PROFILE

Elena Antoniou is a dance and performance artist from Cyprus. She has graduated with honors from the Greek National School of Dance and the London Contemporary Dance School “The Place” as a member of the Edge dance company. She was a scholarship recipient from the Koula Pratsika Foundation and the Danceweb Programme at ImpulsTanz Vienna. She has presented her work in Athens, Berlin, and Tel Aviv and has collaborated with significant organizations, such as the Onassis Stegi, the Marina Abramovic Institute (MAI), NEON Culture & Development Organization, and the Athens and Epidaurus Festival.

Since 2021, she collaborates as a performer with the internationally renowned choreographer Maria Hassabi. In addition, she has also collaborated as a choreographer and movement director with theater directors and companies in Greece and Cyprus. She received the Choreography Award of the Cyprus Theater Awards for the play “Diary of a Madman” (Cyprus Theatre Organisation), and she has been nominated for the same award for the play “Beckettx5” by theater group Solo for Three.

She focuses her artistic research on the physical and emotional limits and how sociopolitical factors impact her being as a human artist. Using her body and movement as tools, her aim is to identify the impact, study, elaborate and communicate it with the beholder, within a framework of an abstract dialogue. Body and movement exist in space as materials with different textures and dynamics, evoking in each given time the constant transition between the sound and the visual environment.

– Just as “all landscapes are autobiographical”(poet Charles Wright), so is “LANDSCAPE”, Elena Antoniou’s third in a row work, following “MAINSTAGE” (Onassis Stegi, 2019) and “WISH” (Rialto Theatre 2019/ 2020, Nicosia International Dance Festival, 2021), where she tauntingly reflects as a female-creator on the interaction with the patriarchic culture of 21st century.

– Her long-durational performance titled “In Situ”, has to date been presented over 21 days for a total of 129 hours at Archaeological Museum of Piraeus (Athens and Epidaurus Festival), Cyprus Museum, Rialto Theater, Neues Museum Berlin and Archaeological Museum of the Lemesos District.

– Between 2008 and 2016, she collaborated with artist Polys Peslikas.

P. Andreas Simopoulos