Michael Theophanous. Ecdysis. © Pinelopi Gerasimou for Onassis Stegi

review

ODDities at Onassis Dance Days 2025

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Michael Theophanous. Ecdysis. © Pinelopi Gerasimou for Onassis Stegi
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Otherworldly journeys, visual provocations and personal worlds, by Greek choreographers and an international star

If the dances are odd, you might be dancing against the odds. That could summarise, quite accurately, my feelings towards the Onassis Dance Days festival, this year celebrating its twelfth edition. The ODD festival is a much-anticipated event within the Athenian dance community, as it has evolved into a transnational showcase for local dance artists to present their work and get acquainted with curators and arts presenters from other parts of Europe. The programme, mainly featuring emerging choreographers, is highlighted by the presence of a well-established one (this year Damien Jalet). The shows are presented as a ‘take-over’ of the Stegi-Onassis building, combining different formats of spectatorship, and with a curated theme that brings dance and choreography into dialogue with visual arts.

Ecdysis, by and with Michael Theophanous, a dancer predominantly known from his bare-fleshed participation in Dimitris Papaioannou’s dance-theatre pieces, sticks quite literally to what the title denotes: a solo performance about shedding an outer layer – i.e. undressing and dressing – which begs to go to more idiosyncratic and psychological depths, but remains awkwardly within the shallow edge of its murky atmosphere. A man in a black suit walks timidly around a diaphanous cell/house, at times fidgeting to give the impression of emotional distress; he’d be the kind of neighbour you’d occasionally spy at from your window, making multiple scenarios about his life. You can see him climb on two boxes to change a light bulb, wriggle naked under a plastic peplum – but nothing striking yet apart from his kouros-like physique. In an ongoing hide and seek, he reappears dressed holding balloons, dances looking like one of those figures in Robert Longo’s hyper-realist photos from his ‘Men in the Cities’ series, only to disappear again wearing a pliable tube and looking like the Alien. The actions, though aiming at the unfamiliar, are blatantly connected, with his body delivering more muscular tone than eerie undertone. If you’re watching from a distance, you soon realise that, ultimately, no mystery lurks here, just smoke and a sweaty torso.


Horse Me by Sofia Mavragani and Janis Rafa . © Pinelopi Gerasimou for Onassis Stegi
Horse Me by Sofia Mavragani and Janis Rafa. © Pinelopi Gerasimou for Onassis Stegi

Horse Me, by Sofia Mavragani and visual artist Janis Rafa, is more like a choreographed concert, dealing with speciesism and the human-animal evolutionary hierarchy, which results to the cruel domination of animals; horses in this case. The performers’ notable costumes and accessories insinuate a rather kinky aspect to the all-female chorus – among them an opera singer – from corset to vest to whips to pony tails; it’s inevitable to think of power games and sex fetishes. Then comes the body language to dissolve any doubts that it’s been the buttocks and riding skills that the choreographer was after, even though climbing on one’s back doesn’t make her a horse. You hear lyrics glorifying arses, vocals imitating somatic winds and music chasing the tempo of galloping horses. But none of these choices problematise the human-animal power structure; quite the opposite, relations remain so persistently human-oriented that you wonder if the dominance exercised upon the dancers’ bodies by the choreographer’s choices is circling yet another hierarchy, this time with reference to the dance arena. To go safely into the bdsm zone, if actions like whipping, wearing reins denote that genre, not only requires trust, but also the kind of liberatory feeling that would allow you, as spectator, to perceive pleasure and to re-elaborate concepts of submission and dominance. Here, in spite of the skilful dancers (Maria Vourou, Konstantina Barkouli, Pagona Boulbasakou), the show verges on first-timer’s riding awkwardness; not the kind of dressage you would expect from pro equestrianism.


Chara Kotsali, It’s the end of the amusement phase. © Pinelopi Gerasimou for Onassis Stegi
Chara Kotsali, It’s the end of the amusement phase. © Pinelopi Gerasimou for Onassis Stegi

Chara Kotsali’s It’s the end of the amusement phase could unapologetically be called a noise manifesto, in the same trajectory as her previous work, creating the kind of whirling nausea that’s so typical of our devastating times. Here, along with electrifying performers Sofia Pouchtou and Christina Skoutela, she not only charges the stage with an inventory of dance-steps and video clip moves (one soon recognises references from Bob Fosse to Trisha Brown and Beyoncé that become a mélange of body automatisms) but creates an aurally dense performance, with high pitch guitar chords and drummings that mess with your heartbeats. Kostali’s choreography feels like a capsule rocketed in time, from a complicated past straight into a vast unimaginable future. A carousel of feelings, facts, images, parade on stage, at times marching to their ridiculous glory, at times defeated yet withstanding, making the performers look like uber-marionettes in this puppetry of absurdity. Cheerleaders of menacing optimism, crushing a birthday cake, covering themselves in body paint, like charlatans in a hyper-nothing realism, they delve into a choreography which becomes a synecdoche for chasing our own tales. If history repeats itself like a farce, then this performance reads the disarming farcical potency of history with courage, pausing our own dark present for one moment to breathe, even though the dancers are left breathless, maybe ascertaining one’s human limits or as Kotsali fiercely recites: ‘Unable to land, unable to take off. So, I pray for a crash in my cyber rabbit hole.’


Near Misses by Fotini Stamatelopoulou. © Pinelopi Gerasimou for Onassis Stegi
Near Misses by Fotini Stamatelopoulou. © Pinelopi Gerasimou for Onassis Stegi

Near Misses by Fotini Stamatelopoulou is aurally immersive and visually arresting, laden with mystic symbolism. The moment you step into this personal sanctuary, you could sense the aftermath of a struggle: the performer is seated peacefully, repeating some sotto-voce mantras, holding in their hands some offerings which will later become a threshold for their soul-excavating journey. The armour-instrument, covering only their chest, makes some resonant sounds whenever their torso is flagellated with lashing force by their arms. However, this self-inflicting force is not about punishment; soon, the thoracic armour will be dismantled, allowing the performer to explore the sensory dissonance of this gamelan-like instruments and to be transported in a dance of ceremonial purification. The performer’s tomboy presence (Despina Sanida Crezia), flirts with both fragility and robustness, they have a serene and composed energy which is gradually unfolding, like a wavering ripple breaking grandiosely on the shore. Their singing, from the gloomy lows to the granular highs, resonates with the conflictual atmosphere of the performance; this fight is fought with soulful dedication, giving us free dives into tenebrous depths – as they scrunch and pull their face to reveal some medieval jester’s expressions – and exhilarative rising back to the surface with their lung-deep howls, the eerie synths further accentuating this emotional roller-coaster. If this performance feels like an invitation into a private shelter, you soon realise that the patterns employed resonate with something personal, reminding us that the idea of wholeness is never quite achieved; on the contrary, if there’s a path to recovery then it must involve empathy, embracing at times ugly feelings and letting go of anger with poetic exuberance.


Planet Wanderer by Damien Jalet. © Pinelopi Gerasimou for Onassis Stegi
Planet Wanderer by Damien Jalet. © Pinelopi Gerasimou for Onassis Stegi

Damien Jalet’s Planet[wanderer] is a pure, large-scale spectacle. As is common in his oeuvre, materials and their embodied qualities create a unique fusion; this time it’s fluidity and anti-gravitational suspension under his radar, with the contribution of multidisciplinary artist Kohei Nawa. The show’s opening scene is mesmerising: a glittery substance falling from above, creating a beam of light to reveal a tetrapod who moves agilely on stage, and later morphs into a bigger organism. There’s great emphasis on torso movement, giving an illusionary sense of planetary curviness on stage, especially once the dancers are immersed in small ponds, their feet sunk into moving white quicksand. You might think that they are sea-algae drifted sideways by invisible currents, creating visually strong trajectories, pleasurable to watch as bodies arch and fall backwards, spiralling upright to fold again forward, arms swaying like navigational instruments, in and out of sync, soli appearing out of domino effects.

However, the moment dancers exit the ponds, they start sleepwalking in cross-cross patterns, as if amidst some intergalactic storm, a feeling of further accentuated by Tim Hecker’s perturbing siren-like sonic ambience. The otherworldly aspect becomes suddenly low-res, like a snippet from a locomotion study by Étienne-Jules Marey. You see sequences unfolding with hieratic solemness, but you might also wonder: what happened to the playful curviness? This middle section, seems creatively off-balance compared to the previous scene, an awkward passage towards the third, where the main motif is a gummy white substance which drips onto the dancers’ bodies, reminiscent of wax play or, to put it in a planetary context, stalagmites created on sculpture-still dancers. Though the work overall is visually striking, compositionally it seems that dance is at the service of visuality rather than the other way round; or at least that the promise of their fusion remains unfulfilled. It’s interesting to note that ‘alien’ could not only imply the extraterrestrial but also, here, the disparate means of artistic expression: dance and visual arts in the same orbit, the journey looking promising but the landing falling short. ●


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03–04.04.2025, Athens, Greece
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www.onassis.org/whats-on/onassis-dance-days-2025
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