Onassis Dance Days 2025: Pre -sale for the Contemporary Dance Festival at Onassis Foundation

Dancing between the clouds, fighting through the stars and the mud. By the 3 to April 6 A dance marathon fills the roof scenes. From 5pm to midnight – and two days later – Greek choreographers deal with the Onassis Dance Days 2025 with what they are concerned with, experiment with new aesthetics and put the pulse of this year’s festival. Michalis Theophanous, Hara Kotsali, Fotini Stamatelopoulou, Sofia Mavragani & Giannis Rafa express their anxieties, hopes and frustrations by setting up altar, bypassing roles and identities, talking with history, justifying them. For another year, the festival program also includes an international choreographer, in the first, presentation of his performance in Greece, Damian Zale and his unique world.

The central stage of the roof is transformed into a cosmogony landscape. Dancers and dancers face the unmistakable beauty of nature: wind, water, soil, tobacco, fog, light, dark. Black sand, silver dust, potatoes, water and glue, under the appropriate look and processed, they become works of art. Such materials were dealt with by iconoclast choreographer Damien Jalet and sculptor Kohei Nawa in the two works presented in the framework of Onassis Dance Days 2025: Planet choreography [wanderer] With an 8 -member ensemble from April 4 to 6 and the Mist movie with the 18 Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT 1) dancers on April 4 and 5.

Sculptors, artists, architects and sound designers have collaborated closely with all four Greek choreographers of this year’s festival on the materiality of the bodies, the aesthetics of sound, the poetry of speech and the visuality of stage objects. Most productions came from the Open Call on the onassis Air and developed with the support of Onassis Air Dramaturgy.

In the solo project Ecdysis, Michalis Theophanous with Tina Joka in shaping the stage at -1 of the roof (April 3-6) invite us to invade as pleasures into the personal space of a plasma in perpetual transformation. We are eyewitnesses to his vulnerable stripping, as a series of identities is eliminated. Because perhaps the flow is the only possible condition, so no one “is no longer what it was and is not yet what will happen,” as the creator says.

In the It’s End of the Amusement Phase of Haras Kotsali on the Little Stage (April 3-6), three women set up an anarchic motor, aesthetic and a sound marathon, looking for the constantly interrupted enjoyment. In collaboration with sculptor and artist Pericles Pravita, a frantic panorama is created by dances in constant conciliation with history, “this bond of progress and destruction”, according to the words of the choreographer.

In Horse Me, Sofia Mavragani and the artist Jannis Rafa set up a Surrealist, poetic allegory on the limits of the cohabitation of human and non-human nature, focusing on the image of the horse and the horse and the relationship of the horses. Their targeting? The right of the body to remain unexplored, unspecified and unmistakable.

In Near Misses, Fotini Stamatelopoulou choreographed at -1 of the roof (April 3-6) Despina Sanida-Crezia in a solo performance that is also a visual installation, in collaboration with Dimitris Tambakis and Panos Alexiadis. The project explores self -defense and durability strategies, charting marginal lines between silence and rage. The performer is supported by a set of wearing metallic objects that make up a sound and phonetic altar revealing an over -applied gesture in chaos.

In the Onassis Dance Days 2025, the scenes of the roof recommend new art worlds, the body acquires other dimensions, the movement gives shape to the intangible and the scene is pulsating.

Planet [wanderer] | Damien Jalet, Kohei Nawa
April 4-6 | Central Stage 20:30
Duration: 55 minutes

We are planets. And, together, planets, constantly wandering beings, on the same celestial body. The internationally prestigious iconostasis choreographer, a collaborator of Madonna, Thom Yorke and Marina Abramović, among others, creates, along with Japanese artist Kohei Nawa, a monumental installation, a cosmogony on the go.

The project was nominated for the Fedora Ballet Award – Van Cleef & Arpels in 2020

Mist | A movie by Damien Jalet in collaboration with Kohei Nawa & Rahi Rezvani
April 4-5 | Central Stage 23:59
Duration: 49 minutes

49 minutes in the “fog”. By employing the confrontation of bodies with all kinds of materials in order to reveal the ever -changing nature of life forms, the Mist explores a marginal space between science and mythology. Jalet’s interdisciplinary dance film was created in close collaboration with Japanese artist Kohei Nawa and filmmaker Rahi Rezvani, with the unique ensemble of the famous NDT 1.

ecdysis | Michalis Theophanous
April 3-6 | On the roof -1 17:00
Duration: 40 minutes

A solo performance that explores the multiplicity of the facades, the vulnerability and the role of the spectators. Inspired by the biological process of diving, it shows a creature wandering into a landscape of constant transformation, dragging the audience into an experience of vulgarity. An uninitiated game that reveals the fragility and power of endless change.

The show includes naked and is suitable for people over 16 years of age.

It’s the End of the Amusement Phase | Joy
April 3-6 | Scene
April 3 & 5 at 18:00, April 4 & 6 at 22:00
Duration: 40 minutes

In a dance marathon running through the historical continuous, three women recover between personal and collective history.

Focusing on the body dancing and with material sound and poetry, the work is confronted with the concept of progress as the most exhaustive linear narrative. In the aftermath of a technological and social revolution that eventually did not happen, IT’s End of the Amusement Phase attempts to talk about the emotional story of the present.

There may be loud music in the show and strobes and smoke is used.

Near Misses | Fotini Stamatelopoulou
April 3-6 | On the roof -1 19:00
Duration: 40 minutes

A performance for resistance, chaos and perseverance. After Optimal Soft, Onassis Air Fellow Fotini Stamatelopoulou returns to the Roof with a choreographic work to conquer durability.

Near Misses is a solo performance and, at the same time, artistic facility, in collaboration with Dimitris Tambakis and Panos Alexiadis. Near Misses negotiates the body as a field of conflict. Investigating experiences of body disease, transformation and failure. A series of actions are gradually unfolded, mixing Spoken Words, protective symbolic objects and intense physical conditions. Conscious but also raw gestures, facial expressions referring to Gargoyles and references to self -defense techniques create an incessant composition that swings between silence and anger.

Near Misses includes archival material from an annual study conducted by Fotini Stamatelopoulou, Dimitris Tambakis and Panos Alexiadis, with the support of the Grand Luxe Network choreographic network.

Horse me | Sofia Mavragani & Janis Rafa
April 3-6 | Scene
April 3 & 5 at 22:00, April 4 & 6 at 18:00
Duration: 40 minutes

Dance, visual art and music are co -founded in a horse -centered show. In an atmosphere of misunderstood eroticism, the power relations between bodies that ride and ride, redefine the limits of enjoyment and submission.

Horse me deals with the fantasies, cravings and needs of man to tame other bodies and dominate. Overcoming gender stereotypes, hierarchies and established perceptions, the work articulates questions about the joys and suffering that animal and human beings can be shared. Paying a tribute to the creatures that have offered their creatures to human services, the show ultimately speaks of the right of the body to remain unexplored, unspecified and unmistakable.

The Horse Me shows with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture

Read more about the shows here

Institutions for Onassis Dance Days 2025