Performances Alternative Stage
25.07 | 20.00 | 35'
Kalamata Dance Megaron / Alternative Stage
XENIA KOGHILAKI
Slamming
Slamming invites the audience into an immersive choreographic experience of extreme dancing. Three performers commit to one shared agreement: a furious dance that originates from slamming. They transform mosh pit practices on stage, oscillating between rage and softness, rawness and trust, ache and pleasure, violence and tenderness, exploring these notions not as binaries, but as interconnected elements within a sui generis dance form. The audience ‘sees’ the sweat dripping, the breaths intensifying, the hearts beating faster, as the three performers are wholeheartedly “caught in a mosh.” Slamming begins with Xenia Koghilaki’s interest in embodied practices that emerge spontaneously in moments of collective expression. It seeks emotional nuances in the aggressive crowd, symbolic affiliations in brutality and frenzy, revealing a collective ritual that lurks behind an ostensible rage. It approaches crowd dances not as something to be deciphered, but as sites of experience, where new intimacies and alternative ways of moving and relating—both individually and collectively—can emerge.
- Concept / Choreography: Xenia Koghilaki
- Co-creation / Performance: Irini Georgiou, Noumissa Sidibé, Xenia Koghilaki
- Music composition: Giorgos Poulios
- Light design: Nysos Vasilopoulos
- Choreographic assistant: Nondas Damopoulos
- Dramaturgical support: André Uerba
- Artistic advice: Elena Novakovits
- Styling: Marianthi Hatzikidi
- Production manager: Olga Tsatsouli
- Executive production: howtomakeyourlifeharder
- Produced by: Onassis Stegi
Onassis AiR fellow Xenia Koghilaki carried out part of the Slamming research at BIT Teatergarasjen in Bergen, Norway, within the context of the Transmissions program, supported by the EEA Grants and the Norwegian Financial Mechanisms 2014–2021.
Slamming by Xenia Koghilaki was first presented in Athens as part of the Onassis Dance Days festival in 2024.
Slamming is presented with the support of the Onassis Stegi Touring Program.
XENIA KOGHILAKI
Xenia Koghilaki works in the field of the performing arts as a dancer and choreographer. She is a graduate of the Greek National School of Dance and the Architecture Department of the University of Patras. Since 2019, she has lived and worked in Berlin, where she completed her postgraduate studies at the MA “Solo/Dance/Authorship” (SODA) program at the Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin (HZT Berlin). Her practice engages with issues of re-examining the aesthetic, political, and social dimensions of the moving body. Her work has been presented at Onassis Stegi / Onassis Dance Days, the Tanztage Festival in Berlin, and has toured at festivals and venues across Europe, including the [8:tension] Young Choreographers’ Series at ImPulsTanz Festival, Oktoberdans, backslash festival at Gessnerallee, and Excentriques at La Briqueterie. As a dancer, she has collaborated with Kat Válastur, André Uerba, Armin Hokmi, and the Chto Delat and Porson’s Khashoggi companies, among others. She is a DanceWeb scholarship holder and in 2022, was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS.