Greek bass, he was born in Patras, Greece. He studied classical singing, violin, advanced music theory as well as sound technology and pursued his postgraduate studies in music technology at the University of York in the UK. He has been a member of the Lyric Theatre Workshop at the Municipal and Regional Theatre of Patras. He participated in concerts with the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation Chorus and the Athens Municipality Chorus. As a soloist, he has performed in opera and musical theatre productions, including Matchbox: The Musical, Z, The Twilight of the Debts, Medea by Bost, Captain Michalis, The Haunted, Sataneries, El retablo de maese Pedro as well as in productions for children and young people such as The Snow Queen, Prince Ivan and the Firebird, A Cloud in Love, etc. At the same time, he also works as a voice artist, lending his voice to dubbing productions and commercials. He is a member of both the Chorus of the Greek National Opera and the ΜEIZOΝ Ensemble.

Artistic workshops cycle in Northern Evia

From September 2022 and for nearly a year, the Caravan Project followed Melisma, the year-long cycle of educational and artistic activities for persons of all ages that was realized in the wider region of Northern Evia, recording the workshops and personal stories of the people who took part in them. The Project tracked the compositional processes of a collective music-dance narration, which was turned into a performance titled Topos Ateliotos (Endless Land) and presented in Kechries, Northen Evia, on Sunday 16 July 2023, as well as on the GNO Alternative Stage on Sunday 17 September 2023.

The members of the film crew wandered across burnt-down and reborn areas, walking on trails and seeking legends and stories. They let themselves get carried away in adventurous encounters with the guardians of this land: a beekeeper who insistently harvests honey in the burnt forest, a monk who serenely reminisces on the miracle that saved the monastery from fire, a carpenter who reopened his carpentry shop, a retsina (variety of Greek wine) producer who is concerned about his future, a wood carver who carves burnt tree trunks transmuting the catastrophe into reborn, peculiar figurines, a horse whisperer who talks with animals.

The documentary composes an unseen geography of diverse narratives that shed light upon catastrophe and rebirth, challenging us to ponder on the symbiotic relationship between nature and civilisation.

Programme coordinator: Leonidas Panagopoulos

Implementation: Caravan Project (Stratis Vogiatzis, Dimitris Kourtis)

Presentation: Spring 2024

The programme was subsidized by the Ministry of Culture

GNO Learning & Participation Lead Donor 

Choreography workshop for children aged 10 to 12 years

In collaboration with the GNO Ballet

The new amazing workshop Do You Choreograph? is coming to offer children aged 10 to 12 years a singular music and movement experience full of emotions made of dance figures.

Classical ballet and the classical technique are based on terms and names well-known to professionals, e.g. grand jeté, pirouette, assemblé etc. But what happens when these terms get mixed with emojis depicting different mental states (joy, sorrow, anger, etc.)? A ballet dancer will have to perform all these instructions the moment each kid will choose the term or the emotion they want to be depicted.

A unique condition that will motivate children to unleash their imagination so as to improvise and choreograph human emotions under the guidance of a professional dancer. The workshop’s goal is to help participants acquire personal experience in the making of a choreography and understand dance as an inexhaustible way of expressing emotions.

Planning / Implementation: GNO Learning & Participation Department – GNO Ballet (Giannis Mitrakis, Marita Nikolitsa)

Age group: 10 to 12  

Dates & hours: Sunday 10 March 2024

Hours: 10.00 - 11.30, 12.00 - 13.30

Applications open on: Monday 19 February 2024

Application deadline: Friday 1 March 2024

Applications can be submitted exclusively via the form you will find here. 

GNO Learning & Participation Lead Donor 

Interdisciplinary workshops for special education schools, teenagers, students with or without visual/hearing disability, and special or non-special education teachers

With interpretation in Greek Sign Language

What shape should the melody have? How does the circle sound and how does the square sound? Can rice paper play music? Does an everyday object have rhythm? Can I describe my favorite song with a piece of wire? In how many different ways can I tell the same story? If the warm and cold of colors were my body parts, what color would my dance be?

With kinetic, audio and visual games, we awaken our senses and develop communication tools that help us connect. By supporting and complementing each other, we create an artistic, experiential experience of inclusion.

The new cycle of interdisciplinary workshops Moving Soundscapes is aimed at special education schools, teenage students with or without visual/hearing disability, and special or non-special education teachers, and has multiple goals: to encourage the participation of teenagers with disability in artistic activities, enhance the self-efficacy of teenagers with or without disability,  support inclusive education through non-verbal communication, cultivate collegiality within and without the school setting, provide inclusive learning tools, empower special and non-special education teachers, and raise awareness on issues of disability and art.

Using physical-experiential education through movement and improvisation exercises, musical tools of coordination and visual practices as their main instrument, the workshops will attempt to develop participants’ kinesthetic skills and expressivity through the enhancement of the mechanisms of reception, processing and composition of stimuli, regardless of the extent to which their senses are functional. Participants will understand the multisensory perception of knowledge by exploring the various ways, in which meanings/stimuli become perceived, and will discover the importance of physicality as a means of communication and dialogue.

Moving Soundscapes will be conducted in two phases: the first will be realized in schools, and the second on the premises of the Greek National Opera with experiential workshops, both for students and educators, as well as with meetings for educators with the goal of collecting feedback while also exploring with them theoretical approaches to inclusive techniques.

Planning/Implementation: Yiota Peklari, Vassia Zorbali,

Scientific associate: Natasa Chanta-Martin

Greek Sign Language Interpretation: Androniki Xanthopoulou

All Together at the Opera is sponsored by

GNO Learning & Participation Lead Donor 

Electroacoustic composition workshops

In collaboration with the National Library of Greece

In what ways can a text be transmuted into a soundscape? What process can convert the two-dimensional pages of a book into the multi-dimensional soundscape that is composed in the reader’s mind? How can an artist turn printed works into a sound experience? These are some of the questions that will be raised in the new cycle of electroacoustic composition workshops titled Latent Space, having as its starting point the power of written word to trigger the creation of a variety of artistic products that can reshape/recompose its content.

The programme is aimed at young artists and invites them to a creative adventure of sensory experiences based on music and the art of sound, with the goal of bringing out the constant interaction between philosophy, legend, and musical creation. Inspired by the literature on Richard Wagner’s emblematic opera Die Walküre, which will be presented in March 2024 in the Stavros Niarchos Hall, participants will use written word as their primary material and will attempt to turn the landscapes and the events described in texts of their choice into their own pieces of acoustic music. The resulting compositions will be presented on the GNO Alternative Stage in June 2024.

This educational programme brings out the vital space that has been historically provided by books to the arts, and at the same time, the special importance of the co-habitation of the National Library of Greece and the Greek National Opera under the same roof. The programme is realized with the collaboration of these two organisations.

Planning/Implementation: Thanos Polymeneas-Liontiris

Scientific associate: Themelis Glynatsis

Bio

Thanos Polymeneas-Liontiris is a composer, sound artist and educator. He obtained a BA in Double Bass, and a BA in Electronic Music Composition from the Rotterdam Conservatoire, while following courses at the Institute of Sonology (Royal Conservatoire of The Hague) and at IRCAM (France). He continued with two MA studies: in Fine Arts (Spain) and in Creative Education (UK).

He did his PhD research at University of Sussex, being fully funded with a CHASE-AHRC scholarship. His PhD research has been awarded as one of the most innovative in the field of Art and Technology by the Leonardo Academic Journal (MIT Press). He teaches continuously in Higher Education since 2011 (Falmouth University, University of Sussex, University of Brighton, Ionian University). Since 2019 he teaches at the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. Since 2012 he is a fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

His works have been presented, at among others: Athens and Epidaurus Festival, Holland Festival, Todays Arts, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Modern Body Festival, Kalamata International Dance Festival, The Athens Concert Hall, Onassis Foundation, Tectonics Festival, Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean.

Programme starts on: Thursday 21 Μarch 2024

Dates: Thursdays 21, 28 March, 4, 11, 18, 25 April, 9, 16, 23, 30 May, 4 and 5 June 2024

Presentation date: 6 June 2024

The selection of participants will be made after an open call that will be announced a month prior to the start of the workshops. 

In collaboration with

GNO Learning & Participation Lead Donor 

Dance performance and movement workshop for parents and children

When the body becomes voice, all destinations seem possible.

Pie in the Sky lands on the GNO Alternative Stage and becomes the starting point for a singular artistic experience that will take younger and older audiences by storm.  

Pie in the Sky is a modern dance work, a duet that will be performed onstage by choreographer and dancer Georgia Vardarou along with the daughter Myrto Sanchis Vardarou, followed by an original movement workshop for children, mothers and fathers, on the GNO Alternative Stage. Right after the end of the show, participants will turn into protagonists, through modern dance techniques proposed by the two dancers, and will be urged to approach movement as a means of expression, communication and externalization of emotions, but also as a mechanism of activating hope and strength. At the same time, through the participatory process, they will get to know up close how a performance of this genre is structured.

* Pie in the Sky was created by Georgia Vardarou and her daughter on the occasion of the curfew imposed during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Confined, between our living room and a small cultural center in the nearby village, we began to create and dance, letting our imagination wander across the universe. Dark days would alternate with days full of astral light and the ceilings would brim with planets and distant stars. From time to time the hope of a possible perfect world would be born up there. Endless, innermost hopes for the future. Yet, maybe we became immobilized looking at the foregone light of these celestial entities. By creating and dancing, the stage world activates us once again with doses of hope and strength.

— Georgia Vardarou

Planning / Implementation: Georgia Vardarou (choreographer, dancer)

Age group: 6 to 9 year-olds

Dates: 25, 26 May 2024

Place: GNO Alternative Stage

Georgia Vardarou graduated from the National School of Dance KSOT) in Greece and then from P.A.R.T.S. in Belgium with the support of the first scholarship from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (ΙΚΥ). As a dancer she has worked with Salva Sanchis, Marc Vanrunxt, Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt, Lance Gries and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker  / Rosas. As a choreographer she focuses on individual movement and the content that this carries. She created Hardcore Research on Dance, Phenomena, New Narratives and Why should it be more desirable for green fire balls to exist than not which have been presented in various venues such as: Dance Umbrella (London), ImpulsTanz (Vienna), Juliana (Amsterdam), Athens Epidaurus Festival, Festival Salmons (Barcelona), Springdance (Utrecht), Kaaistudio’s (Brussels), STUK (Leuven), Schowburg (Amsterdam), Les Brigittines (Brussels) etc. She lived in Brussels for 13 years. In 2017 she relocated to Barcelona. Her work is produced by Kunst/Werk.

GNO Learning & Participation Lead Donor