On April 28, shortly before the official release of her first full-length album “Life in Straight Lines” with music by Heroas from Pineline Music Lab, the 0-100 siren appears live at PLYFA’s Polychoros in a pre-release Live!
The already beloved artist from her first singles and EPs (Clause, Optiki Gonia, Taka-Touka, etc.), in a live performance for a limited number of spectators, gives us a taste of her new record shortly before its release.
Doors open: 20:00
“He grabbed the brushes and started painting.
He went for a spin,
but circles are complete, harmonious shapes.
What he feels, he knows neither what it is nor where it ends
and it is certainly not harmonious.
So press the circle with lines,
An endless straight line
a boring monotony
an inexplicable boredom..
Write the title , in small letters.
the page awoke to the cry of the words,
-stupid…!
he said,…
– and now?”
“Life in Straight Lines”
Athens, 2024
0-100 sirene/Hero
Pineline Music Lab
The internationally renowned performer and choreographer of Butoh, Yuko Kaseki, is coming to Athens together with avant-garde composer musician and performer Kriton Beyer at the invitation of performer and choreographer Vickys Filippa and the Quantum Body Athens Butoh Dance Group.
On Saturday, April 27, PLYFA is transformed into a live sound, lighting and kinetic installation, exclusively inspired by the space itself and vibrating to the rhythms of Butoh, with DIY dark instruments, live electronics and real time responsive lighting.
The three artists will explore the relationship of sound, light and movement based on butoh, as well as the phenomena of (inter)connections, transmission and maximization of the senses aiming at synaesthesia — building live, a bridge, composed power of all these elements, not only for to cross it themselves but to (pro)invite the public to cross this bridge with them.
In the performance “Crossing the LIGHTbridge”, handmade instruments made by Kriton Beyer will be used. His main instrument, the Daxophone, is a dark electric wooden experimental musical instrument, inspired by the original construction plans of its inventor Hans Reichel, slightly adapted to suit Kriton’s aesthetic temperament. Alongside the daxophone, Kriton controls a large number of lamps, fluorescent tubes and projectors in real-time, which are connected to a specially developed proprietary, pedal-like light control system.
Kriton Beyer is a Greek-German musician and composer, who – as a performer and improviser – works mainly with the harmonium and daxophone. He studied musicology in Greece where he collaborated with various local music groups as well as musicians such as Sakis Papadimitriou and Floros Floridis. In 2004 he moved to Berlin, where he was heavily involved in the improvisational music scene of the city.
Since then he has collaborated with many musicians such as Phil Minton, Audrey Chen, Steve Noble, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Axel Dörner, Liz Kosack, Kresten Osgood, Tristan Honsinger, Tomomi Adachi, Richard Scott, Willi Kellers, Matthias Bauer, Antonis Anissegos, Olaf Rupp, Alexei Borisov, Els Vandeweyer, Harri Sjöström, Nicola Hein and Liz Allbee, dancers such as Yuko Kaseki and visual artists such as Akiko Nakayama. Kriton Beyer founded ‘FRAGMENTATION ORCHESTRA’, is a member of the electro-acoustic music trio ‘Uproot’ and the bands ‘Redox Reaction’ and FDBK EXPT.
In his harmonium work, Kriton Beyer uses both the natural sound of the instrument and ‘traditional’ playing techniques as well as preparations, objects and extended playing techniques, while his daxophone playing is characterized by a very personal musical and sonic aesthetic and unconventional playing technique, sometimes supported by the subtle use of electronics. As an improvisational musician, he has performed throughout Europe. His compositions are usually characterized by conceptualism.
Kriton Beyer has also designed and commissioned CinePrompt® music software, which was developed specifically for use in live music performance and live film recording.
Kriton Beyer also curates and manages the concert series and record label “THE PROCRUSTEAN BED”, dedicated to Experimental & Improvisational Music.
www.kritonbeyer.com
Yuko Kaseki is a director, choreographer, teacher and Butoh dancer from Japan based in Berlin. Her artistic research focuses on finding mediums that unite the spiritual with the physical, and every day she trains her perception to find intersections between the unusual and the familiar. Website
She studied Butoh dance and Performing Art at HBK Braunschweig with Anzu Furukawa and danced in Dance Butter Tokio’s company and Verwandlungsamt in 1989-2000.
In 1995, Yuko Kaseki and Marc Ates founded the cokaseki dance company. cokaseki is an ensemble for performative research around dance, visual arts and experimental music in live events and improvisations in theatre, gallery, venue and film… Since then various members have joined the group in different roles and shifting creative responsibilities. There have been collaborations in numerous international projects with performers such as Christine Bonansea, Sherwood Chen, Megumi Eda, Shinichi Iova Koga, 4RUDE, Minako Seki, Lisa Stertz, Valentin Tszin, Teo Vlad, musicians such as Antonis Anissegos, Kriton Beyer, Audrey. Chen, Contagious, Kirikoo Des, Axel Dörner, Echo Ho, Emilio Gordoa, miu, Nguyễn + Transitory, Yasumune Morishige, Olaf Rupp, Tot Onyx, Sasha Pushkin, SEQUOIA, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Xenon, and visual artists such as Nikhil Chopra,
Morvarid K, Sarane Lecompte, Arata Mori, Justin Palermo, Chiharu Shiota, Peter Zach and others.
Solo and ensemble performances, collaborations and improvisations are performed throughout Europe, Georgia, Turkey, Russia, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Burkina Faso, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Australia , and the USA.
These works are accumulations of poetic and vivid images that embody the spirit of Butoh, and her interpretation aims to reflect the existence of openness.
Her strong interest in breaking the boundaries of physical expression leads to inclusive works with mixed artists such as Theater Thikwa (Berlin), Roland Walter (Berlin), Sung Kuk Kang (Seoul), Zan-Chen Liao (Taipei).
Yuko Kaseki has been performing and hosting the ‘AMMO-NITE GIG’ improv series (vol. 1-48 and on) with international performers and musicians since 2004.
Nominations/Awards:
– “Ame to Ame” won “Best Ensemble Performance” and was nominated for “Best Choreography”, – “Best Composition”, “Best Visual Design”, 2004 Isadora Duncan Dance Award in San Francisco, USA.
– “c(H)ord” collaboration with inkBoat received “Out standing Achievement in Performance-Company”, 2009 Isadora Duncan Dance Award in San Francisco, USA.
– “Tooboe” was nominated for “Outstanding Production”, The 2007 Dora Mavor Moore Awards in Toronto, Canada.
– “To” Collaboration with Tableau Stations nominated for “no-ballet, International Dance Competition 2012”, Ludwigshafen, Germany.
– “Let My Fish Loose” nominated for “no-ballet, International Dance Competition 2007”, Ludwigshafen, Germany
– “Kudan” was nominated for the “Toyota Choreography Award 2004” in Tokyo, Japan.
Vicky Philippa is a dancer, choreographer and teacher of butoh, one of the few representatives of the genre in Greece. From 2008 until today, she has been intensively teaching, directing and choreographing, presenting her works in Greece and abroad, while organizing seminars and performances with international artists and teachers of the genre with whom she has entered into several important collaborations.
He has studied, among many others, with the masters of the genre: Yumiko Yoshioka, Valentin Tszin, Koseki Sumako, Yuko Kaseki, Sainkho Namtchylac, Atshushi Takenouchi, Katsura Kan, Imre Thormann, Espartaco Martinez, etc.
In 2015 he founded the performing arts group Quantum Body Ahens Butoh Dance Group, which over the years has developed into a butoh community in the heart of Athens, counting over 40 permanent members and is one of the largest butoh groups worldwide. It is an independent group that with its actions tries to transmit the radical practices and aesthetics of butoh and bring the Greek public into greater contact with the genre, while building bridges of cooperation with foreign artists. Her vision is to contribute to the alternative scene of Athens by creating a new vocabulary, kinesiology, acting and speech called “quantum body”. The group is supported by its members and by the people who follow it in its actions.
Finally, she has studied mathematics, graduating from the University of Crete and then continued her studies at postgraduate level in the field of Bioinformatics and is a PhD candidate at the Medical School of Athens.
Choreographers Iota Peklaris and Vasia Zorbalis explore the imprinting of time through the materiality of the body – organic and non-organic – in the direction of the multi-sensory accessible artistic work.
In a space overwhelmed by polymorphic balloon formations, the performers create kinetic and sonic dilutions and densities, mapping its dimensions. The performative dimension of the work brings to the surface a very interesting counterpoint: the balloons, like dancing butoh beings freeze time, making visible the air that occupies the shape of the space and fills the gaps between the bodies. They thus interrupt the uncontrollable alternation of past, present and future events necessary for the understanding of time, while contemporary sound-kinetic composition glorifies periodicity and synchronicity. In this fluid, performative hospitality space, an ever-moving human resonator acting in a condition of pre-established harmony echoes and tunes in a constant reminder of the unpredictable and ephemeral.
The choreographic research balances between the visual and the auditory, having a parallel address to sighted, non-sighted, hearing and non-hearing people. Delving into an interdisciplinary performative practice, body music, the kinetic performance explores the physicality of sound, which manages to vibrate both the ears and the eyes/gaze. The extra-verbal language of b(l)alun transforms the viewing into a universally experiential, collective experience, an artistic meeting-prompt, which is not limited to the standard tools of accessibility but discovers and cultivates innovative, alternative interpretive tools of inclusion.
Ermira Goro’s new dance performance entitled “Sirens” invites the audience on a sensual and mysterious journey into the world of desire and its social expression.
Hara Kotsali and Antonis Vais are transformed on stage, expressing through their movement a story of dreams and freedom.
The two bodies appropriate and reject stereotypical gender roles, creating an idiosyncratic language of self-expression. The original musical composition of the show is signed by Jeph Vanger.
Scenius [at] Athens organizes an evening dedicated to the new jazz scene, presenting the experimental folk psych-jazz band from London, Valia Calda, and they will be joined by the Greek jazz punk trio MOb.
As part of their European tour, Valia Calda comes to Athens with their second album entitled “Homeland” (2023, Deep Mountain Records). The redefinition of the idea of homeland and immigration are the central musical quest of Valia calda who are inspired and converse with the folk songs of the Greek diaspora, the traditional music of Epirus, along with psychedelic jazz, punk aesthetics and free improvisations. A record with influences from Polar Bear, Get the Blessing, Nels Cline, sunn O))), Black Midi, Bill Frisell, Medeski Martin and Wood, Earth, The Dwarfs of East Agouza.
A little earlier, the explosive jazz trio MOb will take to the PLYFA stage. Having just released their 1st album titled ‘MOb 1’ (2024, Veego Records), they have already made an impression internationally. MOb is the mob, a name that suggests a dynamic and a lack of static, qualities that characterize the band’s moods during composition. Their music is described as a crossroads between electronic melodious jazz, kraut, filmic and exploratory post punk. Synthesizers, effects, loops, drones and tonal deviations share a primary role in creating the trio’s unparalleled soundscape. The group’s compositions are mainly based on open forms, using both tonal and non-tonal linear material, while improvisation tends to balance between the production of melodic material and the creation of multifaceted sonic atmospheres.
A performance by Iro Karras, ending in a live jam. The performance is inspiring from the novel “familiar places and monsters” by Manolis Tsipou (Enypnio publications, 2023). The Magdalene, a personality who carries many titles with the main one being that of a prostitute, lives inside in a strange universe beyond time. He is a lonely man who nevertheless desires me with passion his personal “Resurrection”. We watch her very own daily actions, with each step bringing her closer and closer to the longed-for self-forgiveness for what she is
was in the past, in order to make room for something new to be born. It is thus a symbol for us of an existential – completely personal – emancipation, which Magdalene realizes that can only realize through the Other.
The performance was presented as part of the Graduate Examinations of the Directing Department of the Drama School of the National Theatre. Since then we have created a stable team and the show is developed and modified (dramatically, musically, scenographically and acting) through rehearsals as well as personal work of the actors.
Information about the project
Leonidas Oikonomidis was born in the early 1990s in a seaside town in the Peloponnese. Leonidas is born on stage by the actors. He loves pop music, the sea and wants to be a swimmer. At some point he needs money. He will look for them in various types of credit institutions. For security if he cannot pay his debt, he will be asked for something valuable. The blue notebook. The blue notebook is his main object of memory, as he writes there from a young age about everything that moves him and does not want to be lost in oblivion.
The project mainly draws its references from the Millennials generation. They are the generation that studied and started looking for work during the crisis years. The anxiety of running away from the parental home, economic dependence and parental/societal projections regarding the profession and personal life determine her today significantly. Between absolute reaction or absolute submission, she is called upon to find her own voice and become visible in today’s Greek reality. What is the collective memory of this generation? How does financial insecurity refine the romance of youth and how do we react to it?
From April 1st and for 4 unique performances returns to PLYFA, the performance “A Man and His Double”, an original composition for a dancer (Alexandros Vardaxoglou) and a musician (Yiannis Angelakis)
It is an exercise in man’s irrational, persistent effort to resist the inevitable fall and brutality of the forces of power and oppression upon him.
A body falls continuously. Through repetition, obsession and violence, the stage action is pushed to the extreme limit of its expression, in order to release the lyricism and beauty of the body fighting with forces greater than itself.
A microphone is the only object standing out in front of an empty circular arena. It is the starting point, of the body’s last effort to stand, but also a promise that there is a way out, redemption.
The dancer and the musician share the roles of the perpetrator and the victim, the authority and the governed, the conformer and the conformed.
There is no way out for either of them. The body will rise and fall again. The sounds will stop and start again. One again that constantly reminds us of the existential position of the absurd, as described by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus.
On Sunday 31/03, at the very beautiful and special place of PLYFA (Koritsas 39, Votanikos), 3 new bands of the independent scene will meet on stage. With a common denominator of their powerful riffs and penetrating lyrics, Floudes Erpides, Drifting Clouds and Stavros Allos, invite us on a unique musical journey, using poetry and good music as a vehicle.
Drifting Clouds
Drifting Clouds was formed in 2019 and has been acrobating between Athens and Berlin ever since. Their sound combines elements of alternative rock with post-punk and garage influences. Sometimes with a dreamy atmosphere and sometimes full of storms, but always overflowing with sensitivity, their songs try to approach everything human. On Sunday March 31, taking a break from recording their first album, they return for a spring live at PLYFA.
Stavros Allos
Stavros Allos is a musician and songwriter, who makes a living as a sound engineer and music producer in Athens. A year after the presentation of his first album “For Nora”, he returns to the pop scene with the support of “super producer” Sergios Voudris and the multi-instrumentalist Kostas Stergiou. For Nora, for new songs and a cover.
Less Thought
Three Corinthians, two Athenians and an exotic Agrinesian who, based in Athens, are trying to decide if they play pop, soft or indie rock. They don’t know if they’ve made it so far. What they have managed to do, however, is to record their upcoming EP, all this time away from live performances. They feel ready for live and are excited to present you their very powerful tracks, some time before the release of their first complete musical work”
We are pleased to inform you that the multimedia site-specific performance WALKING IN LIGHT, conceived and directed by Elena Zervopoulou and produced by Diversity United, under the auspices and with the support of the Ministry of Culture, will appear for the first time to the public on March 17 at 19.00 – 20.00 at the Plyfa theater.
It is an interactive performance with the audience, a site specific performance inspired by the testimonies of young refugees that is combined with video projection and live music and reveals their inner journey highlighting their resilience.
Starting from their arrival from the sea at the first door of Europe, Greece, it traces their emotional path as it emerged from experiential workshops of video, physical theater, dance and music.
Guided by Mustafa’s poetic narrative in the video-dance (filmed in Southern Italy in the first part of the triptych), the performers embody their experiences and allow us to penetrate their inner journey, where with a beacon their resilience, the human connection and solidarity, they discover the path that will lead them to the light. Will the local community become a fellow traveler? By placing the audience at the center of an experience of welcome and acceptance, we challenge them to take a stand, raise awareness and find different solutions.
“Walking in Light” trusts human potential by shedding light on the values of tolerance, respect and social justice. Overcoming their difficulties symbolically through the “Mysteries of Passage”, the refugees share with the public extroversion and optimism. Highlighting and recognizing the resilience of those who have suffered is cathartic for the wider society as well.
Free contribution on the ground to support the project will be greatly appreciated!
Diversity United
Through art and social innovation we promote equal opportunities inclusively and march together.
Our goal, the empowerment and social integration of mainly women and young refugees, through experiential art therapy workshops with an ethno-psychological approach, for a better, more inclusive world.
With the resulting participatory cultural projects (interdisciplinary performances, video-dance, VR films, documentaries, cross-media platforms) we raise awareness and mobilize the rest of society around social and climate justice, focusing on human rights, intercultural dialogue and solidarity. We create digital platforms and applications promoting inclusive social and environmental solutions.
Founder: Elena Zervopoulou (ethno-psychologist, director of the show)
Greek-French with studies in Paris in ethno-psychology and directing (postgraduate degrees in Clinical Intercultural Psychology and visual anthropology), she provided systemic psychological support to immigrant families in Paris and to unaccompanied refugee minors in Southern Italy. He was a UNESCO consultant in Paris for the socio-economic integration of “street children” in Madagascar. He founded the production company One Vibe Films based in Italy, with which he wrote, directed and produced social documentaries for international television stations (BBC, ORF 3, RTE, NRK, SKAI, Catalan TV) and NGOs. Stand out are “Sea Gypsies” (part of the BBC’s “Why Poverty?” TV campaign that was shown in 200 countries), “Greece: Days of Change” (nominated for two awards at international festivals, distribution on European channels and in 60 cinemas of Spain), “BeLeaf” (virtual reality film for the European Capital of Culture Matera 2019), “VoiceUP”, “SolidViews” (cross-media platform), “Walking in Light” (site-specific performance). Mostly shot by herself in marginalized indigenous communities in Southeast Asia, Africa or Europe, she captures stories that restore the dignity of “forgotten” people, seeking to break down any stereotypes and bridge worlds through cross-cultural empathy and the promotion of human rights. Founded Diversity United in Athens in 2021 to empower vulnerable groups through art and co
