The Travels of the Outward Turn Program: July – August 2024

From July 1 to 6, renowned artists of the Onassis Stegi set out to attend the important European theater festival and one of the most popular artistic events in the world: Festival d’Avignon. This is where George Koutlis, Mario Banoushi, Hara Kotsali, and Christos Papadopoulos met young and promising, but also established professionals of dance, they attended international premieres, and had the opportunity to discuss with festival directors, curators, as well as the Festival’s wider artistic community, with the support of the “Outward Turn” program of the Onassis Stegi.

Driven by extroversion, the Onassis Stegi supports female and male artists in their international tours, in raising awareness with regards to their work and the furthering of their capacities and learning pathways as they expand their audiences, on a constant and long-term basis. Since 2011, more than 100 productions and co-productions in theater, dance, and music by the Onassis Stegi have staged over 1,000 performances in 56 countries and approximately 200 cities around the world. The “Outward Turn” program offers its support to productions of artists who live and create in Greece primarily and on the condition that they have been included in the programming of the Onassis Stegi.

Following its successful presentation at Teatros del Canal in Madrid and One Dance Festival in Plovdiv, “Lapis Lazuli” continues its tour around the world, with the Netherlands and Spain as its next stops.

On July 4 and 5, the Julidans Festival in Amsterdam welcomed the grotesque, comedic, and at the same time terrifying universe of Euripides Laskaridis, which we met last April on the main stage of the Onassis Stegi. A week later, on July 13 and 14, “Lapis Lazuli” travels to Barcelona for GrecFestival, an international festival of theater, dance and music, offering two nights full of terror and laughter. In “Lapis Lazuli,” Euripides Laskaridis seeks to explore a multitude of intriguing dualities, such as the material and the spiritual, the dreamlike and the nightmarish, the conscious and the subconscious, waving on stage a dense web of antitheses.

It was applauded for the first time in May 2023, on the Main Stage of the Onassis Stegi. The choreographic piece “The House of Trouble” by Patricia Apergis and the Aerites dance company shaked up the French capital on July 6th and 7th, on the occasion of its participation to the city's biggest summer festival, Paris l’été. From there it will return to Greece for one single performance at the Kalamata Dance Festival, on July 17.

“The House of Trouble” aspires to converse with the concept of identity through the violence each one of us may undergo or inflict in order to define ourselves, the world, and our freedom. It is a paean to individuals and their choices, to diversity and self-determination.

Having already presented two choreographic works at the Onassis Stegi as part of the Onassis Dance Days Festival in 2023 and 2024, choreographer Xenia Koghilaki takes an outward turn with her latest project, entitled “Slamming.” In organic continuity with “Bang Bang Bodies,” a piece centered around headbanging, “Slamming” draws its inspiration from the choreographic stance of the audience in a music concert, and brings on stage the choreographer herself and two other dancer-performers. On July 22 and 24, the work will be presented at the ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival, once again turning the stage into a venue of a punk-rock concert, and transforming the crowd’s anarchic movement into a dance piece.

Ioanna Paraskevopoulou adds four new stations to the artistic map of Stegi’s “Outward Turn” program. Having already conquered some of the the greatest in Europe, renowned choreographer will travel to Julidans Festival in Amsterdam with her latest choregraphical composition, “All of my Love,” on July 7 and 8. Her next stop is the city of Chania, in the island of Crete, and more specifically the Chania Dance Days, which will host her well-traveled and award-winning work “MOS” on July 23. With “MOS” in her luggage, Paraskevopoulou will land at the Centro Nacional de las Artes Delia Zapata Olivella in Bogota, Colombia, from July 26 to 28. As for her fourth (and definitely not last) destination, this is Bassano del Grappa, where she will show “all of her love” (i.e., the show “All of my Love”) at the OperaEstate Festival Veneto, on August 22nd.

Following its participation in the Primavera dei Teatri Festival in Castrovillari (Calabria, Italy) Chara Kotsali’s work “to be possessed” follows its international tour, whose next stop is OperaEstate Festival Veneto, in Bassano del Grappa, Italy, on August 25. By means of a disarticulated staged ritual, dancer and choreographer Chara Kotsali engages in a new attempt to investigate the phenomenon of spirit possession, of which women have historically – and in the main – been accused, in a performance alluding to a trial possession. Five years later, on August 30, Elena Antoniou will attend the same dance festival, to present her work “LANDSCAPE” to the Italian audience.

The tours of Onassis Stegi’s productions are realized with the support of the “Outward Turn” program.