Sunday | 01.03.26
17:00 – 18:30
public talk: Costas Kekis & Νefeli Gioti
Being Critical in Dance?
What if critical practices were not only about evaluating works, but about shaping worlds? Here, they unfold in diverse forms, shaping how we write, speak, work, and engage in dialogue.
Nefeli and Costas approach dialogically critical practices in dance – and beyond – not as neutral observation, but as modes of thinking, making, refusing, and resisting. In a cultural landscape shaped by dominant yet fleeting trends, institutional constraints, and systemic exclusions, how can criticality remain a space of possibility and advocacy for better worlds?
Grounded in both individual and collective strategies, the duet explores, from a situated perspective, how these practices can open space for more equitable, inventive, and socially engaged ways of working and relating – inviting them to further ask: what do we practice when we practice critically? And how do we become discerning in the choices, relationships, and contexts that shape our work and workflows?
In this discussion, it positions critical practices as a creative, collaborative, and embedded method – one that produces knowledge (or critically subverts standardised methods of knowledge production), redistributes attention, and shapes how work is made, received, and valued. Across contexts, whether within or against institutions, the duet asks how critical practices can foster more just, unruly, and generative ways of engaging with the dance field.
bio
Costas Kekis began dancing in his family’s living room. He continued professionally on stage as a performer and choreographer as well as socially in nightclubs with the same visceral desire to move. He has presented his own or co-authored works at Impulstanz, Tanzquartier Wien, Dampfzentrale Bern, brut Wien, Raw Matters, WUK, Antic Teatr Barcelona, Improspekcije2022 Zagreb, Ostertanztage Salzburg. As a dramaturge he worked with Katerina Andreou, Magdalena Chowaniec, Fanni Futterknecht, Lau Lukkarila, Beatrix Simkò, Asher O‘ Gorman, Martina de Dominicis. He has performed for Doris Uhlich, Sara Lanner, Oleg Soulimenko & Fanni Futterknecht. In 2021 & 2022 he coordinated artistically the Life Long Burning Programme‚ Performance Situation Room‘ (Impulstanz) and since 2022 he is steadily collaborating as dramaturgical/artistic assistant for Katerina Andreou (FR) and Beatrix Simkò (HU). Within 2026-2028, he will be accompanying the new creations of Andreou (in Biennale de la Danse, Lyon & for The Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company) as well as the work ‘Nerò_una puta historia de amor’ by theatre director Anna Lemonaki (Geneva/Athens).
Nefeli Gioti is a dance researcher, choreographer, dancer, and performer. She has studied Environmental Sciences at the University of the Aegean and contemporary dance practices at Tanzfabrik in Berlin, and graduated in 2022 with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Choreography from the Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH). Her artistic activity emerges through the intersection of contemporary dance, choreography, artistic research, performance, and critical fabulation. Using methods such as practice-as-research, grounded theory, and embodied stories, she develops choreographic practices and performative objects, including performances, publications, discourse practices, text writing, and experimental videos. Recently, she has participated in collective publications such as “Dissonances or Herding Cats to take out the Trash”, published in 2024 as part of the “Critical Practice (Made in Yu)” program, and “A Companion to Ecofeminist Curatorial Geography, an Exercise Book” co-edited with Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, published by Lokomotiva – Centre for New Initiatives in Arts and Culturе.
18:30 – 19:00 pause
19:00 – 21:00
public talk: Elpida Karaba, Κonstantina Georgelou & Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski
shaking the contextual
Starting from the contexts they work and live in – their tensions, particularities, and challenges – Biljana, Elpida, and Konstantina are invited to reflect on how these conditions shape their practice(s). How do they position their work within these environments? In an art world that often appears homogenous, how can they contextualize their work? What possibilities do these contexts open, what limitations do they impose, and what imaginaries or “dreams” do they allow them to explore?
The panel also considers how institutional affiliation – or distance from it – affects access, modes of working, and the circulation of knowledge. It nurtures reflection on strategies of survival: how they navigate, resist, and create possibilities within constrained or challenging environments.
How can critical reflection, combined with attention to relational practices enable us to rethink hierarchies, the circulation of knowledge, and the distribution of acknowledgment both within institutions and in independent or informal contexts?
bio
Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski is a curator, researcher, writer and cultural producer at the intersection of dance, theatre and visual arts performance, art history, cultural policy, independent cultural scenes, activist, feminist and environmental (curatorial) practices. She works as a freelancer and as a programme director of Lokomotiva in Skopje. Currently, she is a co-researcher for the NADA Digital Archive of Dance and Performance; Dance Map research project; co-curator of the exhibition Dancing, Resisting, (Un)working (in Zagreb and Ljubljana) and Performance Platform festival in Skopje (2023-); curator of the international school Curating in Context, and mentor and lecturer on diverse educational programs. She is part of the platform Nomad Dance Academy, teaches and writes, is an art historian and holds a PhD from the Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade. She works collaboratively, believing that meaningful creation and art/cultural production thrive through connections and relations with others.
Elpida Karaba is an art theorist, exhibition curator, and educator. She is an Associate Professor at the Department of Culture, Creative Media and Industries at the University of Thessaly (https://cult.uth.gr/staff/karaba-elpida/). Her work and publications focus on the history and theory of art, feminist theory, activist art, new media, and research-based artistic practices, with an emphasis on archival practices, public art, curating, and critical pedagogies. She is the scientific director of the Centre for New Media and Feminist Public Practices (CNMFPP) (www.centrefeministmedia.arch.uth), based at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly. The Centre focuses on the intersection of art, feminism, and technology. She is also the founder of the Temporary Academy of Arts (https://temporaryacademy.org), a para-institution, a hybrid of artistic, curatorial, theoretical and pedagogical praxis, dedicated to experiments on diverse artistic processes and critical cultural mediation.
Konstantina Georgelou is a dramaturge and researcher based in Amsterdam. Her research is on the practice and theory of dramaturgical activity, especially regarded from a political perspective, which is part of her ongoing inquiry on embodied practices of resistance and forms of dis/order as these are thought and expressed within dance and performance. She is an assistant professor at the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University and at the University College Utrecht. She is also a tutor at DAS Choreography and at DAS Theatre, both MA programmes at the Graduate School of the Amsterdam University for the Arts. Together with Efrosini Protopapa she is currently researching “dramaturgies of moving laterally”, presenting performative dialogues, publications and other events in various contexts. Her publications have appeared in several journals and books, such as with TDR, Performance Research Journal and Maska. She co-authored The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance (Valiz, 2017) and has worked together with several artists including Genevieve Murphy, Zhana Ivanova, Billy Mullaney and Chara Kotsali.
21:00
bye bye satellite
Sunday mellow & easy-going tunes
