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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.

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

Artist talk – Angela Bettoni 819 1024 akropoditi13

Artist talk – Angela Bettoni

Malta

My Art, My Voice: Rethinking How We See Disability on Stage

In this presentation, Angela Bettoni, a Malta-based performer, writer and advocate with Down Syndrome, will talk about her journey in navigating the stage as an artist with an intellectual disability. She will also share some experiences of international training/performing opportunities she has had in Germany, Greece, Italy, Sri Lanka, Sweden and UK, and lessons learned, which can be valuable for those wishing to integrate dancers/movers with learning disabilities. Angela will also share some findings from her BA degree dissertation research on “Representation for people with learning disabilities in the performing arts in Malta”, together with learning gained from her current course of study at the University of Malta, the Higher Diploma in Community Access for Disabled People. She will conclude with some recommendations on what is needed to empower people with learning disabilities and increase their opportunities for professional work in the performing arts, encouraging the audience to ask themselves how emphasizing shared values and an ethics of care can create more inclusive access for practitioners with varied needs and experiences, resulting in improved equity.

The talk will be held in English

Angela Bettoni

Angela Bettoni is a performer, writer and advocate with Down Syndrome, whose work bridges artistic practice, disability advocacy, and international collaboration. She holds a BA in Creative Arts, where her dissertation examined how people with learning disabilities are represented within Malta’s performing arts landscape. She has an Advanced Diploma in Performing Arts (MCAST, Malta) and Diploma in Community Access for Disabled People (University of Malta). Her artistic development has been shaped by involvement with Opening Doors Association Malta, an organization that provides training in arts to disabled adults, and international training opportunities, including a five-week danceWEB scholarship to the ImpulsTanz Festival in Vienna, residencies and Erasmus programmes in Venice, London, Sweden and Greece, including with Skanes Dansteatre, and inclusive companies Chickenshed Theatre and Stopgap Dance Company, UK. Angela has performed in mixed-ability work across Malta, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Sri Lanka, appearing solo/duet/trio performances, and has performed at Dance Festival Malta and Venere in Teatro Dance Festival Italy. She received a University of Malta Social Commitment Award for contribution to the arts industry (2024) and a JCI Malta (Junior Chamber International) Ten Outstanding Young Persons (TOYP) Award for her advocacy work on inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities (2022).
www.angelabettoni.net

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 ).