teatro UNA, Heredia, Costa Rica
22/11/2022: Teatro UNA, Heredia, Costa Rica
23/11/2022: La Tigra San Carlos, Costa Rica
25/11/2022: Salón Corporeos, Quepos, Costa Rica
27/11/2022: Universidad TEC San Carlos, Costa Rica
28/06/2023: Cine de Dalt, Xixona, Alicante
01/07/2023: Centro Coreográfico de la Gomera, Canary Islands
25/06/2023: Tjarnabíó Theatre, RVK Fringe Festival, Iceland
27/07/2023: Tjarnabíó Theatre, RVK Fringe Festival, Iceland
30/04/2023: Tjarnabíó Theatre, RVK Fringe Festival, Iceland
17/09/2023: Festival Vecindario, León
26/02/2024: 600 Beats Festival, Florence, Italy
09/03/2024: Centro Cultural de España en México, Mexico City, México
13/03/2024: Festival Bordes Escénicos, Mazunte, México
18/04/2024: Festival Danzattack, Tenerife, Canary Islands
01/08/2024: Solo Contemporary Dance Festival of Ankara, Turkey
26/11/2022: Salón Corporeos, Quepos, Costa Rica

Julia Nicolau

This year, Julia Nicolau is nominated for Best Dancer at the IVC Awards. She is currently touring in Turkey, Mexico, Costa Rica, Iceland, Italy, and Spain with her latest creation Y TodavíaSomos, which was featured at the 40th Festival de Otoño in Madrid. Recently, she worked on a new production for the InstitutValencià de Cultura. Previously, she collaborated with the Antonio Ruz Dance Company and Miguel del Arco on Las Noches de Tefía, with Arthur Bernard Bazin on Rota at Centro Coreográfico Canal, and with Cuarta Pared Teatro on Antes-Después. In London, she worked with Sadler’s Wells on Rodin Reflections and with Third Arrangement Physical Theatre Company (Andrzej and Teresa Welminski) on international tours of Pages from the Book of… and Kometa. She has also collaborated with Cía Co-Lapso, Cía Mey-ling Bisogno, and Poliana Lima. She holds an MA in Contemporary Dance from CWRU (USA), where she performed with ODC Dance Company, and a BFA in Physical Theatre from RESAD. She has trained at Rose Bruford College and received the L. Eva Pancoast Award for the Kuala Lumpur Contact Improv Festival. Her contemporary dance piece To Disappear in Three Acts won a Comunidad de Madrid grant and a National Performing Arts Award. Y TodavíaSomos is also nominated for a MAX Award as Best Revelation.

Contemporary dance – Elenita Queiróz 819 1024 akropoditi13

Contemporary dance – Elenita Queiróz

Soft Rebellion
Contemporary dance workshop

Exploring themes of exhaustion, vulnerability, and rebellion, the workshop Soft Rebellion invites participants to engage with the methodology developed by Elenita Queiróz for her dance piece Warning for Contemplation Sections. The approach navigates the tension between oppositional forces—balancing stillness, sustained positions, and minimal movements with raw, energetic motion. Through guided artistic exploration, participants reflect on their personal values, embodied expressions, and individual stances to uncover what they stand for. This journey transforms personal insights into a collective movement, culminating in a shared manifesto. The workshop offers a dynamic space for self-exploration, collaboration, and artistic resistance, encouraging participants to engage with their bodies and beliefs.

Ages: 16+
Level: All

 

Photo credit:

 

Elenita Queiróz

Elenita Queiróz is a Brazilian-born choreographer, performer, and cultural thinker whose career in contemporary dance reflects a profound engagement with the complexities of identity, feminist discourse, and the fragility of human existence. Since 2016 based in Switzerland, Queiróz channels her life experiences and interdisciplinary training into works that resonate with universal themes while maintaining a deeply personal edge. Based in Switzerland since 2016, she has collaborated with international artists and institutions worldwide and created her own work over 22 years. Recognized with the 2023 WerkbeitragSt.Gallen and the 2021 TanzPlan Ost Choreography Prize, her latest works include Warning for Contemplation Sections (2022) and The Fabulous Ones (2024). Queiróz holds a Master’s degree in Expanded Theatre from the Hochschule der Künste Bern – CH, a postgraduate degree in Cultural Management from SESC São Paulo, and a Bachelor’s degree in Dance and Pedagogy from UNICAMP – BR.
“I feel small in the face of life’s magnificence. On stage, I’m equal: immense, fragile and insatiable.” (Elenita Queiróz)

Contemporary dance – Julia Nicolau 819 1024 akropoditi13

Contemporary dance – Julia Nicolau

The Skin Trumbles
Contemporary dance workshop

The Skin Trumbles is a methodical and immersive workshop for emerging dancers and dance makers, blending choreographic sequences with personal expression. Through a series of technical combinations and improvisation, participants will explore how their individual movements—shaped by social, political, and cultural forces—can tell unique personal stories. We will begin with structured technical exercises, focusing on precision and movement patterns, before integrating improvisation to express moments of tension, resistance, and identity. By exploring the intersection of technique and personal narrative, participants will learn to create a collective movement language that challenges dominant cultural norms and opens space for new meanings. This workshop emphasizes the body as both a site of individual experience and collective expression, offering tools for self-discovery, creative expression, and social transformation.

Ages: 18 – 100 years old
Level: For emerging dancers and dance makers

 

Photo credit:

 

Julia Nicolau

This year, Julia Nicolau is nominated for Best Dancer at the IVC Awards. She is currently touring in Turkey, Mexico, Costa Rica, Iceland, Italy, and Spain with her latest creation Y TodavíaSomos, which was featured at the 40th Festival de Otoño in Madrid. Recently, she worked on a new production for the InstitutValencià de Cultura. Previously, she collaborated with the Antonio Ruz Dance Company and Miguel del Arco on Las Noches de Tefía, with Arthur Bernard Bazin on Rota at Centro Coreográfico Canal, and with Cuarta Pared Teatro on Antes-Después. In London, she worked with Sadler’s Wells on Rodin Reflections and with Third Arrangement Physical Theatre Company (Andrzej and Teresa Welminski) on international tours of Pages from the Book of… and Kometa. She has also collaborated with Cía Co-Lapso, Cía Mey-ling Bisogno, and Poliana Lima. She holds an MA in Contemporary Dance from CWRU (USA), where she performed with ODC Dance Company, and a BFA in Physical Theatre from RESAD. She has trained at Rose Bruford College and received the L. Eva Pancoast Award for the Kuala Lumpur Contact Improv Festival. Her contemporary dance piece To Disappear in Three Acts won a Comunidad de Madrid grant and a National Performing Arts Award. Y TodavíaSomos is also nominated for a MAX Award as Best Revelation.

Contemporary Dance and Improvisation – Penelope Morout 819 1024 akropoditi13

Contemporary Dance and Improvisation – Penelope Morout

Sculpting Body-Images
Contemporary Dance and Improvisation masterclass

Sculpting Body-Images is a movement workshop of intense physicality, shaped to bring awareness to the conscious act of offering, seeing and perceiving the body in relation to interchangeable elements. All participants are invited to engage into a mapping process: through tasked-based improvisation (body & voice) and game-like situations inspired by Fighting Monkey Practice (founded by Linda Kapetanea & Jozef Frucek), we will recognize-deconstruct-reconstruct personal patterns, identify compositional modes of working, and reflect upon the relationship between what is presented and how it is presented. We will work both alone and in couples or groups. There will be physical contact in order to manipulate the body and we will focus on stimulating the nervous system, increasing stamina and developing motor skills that improve agility through coordination, rhythm and elastic footwork skills.
Building upon the idea of a caring, judgment-free community, where all members are encouraged to embrace their individuality and weave their unique artistic voice, we will approach physical exploration with curiosity, playfulness and generosity.
SBI is a story-telling practice: it is about approaching the moving body from a 360° view and consciously choosing how, what and why we want to communicate with the world. All stories matter: they nourish our interaction with others and our connection with ourselves.

Ages: 17+
Level: Open Level (due to the workshop’s intense Physicality, a familiarity and/or previous experience with movement (dance, sports, physical activities etc.) is recommended, but not mandatory)

 

Photo credit:

Penelope Morout

Founder of CROSS IMPACT Company, is an interdisciplinary dance artist, intrigued by creating hybrid projects through the fusion of various performing and visual art mediums. Graduated from the National School of Dance (Athens) and the National Technical University of Athens – School of Architecture, with a Master’s degree in Theatre Practices from ArtEZ University of the Arts (NL), her artistic identity lies on a durational creative process, during which academic and artistic research are intrinsically connected with her movement practice. Her latest performance EMOTIONAL DOGS was realized under the auspices and the financial support of the Greek Ministry of Culture and, continuing having the support of the latter as well as of THE J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, is scheduled to tour during 2025.
Penelope works constantly between Greece and abroad as a performer, choreographer, dance teacher and scenographer. As a filmmaker she has participated in exhibitions and video dance & dance animation festivals worldwide. As an educator, she has shaped her own movement practice “Sculpting Body-Images”, which she shares around the world (PERA GAU School of Performing Arts, Munus Encuentro Mexico, Nunart Guinardó Barcelona, Points to Play Mulhouse, Akropoditi International Dance and Performing Arts Festival Syros, Unplugged Dance Lefkada, Kalamata International Dance Festival). Penelope implements in her teaching methodology elements inspired by “Fighting Monkey”, a practice by Linda Kapetanea and Jozef Frucek, with whom she has been training for 15 years.