31st Kalamata International Dance Festival-Anniversary Exhibition-Kalamata, the City of Dance/1995–2025

Throughout the Festival’s run, the Lobby of the Kalamata Dance Megaron will host the anniversary exhibition “Kalamata, the City of Dance | 1995–2025″.” The exhibition highlights the Festival’s history through fragments—posters, programs, photographs, and videos—from its archive and new creations.

In this context, twenty-eight years after it was originally commissioned by the Festival in 1997, the tribute work Monument by Dimitris Papaioannou will be screened in a video directed by Takis Chatzopoulos and the Cinetic company. The piece is dedicated to Nelly, the photographer who captured the early days of expressionist dance, and features performer Kat Válastur. Monument, the only solo work Papaioannou has created to date, is being presented once again, marking a rare return to archival material.

At the same time, the Festival archive becomes a source of inspiration for new conversations and new creations: visual art exhibitions, audiovisual installations, video art, performances, and more. In Reimagine, Lila Sotiriou creates a new work, accompanied by music from Stavros Gasparatos — a video inspired by the Kalamata International Dance Festival archive, featuring photographs and publications from the institution’s history. Moments, faces, bodies, and movements captured in the archival material — artists from both the Greek and international dance scene — come together in this audiovisual work as a tribute to the people who have left their artistic mark on the Festival’s 30-year journey.

Additionally, Typical Organisation, drawing inspiration from the posters created over the Festival’s 30 years of operation, is designing a new visual artwork in printed form. It is a retrospective of the various graphic design languages that engage with the pulse and themes of each year through the interplay of colours, shapes, densities, and text.

Production Execution: Delta Pi Productions & Arts Management

Free Admission