Dimitris Papaioannou is an Athenian born in 1964 who emerged from the Greek underground art scene as a defining figure. Starting as a comics creator, he became a director, choreographer, performer, and designer of sets, costumes, and lighting.
His hybrid creations gained a growing dedicated audience in Greece, and in 2004 he became the youngest artist to have been assigned to direct the biggest show on earth: the Summer Olympic Games Opening Ceremony (Athens 2004). A decade later, in 2015, he was discovered by European programmers and was invited to tour.
He is now an internationally acclaimed avant-garde theatre maker, considered "a philosopher of dance" (Τanz magazine), "one of the four most important choreographers in the world" (Le Figaro), "a masterful theatrical magician and imagist" (The Times), "the most original choreographer of our time" (La Repubblica), offering "an act of artistic magic created before our eyes" (The New York Times), and "a genre of performance unlike anything else you'll see on stage" (The Guardian).
Papaioannou's more than 30 productions range from mass spectacles with thousands of performers to the most intimate pieces. His creations have been commissioned, co-produced, and presented internationally by the most renowned festivals and theatres, enjoying sold-out performances on extensive tours worldwide.
He was a student of the iconic Greek painter Yannis Tsarouchis before transitioning to the performing arts
Papaioannou first attracted attention as a visual artist, illustrator and comic book creator. He presented his art work at a number of exhibitions, produced illustrations for numerous magazines, and designed and co-edited the counterculturalfanzineKontrosol sto Haos (1986–1992),[2] one of the few publications to include openly gay content at that time in Greece.[3] He also contributed to the Greek gay activist magazine To Kraximo (1981–1994)[4] in the early 1980s, and gave an interview to the publication in 1993.[5] Moreover, he published over 40 comics in Greek alternative comics magazines such as Babel and Para Pende, many of which incorporated gay themes and explicit images (such as 1986's Rock 'n' Roll, 1988's My Ex-Boyfriend, and 1993's Heart-Shaped Earth). He was awarded first prize in a competition organised by Marseille Public Transport Authority at the 5th Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, held in Marseille in 1990, for his comic Un Bon Plan.
Upon his return to Athens in 1986, he founded Edafos Dance Theatre (έδαφος meaning "ground" in Greek) with Angeliki Stellatou, and went on to conceive, direct, choreograph and produce all 17 of the company's productions over its 16 years of life (the company disbanded in 2002). The group's four early works– The Mountain–The Raincoat in 1987, and Room I–Room II in 1988– represented Greece at the 3rd and 4th Biennials of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, held in Barcelona and Bologna respectively, and were warmly received by the press– Stefano Casi of the ItalianL'Unità described the company as "the revelation of the Festival" in 1988.[6]
Papaioannou, once back in Athens, created The Last Song of Richard Strauss in collaboration with the visual artist Nikos Alexiou in 1990, the first in a series of critical successes for the Edafos Dance Theatre company. The Last Song was incorporated into the 1991 trilogyThe Songs, which was selected to represent Greece the following year at both the 6th Biennial from Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean in Valencia and at the Seville Expo '92. The Songs was also seen by the then Greek Minister for CultureMelina Mercouri, who secured regular state funding for the company.
Moons followed in 1992, a two-part work that drew upon the poetry of Sappho and the balletLe Spectre de la Rose, but it was 1993's Medea that was to prove the company's greatest success. This dance-theatre retelling of the Medeamyth was performed 52 times by the year 2000, touring festivals and venues across Europe and the Mediterranean region, visiting New York City, and representing Greece at the Lisbon Expo '98. In her review of the 1998 performance of Medea at the 12th Lyon Dance Biennial, Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times describes the production as "the festival's big surprise", praising its "extraordinary passion" and "striking intensity".[7]Medea was named "Best Choreography" at the Greek National Awards for Dance in 1994.
Other major Edafos Dance Theatre works include:
1995's A Moment's Silence, the first Greek stage work to deal directly with the issue of AIDS (a topic Papaioannou also tackled in his 1987 comic The Red Freckles on Your Skin), presented the world première of The Songs of Sin, a cycle of songs written by the Oscar-winning composerManos Hadjidakis, and of the specially commissioned Requiem for the End of Love by composer Yorgos Koumendakis. A Moment's Silence was dedicated to the memory of Alexis Bistikas, who died of AIDS in 1995.[8]
1999's Human Thirst, a collection of six short choreographies that included 1990's The Last Song of Richard Strauss, won awards for "Best Production" and "Best Female Performance" (Angeliki Stellatou) at the Greek National Awards for Dance. Outside Greece, the production was performed in Cyprus, France and the United Kingdom.
2001's For Ever, a non-narrative work that proved to be the last Edafos Dance Theatre production, was performed for the final time in Athens in the summer of 2002. The work was named "Best Production" at the Greek National Awards for Dance.
Other work (1986–2000)
Beyond his work with Edafos Dance Theatre, Papaioannou undertook a number of other projects between 1986 and 2000.
He directed two operas for the Athens Megaron Concert Hall: Thanos Mikroutsikos's The Return of Helen in 1999 (which was also performed at the Montpellier Opera in France and the Teatro Verdi in Florence, Italy), and Bellini'sLa Sonnambula in 2000. He also directed two stage shows for the Greek singer Haris Alexiou (1995's Nefeli and 1998's Tree), and two for Alkistis Protopsalti (1998's Volcano and 2000's A Tale).
As a choreographer, Papaioannou worked with the Greek National Theatre, the National Theatre of Northern Greece, Lefteris Vogiatzis' nea SKINI theatre company, and the Athens Festival (a 1994 show with George Dalaras), and created choreographies for two works directed by the Oscar-nominated director Michael Cacoyannis: 1994's Theodora, written and performed by Irene Papas, and the 1995 production of Luigi Cherubini's opera Medea, for which he also produced the costumes. He also designed sets and costumes for the Greek National Opera, and a number of Greek theatre and dance companies. As a performer, he worked with numerous Greek dance companies, including OKTANA Dance Theatre.
His film work included performances in Menelaos Karamagiolis' 1998 feature filmBlack Out p.s. Red Out and the 1990 film shortThe Kiss by Alexis Bistikas[9] (which saw him engage in an on-screen kiss with the actor Stavros Zalmas),[10] and sets for Bistikas' 1989 film short The Marbles.
Choreographies
The Mountain (Liberal Arts Centre Athens, Greece – 1987)
The Raincoat (Halki, Greece – 1987)
Room I (Old Elefsina Soap Factory, Elefsina, Greece – 1988)
Room II (4th Biennial of Young Artists from Europe, Bologna, Italy – 1988)
The Last Song of Richard Strauss (University of Patras, Greece, 1990)
The Songs (Artists' Building Athens, Greece, 1991)
Moons (Artists' Building Athens, Greece, 1992)
Medea (Koninklijke Nederlandse Schouwburg, Antwerp, Belgium, 1993)
Iphigenia at the Bridge of Arta (Dimitris Mitropoulos Hall of the Megaron, Athens Concert Hall, Greece, 1995)
Xenakis' Oresteia – The Aeschylus Suite (Epidaurus Ancient Theatre, Epidavros, Greece, 1995)
A Moment's Silence (Neo Faliro Old Electric Power Station, Athens, Greece, 1995)
Nefeli (Nefeli Studio, Athens, Greece, 1995)
The Brother Grimm Fairytales (Ancient Theatre, Argos, Greece 1996)
In 2005, following the success of the Athens 2004 Olympic Ceremonies, Papaioannou received the Golden Cross of the Order of Honour, awarded by the President of the Hellenic Republic for outstanding artistic achievement.
2
On 24 November 2006, Papaioannou premièred 2 in Athens, his first work following his creative direction of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. 2 was produced in collaboration with the electronic musiccomposerK.BHTA for the production company Elliniki Theamaton. A "dissection of the male psyche",[13] the production commanded a large of amount of Greek press attention, not least for its open references to homosexuality.[14]2 proved a commercial success; its run was extended twice and over 100,000 tickets were sold in total.
The work seems to draw upon a range of influences, including the work of Jean Genet, René Magritte and Robert Wilson. Inspiration for the show also came partly from Papaioannou's experiences as a gay man in Greece.[15]Contemporary magazine described 2 as an "inspiring" work that "captures the zeitgeist".[16]
A DVD of 2, produced and directed for the screen by Athina Rachel Tsangari of HAOS FILM, was released on 11 December 2007 by Elliniki Theamaton and Modern Times.
INSIDE
Inside is a large-scale on-stage experiment by Dimitris Papaioannou that took place in a room set inside the Pallas Theatre in central Athens. Inside this room, for twenty nights in the Spring of 2011, a simple series of movements documenting our daily return home was uniformly repeated by thirty performers in countless combinations and superimpositions. Six hours on stage with no beginning, middle or end. Visitors could watch as much as they liked, sit wherever they liked, exit and re-enter as many times as they liked. The stage action began before visitors came in, and continued after they left.
Inside encouraged audiences to treat the theatre as an exhibition space and the work as an exhibit, and to watch the action as if gazing at a landscape.
Inside was conceived as a kind of visual meditation. The work was developed along two parallel trains of thought. On the one hand, with a view to the emotional charge that is created when we sense the similarity of all human beings inside their nest. And on the other, an interest in the form of the artwork itself — in how a single motif can become a kind of latent narrative through its repetition and multiplication (like on ancient Greek Geometric vases and Eastern patterned carpets).
Inside's final night was filmed in a single, six-hour take and first presented as a video installation as part of Ανταλλαγή / Austausch / Exchange, a 2012 Goethe-Institut art project curated by Sofia Dona, at the Broadway open-air cinema in Athens. The following year, it was projected one summer night at the Kalamata International Dance Festival's open-air Castle Amphitheatre.
STILL LIFE
Still Life premiered at the Onassis Cultural Center - Athens on May 23, 2014.
Still Life springs from a meditation upon the myth of Sisyphus, who was sentenced to a weird kind of immortality: he would roll a huge rock up to the top of a mountain, only for the rock to roll back down. He would then walk down in order to roll the rock up again. Over and over, eternally. Sisyphus is like a working class hero.
While creating Still Life, Dimitris Papaioannou thought a lot about the human craving for meaning, and about the absurdity of the human condition, rooted in matter but yearning for spirit. He was thinking about Albert Camus, and about work as meaning in and of itself. At the same time, Dimitris Papaioannou concentrated deeply on simplicity, interaction with real materials, and silence — musically-composed silence.
Still Life is a work about work. About confronting physical matter in order to elevate our existence above it. It is an attempt towards a kind of theatre that generates meditative energy through simple actions, and encourages an emotional journey through optical illusions.
As part of the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities, this year sees a Special Prize awarded to Dimitris Papaioannou. Performer, director, choreographer and visual artist, he has reached the highest peaks of international theatre with his work. From the end of the 80s until now, during a rich career, Papaioannou has made a vast contribution, in Greece and the rest of the world, to contemporary theatre, visual art, dance and other forms of artistic expression. His theatre is 'total', with an obvious maturity of expression, offering for the stage a perfect form of signification in which bodies, objects, costumes and the entire scenic set-up are transformed into fluctuating visual signs, visual signs into events, events into stories and emotions. With such a talent, Dimitris Papaioannou can tell every story – myth, history, emotional moments, the human condition today, hypermodernity – and make each one unforgettable.[18]
↑ Tramboulis, Theophilos (January 2007), "Useful Contradictions"(PDF), The Athens Contemporary Art Review (9): 52–57, archived from the original(PDF) on 2008-04-08, retrieved 2008-02-04
↑ Panagiotopoulos, Panayis (January 2007), "A New Economy of the Visual Field?"(PDF), The Athens Contemporary Art Review (9): 10–15, archived from the original(PDF) on 2008-04-08, retrieved 2008-02-04
Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides. It is based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and was first produced in 431 BC as part of a trilogy; the two other plays have not survived. The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by murdering his new wife as well as her own two sons, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.
Alexis Stamatis is a Greek novelist, playwright, and poet. Amongst other work, he has published eighteen novels, six books of poetry, and a number of plays. As of, he teaches creative writing at the Hellenic American Academic Foundation.
The Greek National Opera is the country's state lyric opera company, located in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center at the south suburb of Athens, Kallithea. It is a public corporation under the supervision of the Greek Ministry of Culture and administered by the Board of Trustees and its Artistic Director, currently George Koumedakis.
Elias Malandris is a distinguished theatrologist, director, reconstructor and TV presenter. He was born in Athens and originates from Kasos island.
Nikos Xanthoulis is a Greek composer and author. He is currently Artistic Consultant with the Greek National Opera, Assistant Researcher at the Academy of Athens (2009–present), Correspondent Member of the Archaeological Institute of America (2010–present), and Professor of Composition (2004–present) and Trumpet (1984-2013) at the Athens Conservatory. He was Artistic Director of the Public Broadcasting Orchestras and Choir (2014-2015), and Principal Trumpet Player with the Greek National Opera (1983-2007).
Alexis Minotis was a Greek actor and director.
Haris Alexiou is a Greek singer. She is one of the most popular singers in Greece and has been commercially successful since the 1970s. She has worked with important Greek songwriters and composers, has performed at top musical theatres all over the world, and has received several awards. She has recorded over thirty albums and has been featured on albums of other musicians. On 14 March 2010 Alpha TV ranked Alexiou as the first top-certified female artist in Greece in the phonographic era, Chart Show: Your Countdown and the Number 3 overall ranking with regards to the sale of the personal albums certified Gold or Platinum in Greek discography since 1970, behind the male singers George Dalaras and Yiannis Parios. Eight of her personal albums released between 1977 and 2003 have surpassed 1.5 million sales, the only Greek female singer to do so.
The National Theatre of Greece is based in Athens, Greece.
Alexandros Mouzas is a Greek composer. He studied composition with Theodore Antoniou, advanced theory with Haris Xanthoudakis and electronic music with Dimitris Kamarotos.
Athens – Epidaurus Festival is an annual arts festival that takes place in Athens and Epidaurus, from May to October. It is one of the most famous festivals in Greece. The festival includes musical, theatrical and other cultural events.
George-Emmanuel Lazaridis is a Greek classical pianist, composer and mentor.
Kora Karvouni is a Greek stage and television actress. She graduated from the Greek National Theatre Drama School with a distinction in 2002. She has performed in various theatre productions in Greece, U.S.A., South Korea and Italy collaborating with notable directors such as Peter Stein, Anatoly Vasiliev, Dimiter Gotscheff and Laurent Chétouane. She has also participated in Greek television productions.
Dimitris (Δημήτρης) is the Modern Greek form of the older forms Demetrios, Dimitrios and may refer to:
Nikos Alexiou was a Greek artist who specialized in visual art, contemporary art, installation art and set design for theatre and dance. He exhibited his work at personal exhibitions and group events both in Greece and abroad.
Super Demetrios is a 2011 Greek guerrilla ultra-low-budget superhero comedy film starring and written by the cinematic comedy group OtiNaNai Productions and directed by Georgios Papaioannou. Upon its release at the 52nd Thessaloniki International Film Festival the film got the highest number of audience votes in the history of the festival and became an instant cult classic, with all screenings being sold out in all venues thereafter.
Athina Rachel Tsangari is a Greek filmmaker. Some of her most notable works include her feature films, The Slow Business of Going (2000), Attenberg (2010) and Chevalier (2015) as well as the co-production of Yorgos Lanthimos' films Kinetta (2005), Dogtooth (2009), and Alps (2011). In her versatile work for cinema, she has also founded and been director of the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival. In 2014–2015, she was invited to Harvard University's Visual and Environmental Studies department as a visiting lecturer on art, film, and visual studies.
Dimitri Platanias is a Greek baritone who has had an active international career since 2007, excelling particularly in the roles of Verdi and the Italian Verismo.
Elli Papakonstantinou, is a stage director, librettist, translator, cultural manager and activist. Her theatre combines music, new media and philosophical discourse within the range of music theatre, new opera and social engagement. Papakonstantinou shaped her ideas from the civic movements that emerged in Greece during the crisis. Twice a Fulbright Award recipient, Papakonstantinou has been commissioned by European Capitals of Culture, PQ'15 – Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, 2015 (CZ), while her work has been presented for the European Parliament for Culture and toured internationally.
The Kalamata Dance Megaron is a dance hall located in Kalamata, Greece. The venue has an imposing central stage, with a total area of 1,500 m2 (16,000 sq ft) and 675 seats spectator room, plus 15 special seats for disabled people, two large dance classrooms, a foyer at the entrance, dressing rooms, a canteen, administration rooms and other auxiliary spaces, with the ability to host theatrical performances of prose and cinema, theatre, large-sized productions with high set and stage design and other technical requirements from Greece and abroad. The venue is able to act as a convention center.
References
Greek Choreographers' Association (2004), Choros– Dance, Athens: KOAN / BOOKS OF THE WORLD Publications, pp.228–237, 420, ISBN960-7895-41-X
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
