‘When I was a child, my mother - who didn't speak Greek well at the time - used to watch Dumbo on TV with me. She didn't understand the words, but she took me in her arms and told me that one day I would fly away from the city too.’
Extract from an interview with a resident of Elefsina, February 2024

The work focuses on listening to the voice that emerges from within us when everything around us is silent. It brings to the fore a constant regression between fragility and determination, a body sculpted by its voice. Through vocal patterns, rhythmic gestures, improvisations and repetitive structures, the experience of growing up in the city of Elefsina unfolds as a personal memory and a universal question: Which voice within us moves us? What voice within us nurtures us?

X, moving between silence and cry, seeks a point of balance. M's voice becomes a mirror, a maternal memory, a filter - sometimes leading, sometimes holding back, sometimes challenging. The rhythm of the metronome becomes a heartbeat, a tool of transition. 

The choreography does not tell a story. It is itself the process of its birth. From the minimal to the enormous.

Choreographer’s note

At the heart of Elephant is a voice - not just as a sound, but as a carrier of memory, rupture and care. For me, choreography is not a simple arrangement of bodies, but a tuning of presence: what happens when we actually listen? The work is born out of a listening session in Elefsina - a threshold city and a stage site of inner coercion. A queer body, a displaced child, remembers a mother who instilled self-confidence in a world that took it away.

The Elephant is a transformative figure: an impossible flight, moments of tableau vivant where freedom is born in prison. The performance stands between self-confidence and its complete absence; where self-concept collides with social projection - it is not the way others look at me that changes, but my own view of the world.

The scene becomes a site of rupture, as Badiou defines it: an event that cannot be explained in terms of the past, but requires new faith. Here, the voice - shifting, fragile, determined - guides the movement. Melodic, it hovers, it becomes an imperative rhythm.

For Elephant I chose minimalism in movement not as a style but as an economy - the attempt to move precisely without noise - that generates tension. Like an Oedipus who sees while blind, the queer body here is reconstituted through voice, rupture and the visibility of another world that already exists.

Concept • Choreography: Angelos Papadopoulos 

Original Music Composition: Marissa Bili

Photos: Dimitra Tzannou

Performance: Xaris Dimos

Inspired by the women who worked at TITAN Cement factory in Elefsina, Collect Yourself explores the connection between people and cement, using it as a metaphor for human experience and personal development.  

Just as cement hardens through a process, human beings harden through their experiences. Our experiences can crack us and even cause us to lose parts of ourselves. 

How necessary is this process, in the end, in order to "break" our own "cement" and free ourselves?

Choreographer’s note

The movement that emerges.

From the skin, from the bones, from the depth of instinct.

Where the woman remembers.

With every turn, intuition is awakened.

With each pause, space is made for the wild.

For play, for redemption, for total devotion.

In the beginning alone. Then together.

Bodies searching, recognizing, merging.

It's not a dance of survival.

It's an invocation.

It's a ritual.

It's a return.

An ode to the woman screaming under the moon,

who never forgot what it's like to belong to your body.

Concept • Choreography: Elina Demirtzioglou

Set: Panos Profitis

Sound design: Vassilina

Promo material design / Video: Angelos Socos

Performance & Material cocreation: Emma Antivasi, Elena Psimmenou, Xenia Stathouli

Special thanks: Argiro Orfanoudaki, Mairi Gianoula, Gizem Bilgen

Between the conscious and the unconscious, all elements sleepwalk and blend together without fully matching.

Memory and dance intersect reality with imagination and place them in a space that balances between sleep and wakefulness.

Through the dreams of the Eleusinian residents, a mix of images, gestures, and movements is inspired—intertwining and conversing with each other using a vocabulary that is constantly altering. 

Three bodies unfold mosaic stories drawn from the collective dreamscape of a city asleep.

Choreographer’s note

Somewhere between my choreographic path in the pop scene and my need to delve creatively into a different framework of artistic expression, I found myself in Elefsina and the U(R)TOPIAS Academy of Choreography.

During the first year, I was completely confused and nervously tried to fit simultaneously into creative contexts that are often seen as opposites. Commercial and contemporary art. It was precisely this in-between and simultaneous state that began to align me with Elefsina and its liminal environment, defined by its myths and history. The relationship of the goddess Demeter with Persephone and Hades, the Kallichoron well –a gateway to the underworld – and the Eleusinian Mysteries as a ritual to overcome the fear of death, became the primary elements of my research.

The idea involving dreams emerged during the second year of the Academy and became a motivation for me to engage with the town's residents. The interviews, the events surrounding them, and the connections I formed were the most valuable gifts of this experience. The two years of research began to interconnect during the residency and led me to the thought that dreams represent a threshold between life and death.

You are not alive, you haven’t died — you are in between.

I recorded dream narratives from residents of Eleusis of various ages, backgrounds, and professions. They shared loop dreams, dreams featuring mythological gods, and personal nightmares. I also recorded my own dreams whenever I slept in the town. 

By translating the images/narratives into movements and gestures, a kinetic alphabet was created that allowed commercial movement vocabulary to be integrated into the work and continually redefined. The need for a sleepwalking condition among the dancers is approached through the coexistence of conscious and unconscious movements that are repeated and intervene in the choreography.

Concept • Choreography: Nefeli Theodotou

Costume Design: Apostolos Mitropoulos

Music: RAAD

Promo material photos: Marios Hadjantoni

Performers: Velma Andrianaki, Ioanna Kagiou, Nefeli Theodotou

Special thanks: Daphne Stasini, Aliki, Eleftheria, Vassiliki, Karolina, Cult_terra community, George Prifti, Ad:Mark

What happens in a place where everything has already happened?

From the reality of a yard, I visit the place where physical exhaustion takes place, with the purpose of transformation and the anticipation of a mysterious “something,” exploring how imagination is summoned as a means of survival and change. The silence of the body in the process of intensive effort, a defined space with indefinite possibilities, contributes to a field of battle, prayer, indignation, promise of not giving up before giving everything in the disorder of tenderness. A song dedicated to Elefsina that hurts and is hurting, a dreamy transition to the elusive dream, to the way out, to the moment when the body is everything and nothing, to fatigue, to hope, to indignation, to a transcendental step towards the unknown.

Choreographer’s note

In Eleusis, everything seems to be in a state of anticipation, as if something new is about to happen. The constant noise, the movement of populations, a chimney smoking in its sky, the stories that are passed on to those who pass through this city. It feels as if everything has already occurred.

In the process of researching this embodiment, I focused on the combination of voice and body and was led to the creation of a deconstructed concert, emphasizing the contrast between the flow of speech and the resistance of the body.

The work brings into the space a home’s yard where everything seems normal, yet the space is "out of balance". It is inspired by all the things no one wants to talk about, attempting to "illuminate" them and transform obscurity into power and a place of change.

Song 1

now the house reminds me of an end, rain drips from the ceiling / in the photo albums, burned faces, my life is burned too / the stories of the city are violent, how can I manage to be justified? / in this place, no wound ever heals / I apologize for what I am about to say

happiness hidden in my childhood room / happiness is afraid I'll leave from here / I count the nights before I fall asleep / I count the moments and only celebrate death

Song 2

from the ashes to the present, I cut the umbilical cords, I am the source of evil / no matter how bitter the end may be, like an arrow, it will tear the prayers of the people / and I open the sky, lighting up the past and still, I don’t see God / I fear I won’t be able to keep running / it’s paradise, but it’s also me

tonight, tell me the truth, cross your fingers, crucify your children, don't feed them anymore from the rotten past / bring them to see the explosive present / like a razor on a tongue that melts stone / no enmity holds the measure anymore / the lights here only dazzle / but mouths can’t be silenced / don’t forget this, my love

I see with my mouth and kill with my heart, which becomes redder than its blood / which kindness should I believe in, my only weapon is that today I might enchant you / the distance between us swims in the breath's range, rooted in our lungs, embracing the cement, embracing you, 20,000 feet below the sea

I am a tripping, a protruding corner, a terrible misfortune, a grim existence, a missing button, a candle that won’t light, a flat tire, a refrigerator that doesn’t freeze but rots / a car that only goes in reverse, a window permanently closed, a dark room / and yet / I am here with one wish / that I’ll give everything to make it come true

Concept • Choreography • Lyrics • Performance: Mairi Giannoula

Music / Teaser / Photography: Alexis Falantas

Set Design: Eudokia Makri, Fofo Mastori

An environment. A structure. A person inhabiting it. A place both familiar and distant. He soon realizes he no longer exists in his homeland. To (re)position himself, he must either resist or surrender to the social structure around him. This journey forces him to measure his values and confront his boundaries and the past.

 The performance ecHoos delves into the relationship between contemporary humans and the society they inhabit. It questions whether we genuinely belong within the social, political, and gender frameworks that shape our lives, or if our journey is merely a constant struggle for adaptation. As we strive to reposition our bodies within these structures, our histories—personal and collective—can become resources or obstacles.

Ultimately, ecHoos challenges us to consider: Is it only the individual who is transformed through this process, or does the place itself also undergo change?

Choreographer’s note

 /ekhoṓs/ < (Greek) from the earth < earth, soil, dirt

Earth. Soil. Roots. Above and below. Before and after. The past. The future. Earth. Soil. A source of nourishment, yet an anchor. Earth. That which defines us. And confines us. That which hosts us. That which protects us. And sometimes it might seek its revenge. Carrying memories, flavors, and echoes. Earth to earth. Dust to dust. From the moment we open our eyes. Until we close them again. One single day. And within it, a lifetime. In a place familiar, yet foreign. Or perhaps unfamiliar, yet known. Where everything echoes, something remembered- but something never quite fits. A space you often see but never wonder what it would be like to be there. Like a house you always pass by- always outside, never inside. Until you are inside. A choice? Or fate? 

A place. A thought. A belief. A decision. And a gaze. Yours. That of a stranger.

And the place transforms. And you can never quite feel settled. You try. You push its boundaries. You try to change yourself. Or maybe- you must. You try to change it. But in the end, it changes you. And it too- is changed. You try to make it yours. Again, and again. You try. To build your own place. From the earth once again. Your memories. Your thoughts. Your beliefs. Your decisions. The soil you carry with you. “…a few photographs, some ‘papers’, and bits of jewelry, stitched into the hem…”. And within that soil, the voices of past still echo. And the voices of what’s to come. Mingling with your own sounds into a lullaby. And the sound of the sea- always there, for the journey.

In the end, how much soil does it take to build your home? The one next door? And the one after that?

Concept • Choreography • Stage Design • Performance: Dimitris Baltas

Photography: Elina Demirtzioglou, Dimitris Baltas

Special thanks: Gidiki band for the song “Skaros” (traditional chant from Epirus / arranged by Gidiki band, album Ahoy), Odisseas Zafiras, M54 team, Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Center in Syros for all the help.

The work is attempting to recreate on stage the state of a dream. Elefsina is transforming into an imaginary land where the human body exists as a medium between transcendence and harmony. A personal journey towards the unfamiliar environment of Vlycha, where the combination of artificial and natural elements merge on a «physicality of transition» and an endless relation between destruction and creation.

Choreographer’s note

What is the land,

but mountain tops

and valleys,

still untouched

by the flooding

of the sea.

Concept • Choreography • Stage Design • Performance: Adonis Vais

Cocreation / Artistic Direction / Video Art: Haris Savvopoulos

Music Composition: Nonika (Marcel Coka)

Assistant Choreographer: Angelos Locos

Landscape Research / Photos: Maria Kosmidi

Visual Artist: Iria Vrettou

Light Design Supervision: Afroditi Neri 

Set Design Supervision: Dimitris Zampopoulos

Technical Support: Vasilis Papailiopoulos

Teaser: Haris Savvopoulos, Adonis Vais