ELENIT | Euripides Laskaridis
A dark comedy suffused with subversive humor. A theater troupe teeming with strange beings. An international triumph, back at Onassis Stegi.
Dates
Tickets
Venue
Time & Date
Tickets
Group ticket reservations at groupsales@onassis.org
Onassis Stegi Friends presale: from 20 JAN 2023, 17:00
General presale: from 26 JAN 2023, 17:00
Information
Update
Due to 24-hour strike action announced by the Hellenic Entertainment Federation (POTHA), the performance scheduled for Friday, February 17 is cancelled.
Thank you for your understanding.
Duration
1 hour and 20 minutes (no interval)
Information
Strobe lights, smoke and laser are used during the performance.
Introduction
Soon after its presentation in Canada – and a little before setting off on tour around Europe for a fourth year running – the exquisitely funny and oddly magical “Elenit” is making another stop at Onassis Stegi.
Original photo: Julian Mommert
A towering lady with an outlandish hairdo and an even more outlandish nose picks up the phone, sings to herself, and rubs shoulders with other strange beings, speaking to them in a language that’s all her own. This is none other than Euripides Laskaridis, transformatively inhabiting a persona as adorable as she is outrageous, a figure who welcomes us into a universe in which dinosaurs, wind turbines, Stephen Hawking, piled corrugated metal sheets, an elevated DJ platform, Nike of Samothrace – and much more besides – all co-exist.
An utterly idiosyncratic scenic language saturates this exquisitely funny and endlessly charming work by a Greek artist acclaimed both at home and further afield. With a series of works described as “tragic comedies”, Euripides Laskaridis cannot easily be pegged. Active as he is – in startling ways – somewhere between happenings, burlesque, and contemporary dance, he invites us to focus our gaze on the transformative here and now of every scenic moment, defamiliarizing the familiar and making the absurd truly wondrous.
A little before the launch of the work’s fourth touring phase, “Elenit” is making a farewell stop at Onassis Stegi, where it had its world premiere back in 2019.
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- “Elenit” had its world premiere at Onassis Stegi in November 2019, and was Euripides Laskaridis’ first large-scale international co-production. It went on to tour theaters and festivals around the world alongside two of his previous works: “Relic” and “Titans”.
- With “Relic”, back in 2015, Laskaridis launched a series of peculiar and outrageous spectacles that propose an utterly original scenic language, magically managing to go beyond the limits of theater, dance, and the visual arts. “Relic” – which was selected for Aerowaves that same year – engaged in a solitary marathon of absurd transformations manifested through the body, and through the set, lighting, and sound. Two years later, in “Titans”, encounters with the grotesque were realized by means of an incredible duet: two genderless beings in a space without time, birthing feelings of familiarity and tenderness but also an otherworldly, melancholy beauty, all the while keeping transformation at the core of the work’s every medium.
- In April 2019, Euripides Laskaridis journeyed with “Relic” to appear as part of the Democracy Is Coming Festival program at Onassis New York. The production has been presented at more than 30 international festivals and theaters in Europe, and continues to tour the world.
- In the fall of 2020, as Euripides Laskaridis was preparing for his international tour of “Elenit” that was scheduled to launch from Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, a second lockdown shut everything down. But the world of “Elenit” couldn’t wait. This is how “Here Not Here” was born: a short film that slips us in through the back door of the creative process, enigmatically capturing the team’s preparations as they take a fresh look at the production. It was Euripides Laskaridis’ way of explaining that his work favors quickening the hearts and emotions of audiences over rousing their minds. “Here Not Here” was completed in partnership with creative consultant Eva Stefani and a film team comprising Pavlos Kosmidis, Emilia Milou, Fani Bitou, and Panagiotis Papafragkos. It first screened in January 2021, on the Onassis Channel on YouTube.
- International critics have described the work of Euripides Laskaridis as “anarchic physical theatre that will live long in the memory” (Graham Watts, “DanceTabs”) and “unique in terms of genre, quite unlike anything else” (Catherine Lalonde, “Le Devoir”), and the artist himself as “a craftsman of times and atmospheres, […] a creator of extraordinary characters capable of connecting the domestic with echoes of the cosmic” (Claudia Brufau, “Núvol”).
Photo: Andreas Simopoulos
ELENIT | Euripides Laskaridis
