The festival “New Baltic Dance” will be opened by a troupe from Greece, which has been waiting for 5 years – MadeinVilnius.lt

Already this weekend, the 27th The contemporary dance festival “New Baltic Dance” begins in Vilnius. Tickets for the opening of the festival are sold out a month and a half before the festival, the last tickets for the remaining performances of the festival are being sold. “During the two weeks of the festival, 10 world-renowned contemporary dance troupes will dance for our audience, in addition, we will take some works to Ukmergė and present a surprise by integrating dance into other neighborhoods of Vilnius. Every year, I feel that I have more and more contemporary dance community”, – the head of the festival, Gintarė Masteikaitė, rejoices before the start of the festival.

The Lithuanian audience has been waiting for the stars of the opening – Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos since 2019. That year, the Papadopoulos troupe could not come due to the dancer’s illness, during that time the choreographer created and brought to Lithuania a new piece that talks about the topic of melting glaciers, which is relevant to the whole world.

Christos, who will present his show LARSEN C at the Lithuanian National Drama Theater, established himself in the world of dance by working with the most famous Greek director of our time – Dimitrijus Papayouanus, who was very warmly received by the Lithuanian audience in 2021. Another interesting detail of the biography: Christos Papadopoulos was in 2004. Member of the organizing team of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Athens Olympic Games and 2015 Participant of the European Games in Baku.

The performance LARCEN C is inspired by the slowness of melting glaciers to speak about the urgency of life. “Glacier” or “ice plume” is the 10,000-year-old still Larsen C body of water in Antarctica. It moves so slowly that it cannot be detected by human senses.

“My starting point, my source of inspiration, is usually one moment. A pale impression lasting almost nothing. Something small, probably insignificant – I’m often not sure if it even existed or if I imagined it. And yet it remains, firmly entrenched in me. That’s when the struggle begins in rehearsals – to believe in that little thing and call it significant. To advocate for him, to give him time and try to give him a shape without pressuring him, and then to wait,” says C. Papadopoulos about his work.

During the hour-long performance, the dancers are constantly in motion, their movements suggestive and fluid, like vibrations in space, like waves, pulsating together with all the other elements – lights, decorations and sounds. Landscapes, bodies and sounds appear and disappear, approach and recede. The show speaks directly to a rather gradual transformation, catching the audience off guard many times, pretending that nothing else is happening without the constant rotation.

“To discover in movement what has not yet been formulated, I set out to study the changes in glaciers and try to convey this through subtle movements in dance.” My goal is to take the audience not to another place, but to a new state by the end of the performance. It’s an enchanting invitation to the audience to understand what’s going on,” Christos intrigues the audience.

Choreographer Christos Papadopoulos, who is coming to the Baltic region for the first time with his program, studied dance and choreography at SNDO (New Dance Development School) in Amsterdam (2003), theater at the Greek National Theater Drama School (GNT Drama School) (1999). Since 2003 he teaches movement and improvisation at the Athens Conservatory School of Drama. He is also the founder of the dance group The Lion and the Wolf (2015).

Being the largest event of its kind in the Baltic States, NBŠ performs a triple mission: to inform, educate and gather people interested in dance art. More than 6,000 spectators visit the festival every year. In total, more than 270 troupes from 37 countries of the world took part in “New Baltic Dance”, which showed over 480 dance performances. Festival organizers: Lithuanian Dance Information Center and Vilnius Festivals. The festival is financed by the Lithuanian Culture Council and Vilnius City Municipality.