Dimitris Papaioannou

Director, choreographer, performer, and visual artist Dimitris Papaioannou blends experimental dance, physical theater, and visual and performance arts in surreal, dreamlike, and immersive environments. He has full command of the artistic vision, including set, costume, sculptural installations, and lighting design.

Born in Athens in 1964, Papaioannou studied under the renowned Greek painter Yannis Tsarouchis and at the Athens School of Fine Arts and went on to publish numerous comics and graphic novels, the first of their genre in Greece to include punk and hardcore homoerotic images.

Dimitris Papaioannou is the first Greek artist of the performing arts to penetrate the international art scene as an auteur, with his creations co-produced and commissioned internationally and enjoying sold-out performances in long tours at the most renowned festivals and theaters on the planet.

Papaioannou is one of the rare artists whose body of work includes creations made with minimal resources (“Primal Matter,” 2012) and of the largest possible scale (ATHENS 2004 Opening Ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games). He is also the first artist to create a work for the Tanztheater Wuppertal after the death of Pina Bausch.

He has been nominated twice for the Emmy Award (2016) and twice for the Olivier Award (2019 και 2022) and is the first Greek artist to receive the European Theater Prize (2017).

Dimitris Papaioannou was among the artists who participated in the international exhibition “Portals” (2021), held at the former Public Tobacco Factory in Athens and organized by the cultural organization NEON. The exhibition featured his work “Sisyphus / Trans / Form” (2019), which had premiered in 2019 at Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy.