ODD - Onassis Dance Days 2026

The Onassis Dance Days (ODD) contemporary dance festival focuses this year on the ‘familiar and the unfamiliar,’ exploring notions of origin, family, the known and the unknown, as well as chosen kinship. How is choreographic identity shaped through ties of blood, memory, or imagination? What new forms of ‘kinship’ emerge in a world of fluid connections? Can choreography become a meeting ground for relatives by blood, by choice, or by surprise?

The central performance of this year’s festival is an international co-production by Onassis Stegi, “NÔT” by Marlene Monteiro Freitas from Portugal, which opened the Avignon Festival in 2025 and was talked about as few have been. An unconventional ritual that dismantles form and recomposes the shared experience through the fever of its eight performers’ bodies. An absurd hymn to freedom that does not seek to explain, only to etch impressions through fragments, like dreams.

Among this year’s works are also productions that emerged from the research of two Onassis AiR Fellows from last year: “FÁE” by Efthimios Moschopoulos and “(REST IN) BLUE” by Katerina Foti are two solo works that, through explosive corporeal vocabulary and a contemporary neopaganism, are situated within the field of autoethnography. Both works draw on lived memories, collective visions, and invented genealogies, transforming the body into a site of narration, rupture, and reinvention of kinship.

Another Onassis AiR Fellow, Efi Gousi, presents “Tectonic Riders” at Onassis Stegi’s –1 Black Box; her video installation, which premiered at Pedion tou Areos park as part of the Plásmata 3 exhibition, is a post-shamanic hymn, filmed in a post-apocalyptic landscape of Central Greece, with young girls, like modern-day Amazons, reenacting the ritual of bull-leaping, fertilizing the arid land.

Finally, Elena Antoniou from Cyprus returns to the Onassis Stegi—following “LANDSCAPE”—with her new work, “ODE”: a duet-ode to femininity, female eroticism, and vulnerability transformed into strength. Together with musician Maria Spivak, the two artists are elevated to a pedestal, where movement becomes sound, presence is understood as an act of freedom, and “together” means “no woman being alone.”

Some of the choreographies resemble family photo albums: at times tender, at times strange, sometimes truthful, sometimes entirely fictitious. They search for the cracks, the imprints, and the subconscious traces of family, whether biological or invented, as well as places of origin, both real and imagined. This year’s ODD invites audiences into a transformative experience, where familiarity meets the uncanny, and where the body remembers, forgets, and invents new kinships.

Thursday 5.2—Sunday 8.2

18:00 | “ODE” by Elena Antoniou, -1, Duration: 43 minutes

19:00 | "(REST IN) BLUE" by Katerina Foti, Upper Stage, Duration: 45 minutes

20:00 | “FÁE” by Efthimios Moschopoulos, -1, Duration: 45 minutes

18:00- 22:30 | “Tectonic Riders” by Efi Gousi, Screening on a loop, -1 Black Box, Duration: 5.43"

Friday 6.2—Sunday 8.2

21:00 | NÔT by Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Main Stage, Duration: 90 minutes

Friday 6.2 | After-performance talk

After the premiere of NÔT, on Friday, February 6, a discussion will take place on the Main Stage of the Stegi, on the occasion of the publication of the book «Troubling the Stage: The Choreographic Work of Marlene Monteiro Freitas» (Lenz Press, 2025).

The discussion will feature choreographer Marlene Monteiro Freitas and the author of the book, Alexandra Balona, and will be moderated by director and performer Euripides Laskaridis. The discussion will be held in English, without interpretation into Greek.

Duration: 30 minutes

Where does the safety of the familiar end? Where does our unsettling relationship with the unknown begin? This year’s Onassis Dance Days festival explores this threshold, inviting us to wander between the familiar and the uncanny, where ancestral landscapes intertwine with our darkest dreams.

The five works presented this February at the Onassis Stegi are reminiscent of a strange, tender, and unpredictable family: from the multi-bodied ritual ecstasy of Marlene Monteiro Freitas’ “NÔT,” to the intimate, autoethnographic solo confessions of “FÁE” by Efthimios Moschopoulos and “(REST IN) BLUE” by Katerina Foti; and from Elena Antoniou’s “ODE” to femininity to the post-shamanic Amazons in Efi Gousi’s “Tectonic Riders.” Contemporary dance, as the most free and autonomous field of artistic research that we consistently support, can speak of the body as the ideal site for reimagining who we are and with whom we are connected.