Onassis Dance Days 2025

Dancing in the clouds, grappling among the stars and mud. The Onassis Stegi Main Stage is turned into a landscape of cosmogony. The dancers confront the untamed beauty of nature: wind, water, earth, smoke, fog, light, and darkness. Black sand, silver dust, potatoes, water, and glue may all become works of art with the appropriate gaze and treatment. These are the materials that iconoclastic choreographer Damien Jalet and sculptor Kohei Nawa have tackled in the two works they are presenting as part of Onassis Dance Days 2025: the choreography “Planet [wanderer]” with an 8-member ensemble and the film “Mist” with the 18 dancers of Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT 1).

Sculptors, visual artists, architects, and sound designers have worked closely with all four Greek choreographers of this year’s festival to explore the materiality of bodies, the aesthetics of sound, the poetics of speech, and the visuality of stage objects.

Michalis Theophanous’ solo piece “ecdysis” invites us to invade, like voyeurs, the personal space of a creature in perpetual transformation. We witness their vulnerable disrobing as they shed a series of identities. For perhaps flow is the only possible condition; thus, no one “is no longer what they were and is not yet what they will become,” according to the choreographer.

Chara Kotsali’s “ΙT'S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE” depicts three women embarking on an anarchic kinetic, aesthetic, and sonic marathon in pursuit of pleasure that is constantly interrupted. With the sculptor and visual artist Periklis Pravitas as a collaborator, a frantic panorama of dances is created in a perpetual interchange with History, “this bond of progress and destruction,” in the choreographer’s words.

Sofia Mavragani and visual artist Janis Rafa created “Horse Me,” a surreal, poetic allegory on the limits of the coexistence between humans and non-humans, focusing on the image of the horse and the relationship between bodies that ride and are ridden. Their aim? The right of the body to remain unexplored, undefined, and untamed.

In “NEAR MISSES,” Fotini Stamatelopoulou choreographs Despina Sanida Crezia in a solo performance that is also a visual installation, in collaboration with Dimitris Tampakis and Panos Alexiadis. It investigates strategies of self-defense and resilience, drawing liminal lines between silence and rage. The performer is accompanied by a set of metallic wearables generating a sonic and vocal altar that reveals an overexposed gesture amidst chaos.

During Onassis Dance Days 2025, Onassis Stegi introduces us to new visual worlds, the body takes on other dimensions, the movement gives form to the immaterial, and the stage pulsates with life.

Thursday, April 3

17:00 | ecdysis | Michalis Theophanous | -1 | 40 minutes

18:00 | ΙT'S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE | Chara Kotsali | Upper Stage | 40 minutes

19:00 | NEAR MISSES | Fotini Stamatelopoulou | -1 | 40 minutes

22:00 | Horse Me | Sofia Mavragani & Janis Rafa | Upper Stage | 49 minutes

Friday, April 4

17:00 | ecdysis | Michalis Theophanous | -1 | 40 minutes

18:00 | Horse Me | Sofia Mavragani & Janis Rafa | Upper Stage | 49 minutes

19:00 | NEAR MISSES | Fotini Stamatelopoulou | -1 | 40 minutes

20:30 | Planet [Wanderer] | Damien Jalet, Kohei Nawa | Main Stage | 55 minutes

22:00 | ΙT'S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE | Chara Kotsali | Upper Stage | 40 minutes

00:00 | Μist | A film by Damien Jalet in collaboration with Kohei Nawa & Rahi Rezvani | Main Stage (Screening) | 49 minutes

Saturday, April 5

17:00 | ecdysis | Michalis Theophanous | -1 | 40 minutes

18:00 | ΙT'S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE | Chara Kotsali | Upper Stage | 40 minutes

19:00 | NEAR MISSES | Fotini Stamatelopoulou | -1 | 40 minutes

20:30 | Planet [Wanderer] | Damien Jalet, Kohei Nawa | Main Stage | 55 minutes

22:00 | Horse Me | Sofia Mavragani & Janis Rafa | Upper Stage | 49 minutes

00:00 | Μist | A film by Damien Jalet in collaboration with Kohei Nawa & Rahi Rezvani | Main Stage (Screening) | 49 minutes

Sunday, April 6

17:00 | ecdysis | Michalis Theophanous | -1 | 40 minutes

18:00 | Horse Me | Sofia Mavragani & Janis Rafa | Upper Stage | 49 minutes

19:00 | NEAR MISSES | Fotini Stamatelopoulou | -1 | 40 minutes

20:30 | Planet [Wanderer] | Damien Jalet, Kohei Nawa | Main Stage | 55 minutes

22:00 | ΙT'S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE | Chara Kotsali | Upper Stage | 40 minutes