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lecture

SYMPOSIUM: Rethinking the Disabled Body in Dance – ARSI NETWORK 819 1024 akropoditi13

SYMPOSIUM: Rethinking the Disabled Body in Dance – ARSI NETWORK

Greece

Rethinking the Disabled Body in Dance: Representations and Practices

The symposium is an open invitation to the public to explore and experience different approaches to dance and disability, through a journey that combines presentations, screenings, discussion, and participation. The audience will engage with the ways the dancing body has been historically defined, as well as with contemporary artistic practices that challenge stereotypes and advocate for the visibility of disability. Through examples from Greece and abroad, a new aesthetic emerges—one grounded in coexistence and inclusion.
Participants will be invited to actively engage in experiential processes, where personal stories become a starting point for reflection, exchange, and experimentation with accessibility practices. This experience will lead to the collective shaping of core principles of inclusion, creating a shared space for expression and understanding.
The day concludes with an open discussion featuring artists and members of the local community of Syros, where the audience is encouraged to participate, raise questions, and share thoughts on art, accessibility, and social coexistence.

PROGRAM OF THE SYMPOSIUM
of the ARSI Network for Dance and Disability

10: 00 – 10:15  WELCOME

10: 15 – 10:45  Α. PRESENTATION OF THE ARSI NETWORK & AKROPODITI FESTIVAL

Arsi Network is a nationwide network of disabled and non-disabled artists and cultural professionals active in the field of performing arts in Greece and abroad, with long-standing experience in inclusive dance.
Speakers: Demy Papathanasiou, Yiota Peklari, Anna Vekiari
Duration: 15 minutes

 11:00 – 12:30  Β. THE DISABLED BODY ON STAGE: A WAY TO BE TOGETHER

  1. The Disabled Body and the Dancing Body

The lecture examines the ways in which the disabled body and the dancing body have been historically constructed and explores the role of the body in shaping our perceptions of disability.
Speaker: Valasia Symeonidou
Duration: 15 minutes

  1. The first steps (and the first missteps) of inclusive dance

The first disabled dancers and choreographers are demanding visibility and challenging traditional forms, aesthetics, and perceptions of dance and the body.
Speaker: Medie Megas
Duration: 15 minutes

Brief Break

  1. The Landscape in Greece

An attempt to outline the landscape of dance and disability in Greece, with reference to dancers and choreographers who have raised awareness and contributed to the field’s current growth.
Speaker: Filareti Papadopoulou
Duration: 20 minutes

  1. The Disabled Body on Stage Today

How is the performing arts being reshaped today by disabled bodies, both in Greece and internationally.
Speakers: Maria Koliopoulou, Demy Papathanasiou
Duration: 20 minutes

12:30-13:30  Light Meal

13:30-15:30  C. LEARNING FROM COEXISTENCE

  1. Stories as a tool for learning, experimentation, and understanding

This section is built on the power of personal narrative. Members of the network share experiences around inclusion and accessibility. In some cases, the narratives lead to practical exercises, in which participants are invited to actively engage.
Speakers: Medie Megas, Yiota Peklari, , Anna Vekiari, Valasia Symeonidou, Olga Dalekou
Duration: 90 minutes

  1. Shaping core principles of inclusion, TOGETHER

Through a participatory process, first in smaller groups and then in plenary, we shape shared principles of inclusion, which will be accompanied by practical tools and shared with participants after the symposium.
Speakers: Medie Megas, Yiota Peklari, , Anna Vekiari, Valasia Symeonidou, Olga Dalekou
Duration: 30 minutes

 15:30 -16:00 Break

16:00 -17:30  D. DIALOGUE WITH THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

Open discussion with invited guests from Syros and free participation from the audience.
Moderation: Angeliki Sakellariou, Maria Koliopoulou, Demy Papathanasiou
Duration: 90 minutes

 

Arsi Network

The Arsi Network is a nationwide network of disabled and non-disabled artists and cultural professionals active in the field of performing arts in Greece and abroad, with long-standing experience in inclusive dance.
Their work in this field encompasses a significant part of the history of inclusive dance in Greece, dating back to the 1980s, and includes dozens of initiatives, performances, dancers, spaces, and organizations that have actively supported the equal inclusion of people with disabilities in dance professions. In recent years, the field has experienced unprecedented momentum, which has further driven the creation of this network.
A core value of the Arsi Network is inclusion and integration, as well as universal accessibility for disabled artists. The network operates on a non-profit basis, with dance as its primary focus, while remaining open to all art forms and embracing an expanded understanding of dance as an art form that does not discriminate.
www.arsinetwork.com

Accessibility Information

– 4th Elementary School of Ermoupolis
The venue is wheelchair accessible and includes an accessible restroom meeting disability access standards. (Entrance from G. Petritsi and Ploutarchou street)

For further accessibility information, please contact us at: akropoditidancefest@gmail.com or by phone at +30 697 379 2685.

A talk regarding social theatre – Ilias Kounelas 1024 1024 akropoditi13

A talk regarding social theatre – Ilias Kounelas

THE PEOPLE HAVE LEFT THE CIRCUS
A talk by Ilias Kounelas regarding social theatre or how a performance longs to rest in the spectator’s heart

It’s like trying to recall the dream you once had. Likewise, Ilias Kounelas unfolds a series of performances, played out on small surfaces, through a real narrative of imaginary journeys always for minimal audiences who find themselves in urgent situations. By giving life to audiences and using unorthodox natural scenery in site-specific atmospheres, he transports us in paradoxical theatrical conditions, thus, unraveling the significant potential and different aspects of Social Theatre and, by extension, Applied Theatre; always seeking this space of execution, which, while it seems de-charmingly ephemeral, it simultaneously travels forever.

The talk will be conducted in Greek

Ages: All
Level: All

 

Photo credit: #thehead

Ilias Kounelas

He is teaching since 2012 at the Athens Conservatory Drama School the class „Clown / a class about failure“. It’s a self-exposure class that has as subject the things that actors do not love about themselves.
He is rapporteur of the Laskaridis Foundation. The title of his contribution is “The pleasant story of a failed man”.
An alumni of the National Theatre of Northern Greece Drama School, since 2006, he has collaborated with many distinguished directors and many important theatres.
In 2010, after working for commercial theatre, he starts dreaming of a chamber theatre where the audience and the actor will be sitting on the same level and will have “common skin in the theatre game”. He thus creates a theatre “of the person”, where he starts giving value to each spectator as a person. He believes that every person in herself constitutes a full theatre. He abandons the classical theatre stages and creates performances in natural surroundings that are addressed each time to a limited number of spectators. He plays in abandoned neoclassical houses, in church yards, in squares, rooftops, prisons and hospitals.
The performance “Garden – Ashes / from the velvet album of the 20th century” (2011 -2013) for example, was staged for two years in an abandoned neoclassical building at Kolonos for 22 spectators each time.
The performance “The 8th day” was staged in 220 homes in the whole of Athens. The performance hosted and was hosted. It could be played in anybody’s living room, but you could always visit it in any living room it was being played. It traveled to Cyprus, Salonica and Greek-speaking homes of Switzerland, and it constituted a distinct experience for those who attended each time.
In the summer of 2014 he conceives the action ”Hospital visit” and suggests it to the National Theatre, which embraces it to this day. In this action, theatre is performed in hospital rooms, always around a bed, for sick spectators, usually in their final stage. The action ”Hospital visit” counts 600 performances and keeps on.
On May 2018 he grounds the Cultural Consolational Care Organization “Person/face”, which has as its goal to make performative art accessible to spectators that on the current moment of their lives cannot come to the theatre.
He also directs performances that represent the “narrative of the good” in the era of the crisis and convey hope and braveness to the audience. Some of them are:
“Love / a trilogy about the narrative of the good”
“I am sea years old / a song about the generation gap”
On March 2018 he publishes the book “The handbook of a good clown” ( Kaleidoscope Publications ).