The Ballet of the National Opera travels to Italy

The Ballet of the National Opera travels to Italy and presents the successful production of her Alternative Stage ELS “Human Behavior”a contemporary dance triptych choreographed by Yiannis Mantafounis, Konstantinos Rigos and Ermira Goros, in the Chiostro grande of the Chiostri di San Pietro, the grand courtyard of the iconic monastery of St. Peter in the city of Rezzo Emilia, Italy, on July 12, 2022.

The performance takes place as part of the Danza ai Chiostri summer festival, co-organized by Fondazione Nazionale della Danza / Aterballetto and Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia as part of the “Restate 2022” program of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia. The production is implemented with the support of the donation of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) to strengthen the artistic extroversion of the National Opera.

At the same festival, on July 15, 16 and 17, 2022, three MicroDances of the ELS Ballet will be presented, short dance performances (lasting from 6 to 10 minutes), choreographed by Yiannis Nicolaidis, Elena Kekkou and Konstantinos Rigou. MicroDances are part of the program “An Ideal City”, which is implemented in collaboration with three European dance organizations – Fondazione Nazionale della Danza/Aterballetto (Rezzo Emilia), Les Halles de Schaerbeek (Brussels) and National Opera Ballet (Athens )- and is co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, which aims to support the cultural and creative industry in Europe.

Human Behaviour

The National Opera Ballet presents the contemporary dance triptych Human Behavior in the Chiostro grande of the Chiostri di San Pietro, the grand courtyard of the iconic monastery of St. Peter in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Yiannis Mantafounis choreographs “Point of No Return” to the music of Giorgos Koumentakis, Ermira Goros choreographs “Plan B” to the music of Dimitras Trypanis and Ballet director Konstantinos Rigos “Lieder ohne Worte” to the music of Dimitris Terzakis. The choreographies fluctuate between classical and contemporary styles, giving the ELLS Ballet dancers the opportunity to experiment with new forms and on a smaller scale, to the music of Giorgos Koumentakis, Dimitras Trypanis and Dimitris Terzakis.

Point of No Return

In Point of No Return, the internationally recognized dancer and choreographer Yiannis Mantafounis composes a contemporary dance work with kinesiology elements deeply rooted in the tradition of classical dance. To the tune of Giorgos Koumentakis’ music, the dancers of the ELLS Ballet focus their performance on the transparency and authenticity of the movement through the prism of the classical steps. Although the collective experience of their bodies reflects a highly classical choreographic approach, we can distinguish in the performers a personal stamp and a particularly modern approach to the presence and interpretation of movement, obvious elements that mark the choreographer’s signature in each of his new works.

Lieder ohne Worte

The director of the ELS Ballet, Konstantinos Rigos, bases the choreography of Lieder ohne Worte on three works by the acclaimed composer Dimitris Terzakis, inspired by ancient Greek heritage and modern Greek history. Lieder ohne Worte, a 1994 vocal work presented here in its recent (2019) version for solo viola, is an apotheosis of melody based on the musical system of antiquity. The second work, “Der Hölle Nachklang I” (1992) for alto saxophone and piano, is the composer’s emotionally charged response to the unbearable memory of the German occupation during his childhood, in the period 1941-1944, while the program concludes with the delicate “Words of the Wind” (Sprüche im Wind), a 2009 work consisting of ten short “haiku” for violin and piano.

Plan B

In Plan B, Ermira Goro, a movement and dance theater artist who is always in search of new forms of research and communication of her ideas, notes about the choreography of the Plan B project: “Plan B is a choreographic experimentation on strictly structured, asymmetrical sounds forms. The dancers move through the space in a constantly changing flow from the concrete to the abstract and back again. Plan B, because Plan A didn’t work out and Plan C is already happening.”

MicroDances

Three MicroDances of the ELS Ballet, short dance performances (lasting from 6 to 10 minutes), choreographed by Yiannis Nicolaidis (Knight of Asphalt), Elena Kekkou (Active motivation) and Konstantinos Rigou (Forget me not), will also be presented at part of the Danza ai Chiostri Festival. MicroDances, part of the An Ideal City program, aims to research and explore the possibilities of dance as a public art rooted in the urban fabric of the cities of Athens, Reggio Emilia and Brussels, while the artistic direction is co-signed by Gigi Cristoforetti (Fondazione Nazionale della Danza / Aterballetto), Christoph Galan (Les Halles de Schaerbeek) and Konstantinos Rigos (National Opera Ballet). The three MicroDances will be presented in different spaces of the Chiostri di San Pietro, giving the viewer the opportunity to follow them sequentially as if visiting a museum.

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