Commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi Athens (GR). Co-produced by Le Gymnase–CDCN Roubaix Hauts-de-France (FR) and La rose des vents – scène nationale Lille métropole Villeneuve d’Ascq (FR). Touring is supported by Onassis Stegi’s “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program.

Premiere on 4 May 2023 at Onassis Stegi Athens (GR).

On the occasion of the 200 years since the Greek Revolution, U(R)TOPIAS seeks to revisit the contemporary “utopias”. The Greek Revolution was an utopia that became reality 200 years later. Today, this seems inconceivable.
Utopia is defined as an imagined community or society that possesses desirable, nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The word comes from Greek, où (“not”) and τόπος (“place”) and means “no-place”.

The work seeks to discover these ideas based on the knowledge of the past. Utopia becomes for them „Ur-topia“. The prefix „Ur“ – that means ancient, primitive, prototype – symbolizes the path for the definition of a new utopia which revisits our history. What kind of utopias do we need to invent and construct in the 21st century? What kind of citizenship do we imagine in a non-place, boundaries, frontiers, countries etc.? U(R)TOPIAS are the imaginary and ideal places where a society/community can find an ideal way of life, balance, paradise, by learning from the facts of the history and re-read it.

And this is why our Urtopia begins by re-reading our history. And after we manage to discover parts or fragments of the old, we will try to embody our own ideas so that we reinvent new ways to fight and resist. To imagine independence. To realize the fight. To stand the fall. U(R)TOPIAS is dance and revolution, the past and the present.

Duration: 70 min

A production by Aerites Dance Company and Techni coros theatre company. With the support of the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Premiere 12th November 2021, Olympia Municipal Theatre Maria Callas Athens.

Polittes (Citizens defeated) explores the emergence of the historical subject within specific socio-political processes. Although its content is shaped by Patricia Apergi’s Greek origins and experience, it also draws from and responds to every kind of societal crisis. As the artist herself asks: How does it feel to be a citizen of a country that is „losing“? What is the most difficult to face: anger, fear or defeat? What is of most value: the fight or its outcome? Can one emerge as a hero from a failure? Who are the citizens to be praised today?

Patricia and her team researched the meaning and ways of mourning as expressed by the chorus in ancient Greek tragedy in order to develop a specific choreography that translates the mournful dance-performance / state / representation to the contemporary reality of citizens being confronted with fear and defeat. Mourning together is a radical confrontation of the phenomenon of loss. By occupying the space of loss we master the art of consolation and gain the wisdom of collective recovery and change.

Titled Polittes, with a twisted spelling that playfully alludes to „citizens defeated“, Patricia´s work is inspired by contemporary writers and historians (such as Edouard Said, Dimitris Dimitriadis, Edouard Glissant, Kostis Karpozilos) and wishes to address the profound changes that have occurred in social and political living, the violation of rights of citizenship under the stress of the refugee crisis, and the rise of conservative and antiminority politics.

The various lessons inherited through Greek myth and drama are being reconfigured through contemporary political poetics; the kind that wishes to recognize the needs and woes of emerging societies, where class systems are dislocated, gender-based identities shift, and singularities budge under heavy psychological and body strains.

In those yet-to-be-identified societies, world citizens hear the last sounds of familiar things and learn how to accept the organic, fertilizing presence of chaos. They are confronted with an urgent demand: to invent new sounds, new images and new languages in order to describe the reality that is coming.

Duration:  60 min. 

A production by Aerites Dance Company. The work has been subsidized by the Greek Ministry of Culture & Sports. 

Cementary, premiered in 2017, visits one more time the urban environment and labyrinth, but this time, Patricia Aprgi and her company focuse more on the idea of the dwelling of the city. What is it like to be homeless and to live on the streets? What is the significance of „empty spaces“ in a city? How can these spaces be re-used and recycled? And what kind of dance can be born there?

Cementary is an imaginary city. A city that belongs to the future, using the contemporary issues and the nowadays examples. Cementary is a city that survived crisis although still mourns for its victims. It is the city of blending, the city where voices scream underneath the cements. Cementary is the future, even though today we are unable to imagine it.

For this piece, Patricia is re-approaching classical ballet, using it as a tool/example in order to create a kinetic vocabulary which could be described as the “lyricism of hardship” Α contradictory and provocative language, but at the same time a language that could be understood by anyone, where any “body” can fit anywhere.

With Cementary, Patricia and the performers want to devise their own city of their dreams, their own world, which might allow us to ponder, even for a little while, on our future.

Duration: 70 min.

A production by Aerites Dance Company and Onassis Cultural Center, Athens. In coproduction with Maison de la Danse, Lyon, Centro Cultural Villa Flor, Guimaraes and O Espaço do Tempo, Montemor-o-Novo.

Planites maintains the spirit of navigating the urban labyrinth. The collective mind and body of the city is the raw material which the team draws upon. But these elements are reevaluated so that the concepts of the streets and wandering (dérive) include the foreigner, the immigrant, the person who travels whether by choice or by force.

We speak then of the path which is chosen and on which civilizations are mixed and created through their mediators, the people. Nowadays, as the old urban centers undergo rapid changes due to gentrification, creation of ghettos and reclaiming of unused areas, new interpretations and practices are formed in the field of culture.

For Planites, the complexion of the streets changes. They become a place of wandering and search for a better tomorrow, the melting pot of the foreign and the segragated, the embodiment and incorporation of force and exile.
Planites are people of the world. They travel and carry with them stories and experiences from the past in order to adapt to a foreign way of life without losing their own identity. They are the contemporary migrants. They are the citizens of the world.

Duration: 60 min.

A production by Aerites Dance Company. Coproduction and residencies: Maison de la Danse, Lyon; Hellerau – European Center for the Arts, Dresden; Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona; Graner, Barcelona; Tanzhaus nrw, Düsseldorf; Dance Ireland, Dublin; Duncan Dance Research Center, Athens. With the support of modul-dance and the Culture Programme of the EU and Centre Choréographique National Rillieux-la-Pape.