Elenit

An international co-production and world premiere at the Onassis Stegi.

Two years after his latest production in Athens, Euripides Laskaridis returns to Greece following a world-tour and international recognition. In his first collaboration with Onassis Stegi, he presents on a world premiere Elenit, produced by Onassis Stegi and co-produced by some of the most significant theatres and festivals around Europe. From 28 November until 7 December, emerge yourselves in a performance that brings together the ridicule and the terrifying.

Euripides Laskaridis works are marked by a sense of contained chaos: deep and detailed dives that tap into who we are by staying true to the specifics of a most personal vision. Unconventional and non-linear, they play with the possibilities of what lies all around – breaking, distorting, reforming and fiddling with commonplace materials and the detritus of everyday life to create the unexpected.

The body is the medium through which Euripides’ spaces come to life. The action always evolves and revolves around characters who are touchingly real and painstakingly realised, yet unashamedly imaginary. Through them open new territories that are – by sudden turns – hilarious and heart-rending, grotesque and affecting, frightening and absurd.

RELIC (2015) was a domestic scene, its lone mortal lost in a terrestrial world after the end of reason. TITANS (2017) created an alien space for two, its co-dependent deities inhabiting a metaphysical realm in a time before reason. The new tragic comedy by Euripides, ELENIT, looks to further expand this universe. An ensemble piece for three creatures and a machine, it introduces too a chorus of many bodies to create an endlessly-animated backdrop to the action, a scrolling tableau that is also a world of its own.

It will forgo all reason to forge a space without past or future. A monumental machine interested only in the urgency of the moment. A place where the things we know we knew are now behind.

Credits

Conceived & Directed by Euripides Laskaridis

With Amalia Kosma, Chara Kotsali, Manos Kotsaris, Euripides Laskaridis, Thanos Lekkas, Dimitris Matsoukas, Efthimios Moschopoulos, Giorgos Poulios, Michalis Valasoglou, Fay Xhuma

Costume Design Angelos Mentis

Music & Sound Design Giorgos Poulios

Set Design Loukas Bakas

Lighting Design Eliza Alexandropoulou

Dramaturgy Consultant Alexandros Mistriotis

Associate Movement Director Nikos Dragonas

Technical Director Konstantinos Margas

Production Manager Rena Andreadaki

A project by Euripides Laskaridis // Osmosis

Produced by Onassis Stegi-Athens (GR)

Supported by the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès within the framework of the New Settings Program

Coproduced by Théâtre de la Ville-Paris (FR), Teatro della Pergola-Florence (IT), Teatro Municipal do Porto (PT), Festival TransAmérique-Montreal (CA), Les Halles de Schaerbeek-Brussels (BE), Biennale de la Danse de Lyon 2020 (FR), Teatre Lliure-Barcelona (ES), Malraux, Scène Nationale Chambéry-Savoie (FR), Théâtre de Liège (BE)

In collaboration with Julidans-Amsterdam (NL), ICI-Centre Chorégraphique National Montpellier-Occitanie (FR)

International Premiere 28 November 2019, Onassis Stegi

ELENIT is funded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.

In association with EdM Productions and Rial&Eshelman

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ELENIT, an international co-production, is making its world premiere at the Onassis Stegi. It will then tour international theaters and festivals in 2020 and 2021, alongside the works RELIC and TITANS.

RELIC (2015) is a lonely poem about things left behind, and TITANS (2017) a peculiar dance for two deities in the metaphysical realm of the beginning of the world.

RELIC was Euripides Laskaridis’s contribution to the Onassis Cultural Center USA’s festival “Democracy” in April 2019.

Euripides Laskaridis studied acting in Athens and directing in New York.

Performing since 1995 for such directors as Dimitris Papaioannou and Robert Wilson, he began directing his own work in the year 2000 for the stage and screen, and founded OSMOSIS in 2009. The company’s first travelling work, “RELIC” (2015), has been presented at over twenty festivals and venues worldwide, including Lyon Biennale de la Danse, Palais de Tokyo, the Barbican Pit, and the Public Theatre in NY. International tour stops of his 2017 work “TITANS” included Théâtre de la Ville, Festival TransAmériques, Berlin’s Tanz im August, and the Hong Kong Arts Festival. In late 2019, his new international co-production will premiere in Athens before touring the world throughout 2020 and 2021, alongside “RELIC” and “TITANS”.

In 2016, Laskaridis was awarded an inaugural Pina Bausch Fellowship.