26th Cyprus Contemporary Dance Festival, 4 – 22 June 2025

Rialto Theatre
6 days ago
6 min read

The 26th Cyprus Contemporary Dance Festival continues with a rich and diverse programme, presenting performances from seven different countries. From 4 to 22 June, audiences will have the opportunity to enjoy ten performances in total, nine at Rialto Theatre in Limassol and one at the Nicosia Municipal Theatre. This year’s programme was curated by the Festival’s Artistic Advisor, Fotis Nikolaou.

All performances begin at 20:30.

12/06 ERRONEOUS ENCOUNTERS (45’) PANAYIOTIS TOFI | Cyprus

Text, Research, Direction, Choreography: Panayiotis Tofi in collaboration with the performers

Performers (in alphabetical order): Damianos Aggelos Efstathiou, Vasiliki Kypraiou, Ioannis Mamolis, Thanos Stasinos

Premiere Cast: Damianos Aggelos Efstathiou, Vasiliki Kypraiou, Ioannis Mamolis, Nikos Samouridis

Music Composition and Musician On Stage: Andreas Economides

Set Design: Yiorgos Yiannou

Costume Design: Rea Olympiou

Lighting Design: Vasilis Petinaris

Special Thanks: Chorologie Dance Center, Vert School of Dance, Panos Topsides, Kypros Ioannou, Marilena Ttofi

The choreographic work Erroneous Encounters was created with the support of the Deputy Ministry of Culture (TERPSICHORE 2024 programme).

Erroneous Encounters is an experimental choreographic work that intertwines movement, live electronic music, and poetic text. The piece explores the fragmentation of the self caused by post-traumatic experiences, embodied by three male performers as they navigate fractured phrases of their semi-malfunctioning bodies. Alongside them, a live electronic composer and an actress delivering sections of poetic text, further amplify the exploration of physical and emotional distance. Reflecting on the loss of autonomy and the rising disconnection in contemporary reality, the work challenges perceptions of the body’s fragility and the erosion of empathy through its haunting aesthetics.

Panayiotis Tofi is a choreographer whose research delves into themes of dispossession, decentralisation, and concealment. His work highlights the beauty and exhaustion of the human body, emphasising the uncanny presence of the unfamiliar. Known for his subtle minimalism, poetic text, elements of romanticism, and intense physicality, Panayiotis has developed a distinguished body of contemporary dance work. Originally trained as a visual designer, Panayiotis graduated from Trinity Laban with a First Class Bachelor of Contemporary Dance and a Diploma in Dance Studies. He is an experienced theatre movement designer and director, awarded as ‘Creator of the Year’ by Cyprus Theatre Organisation in 2018 for his artistic versatility, imagination and bold approach towards experimentation. Based on his choreographic research and evolving movement vocabulary, Panayiotis has led workshops in Stockholm, Naples, Athens, Ermoupolis, Limassol and Nicosia, sharing his innovative approaches with dancers and performers across diverse international stages.

14/6 CUIR (45’) ARNO FERRERA & GILLES POLET | Belgium

Artistic Direction: Arno Ferrera

External Eye: Paola Rizza

Choreographic Eye: Benjamin Kahn, Gilles Polet

Sound Adviser: Amaury Vanderborght

Lighting Design: Florent Blanchon

Light and Sound Technician: Pierre-Jean Faggiani

Saddler: Jara BuschhoffCostume Design: Jennifer Defays

Booking, production: Anaïs Longiéras

Administration: Steven Cayrasso - Les Halles de Schaerbeek

With the collaboration of Alexandre Fray, Un loup pour l’hommeAcknowledgements: Un loup pour l’homme: Lou Henry, Caroline Cardoso, Emma Lefrançois

Photographer: Valérie Frossard

Video: Romain Vennekens

Press: Estelle Laurentin

Graphic Design: Ekta

Delegated Producer: Les Halles de SchaerbeekCUIR has been produced by the company Un loup pour l’Homme (FR)

Co-production: Le Bateau Feu, SN de Dunkerque (FR), Theater op De Markt, Dommelhof (BE), Larural, Créon (FR), Festival Perspectives, Sarrebrück (DE).

CUIR is a duet on the notions of traction and attraction. In a powerful body-to-body confrontation, two harnessed men play at manipulating each other’s bodies. The cautious pleasure they take in transforming each other into an instrument, an apparatus, a playground or a battlefield engages them in a struggle with mutual consent. Between traction and attraction, they do not aim for power over the other, but rather power with the other.

Arno Ferrera graduated in Physical Theatre from the Scuola Teatro Dimitri in Switzerland, after practising gymnastics for ten years and studying Baroque music for six years at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana (CSI). He chose Brussels as his base and enriched his physical training with contemporary dance in the Belgian capital. He took part in the European tour of Holiday on Stage by Martin Schick and Damir Todorovic. He then participated in the creation of the Swiss company Opera Retablo’s production Vanity: I Hate This Job. Since 2018, he has been the artistic director of the Belgian company Kind Bull, alongside Amaury Vanderborght. Their work focuses on creating artistic projects within closed environments, such as psychiatric hospitals and prisons. He has developed research around instinctive movement, combined with an analysis of animal motor skills. In 2015, he joined the company Un Loup pour l’Homme, performing in the show Face Nord and later contributing to the creation of Rare Birds. In 2018, he began developing the new project Cuir. In 2023, Cuir left the company Un Loup pour l’Homme to join Les Halles de Schaerbeek in Brussels, where Arno Ferrera is an associate artist from 2023 to 2028.

Gilles Polet (1984) first trained as an actor at the Lemmensinstituut in Leuven before moving to Leeds to study at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. He graduated from P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels in 2008. Since graduating, his work has ranged from opera — with Deborah Warner at La Monnaie in Brussels — to short films with directors Dimitri Karakatsanis, Andrew Ly, and Kevin Calero. His solo Jack-in-the-Box has been performed worldwide, at venues in Hong Kong, Tehran, Berlin, and beyond. While travelling through Iran, Gilles Polet encountered Sufism, which inspired his next solo, Simurgh, exploring the intricate links between Sufi culture in Iran and Western club culture. He collaborated for ten years with Troubleyn/Jan Fabre, including in the re-enactments This is Theatre Like It Was to Be Expected and Foreseen and The Power of Theatrical Madness, in which he played the role of the emperor. He also performed in Mount Olympus: To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy, a 24h Performance by Troubleyn/Jan Fabre. In 2020, he focused on his career as a yoga teacher and created his own outdoor yoga app, YOGING. He joined the team of CUIR in June 2021.

16/6 FOLKLORE DYNAMICS (50’) VIDAVÈ Company Noemi Dalla Vecchia & Matteo Vignali | Italy

Choreography: Noemi Dalla Vecchia & Matteo Vignali

Dancers: Cristina Roggerini, Emma Bogerd, Fabio Cavallo, Matteo Vignali, Noemi Dalla Vecchia

Production: VIDAVÈ Company

Co-production: La Biennale di Venezia

With the support of: DANCEHAUSpiù National Production Center, Movimento Danza National Promotion Organism and PACTA Salone dei Teatri

Voice: Gustavo Frigerio

Texts: Mariateresa Sartori

Sound Composition: Sabrina Felli, Simone Andres Ollearo

Lighting Design: Alessandro Caso

Costume Design: Francesco Iacovino

“A language is a dialect with an army and a flag.”With this formula, first the sociolinguist Weinreich and later Quirk described the influence of a country’s socio-political situation on smaller communities. Similarly, Folklore Dynamics, through its research on Italian dialects — metaphors for values that seem to be vanishing in today’s society — amplifies the voices of choreographers in protest against political power. Instinct, humility, passion, and hard work all converge in a country’s folklore, where diverse identities foster a powerful sense of collectiveness. Five performers square up to a dominant voice that seeks only approval and unquestioned consensus, reminding them what it means to have no chance at resistance. Yet these identities endure. The choreography captures their sincere expressions and emotions, their astute codes of communication, and underscores their anti-conformist political intent.

In 2019, Matteo Vignali and Noemi Dalla Vecchia founded VIDAVÈ, and they have been working nationally and internationally on productions that emphasise a consistent, contaminated movement style and rich micro-dramaturgical choreographies. They attended the NGC Course of AterBalletto and the Pioneer Project of Korzo from 2021 to 2023. With Another With You, produced by DanceHausPIÚ and DanceGallery, they won WhatWeAre and Prospettiva Danza Teatro 2021, making their debut at the National Theatre of Vicenza and, on the European stage, at TanzArt OstWest in Giessen. In 2022, in collaboration with Scenario Pubblico, they created Hansel&Gretel Alteration, which premiered at the National Theatre Fontana in Milan, and was performed at festivals such as Istanbul Fringe Festival and 10Sentidos, earning awards including Linkage, SoloTanz, and Tanzplattform Bern. In 2023, they created Spoken Dance, divided into two pieces: Choreographic Figures, winner of the Residanza Award 2023, which premiered at Teatro Mercadante, and Stimmung, supported by Centro Coreográfico Canal and Festival Primavera dei Teatri. In 2024, they won the Biennale Danza Award with Folklore Dynamics.