Who are the next big names in modern dance? Stegi’s subversive festival of young choreographers returns for its 11th year and puts the music on the line. Onassis Dance Days 2024 (ODD) with a denser program in the three days from February 23 to 25 dances after music, giving sound the lead and taking off the concept of sound design, with the new generation of Greek choreographers occupying the Foundation Roof Onassis shortly before or after the moment when the European scene discovers them.

It’s not just days of dancing and music. It’s days of adrenaline. This year’s Stegis contemporary dance festival wants choreographers, performers, composers and musicians with their bands to “break it” live on stage, with an impressive parallel program with great names of the international scene.

As last year, ODD 2024 also introduces to the Greek public an international name that appears in all the great festivals of Europe. Belgian visual artist Miet Warlop with ‘One Song’, an ecstatic dance performance that is both live concert and sports marathon, triumphed at the Avignon Festival, tours internationally and performs with her indefatigable dancers on February 24 and 25 on the Main Stage of the Roof .

ODD, like every year, shines a light on the Greek choreographers who are already marching in the European festivals or will occupy us in the coming years.

This year, it re-introduces the most up-and-coming Greek choreographer, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, who last year received the distinction of the international network Aerowaves, presenting two of her sound-kinetic works: the award-winning “MOS” (February 24 – March 3) which was presented for the first time last year at ODD and the new her and highly personal project ‘All of My Love’ (February 24 – March 3), in world premiere, which sings right from the title, winking at those who once danced to Led Zeppelin’s chant. Both Paraskevopoulos productions open at the festival and continue for one more week, until March 3.

Three more new works, resulting from Stegi’s recent NEXT OPEN CALL, are premiering (February 23 to 25), with their performers “sweating their jerseys” like true rock stars, with – instead of coaches- their musical partners. The stage turns into a constantly changing concert mosh pit and the anarchic movement of the crowd becomes a dance to “Slamming work in progress” by Xenia Konchylaki, with George Poulios on the music.

A panic attack becomes the occasion to create a confessional group therapy environment within the electronic sounds of the rave culture in “We all need therapy” by Panos Malaktos in collaboration with Die Arkitekt. Finally, a female body runs under the relentless pounding of sound and time on a treadmill in Christiana Kosiari’s ‘RUNWAY’ with Jan Van Angelopoulos on sound design.

Also, ODD includes a notable side program. In addition to the great choreographer, visual artist and curator, Christian Rizzo, who for the second consecutive year participates in the festival as a mentor to Greek choreographers, a series of remarkable moments follows.

On February 23, Damien Jalet, the iconoclastic choreographer and dancer, will hold a masterclass with the monumental choreographies, which function as visual installations – from ‘Skid’, in which 17 performers defy gravity by dancing on a ten-metre sloping platform , to the iconic “Chiroptera”, on the facade of the Opéra Garnier in Paris, with the participation of 154 dancers. Choreographer of Madonna, Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Anima” and collaborator of artists such as JR, Thom Yorke, Marina Abramović and Iris van Herpen, in the masterclass he will give at Stegi, he will focus in his creative collaboration with composers such as Fennesz, Tim Hecker, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Thomas Bangalter and Thom Yorke.

On February 24th from 22:30 onwards, Miet Warlop and the crew of ‘One Song’ take over the main foyer decks of the Roof for an ODD party with free entry.

From February 26 at 12:00 p.m. will be shown indefinitely on the Onassis Channel on YouTube, the first short film by the dancer and choreographer Yiannis Nicolaidis, “CABIN 9” (12΄, 2022), in sound design by Manolis Manousakis and produced by Shampoo films, a DIY, handmade, sci-fi film.

Finally, on Saturday, March 2, the show “MOS” by Ioanna Paraskevopoulos is presented with supertitles for deaf and hard of hearing people and audio description for people with visual impairment.