To Have Been So Close So Many Times | Kalamata

Lead GNO & Tour Donor

The new GNO Ballet production, To Have Been So Close So Many Times, crafts a multidimensional stage universe, where contemporary dance and music theatre unite in a visceral symbiosis—an eternal conversation. Three chamber music works by Giorgos Koumendakis engage in dialogue with four poems by Constantine P. Cavafys, which are set to music in the amanes style, creating a deeply inward, reflective, and constantly shifting soundscape. Three distinguished choreographers—Patricia Apergi, Ilias Hatzigeorgiou, and Eva Georgitsopoulou—approach the material through diverse aesthetic and movement languages. The body is brought to the fore as a carrier of memory, desire, and loss, while movement hovers between group coordination and personal deviation. Nine dancers move through an environment of constant transition, where time seems to slow, repeat, and take on an almost ritualistic dimension.

The sculptural installation by visual artist Petros Touloudis turns the stage into a moving soundscape, functioning as a mechanism that produces and conveys sound, and transforming the stage into a space where emotions do not scream but instead echo across time, allowing room for imagination. The production features a unique performance by Zaharias Karounis, accompanied by Angelina Tkatcheva on the santoor, the Oros Ensemble, and the Osmosis Saxophone Quartet. John Papatzanis is in charge of percussion coaching and performs a wide range of percussion on stage, alongside the dancers. This performance does not tell a linear story; instead, it plunges the audience into an immersive, emotional experience, an inward ritual.