20.07 | 18:00
KALAMATA DANCE MEGARON
What if every cell in my body at once has the potential to perceive beauty and to surrender beauty simultaneously, each and every moment? – Deborah Hay
Using the Sky. A Dance, translated into Greek with an introduction by Myrto Katsiki, published by the Athens Epidaurus Festival and Nefeli Publishing, 2026 (Using the Sky. A Dance, Wesleyan University Press, 2019), is Deborah Hay’s most recent book, following the influential Lamb at the Altar: The Story of a Dance (Duke University Press, 1991) and My Body, the Buddhist (Wesleyan University Press, 2001).
Through diary entries and notes, the book traces the evolution of Hay’s choreographic practice from 2000 onwards and her search for ways to approach and redefine the dance experience. It includes three complete choreographic scores that offer access to Hay’s unceasing experimentation with language and its possibilities as a choreographic tool.
Deborah Hay (Brooklyn, 1941) began her career in the early 1960s with the Judson Dance Theater and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Active at the forefront of choreographic experimentation for over five decades, she has contributed to the redefinition of dance through her radical work and her influential books, Lamb at the Altar: The Story of a Dance (Duke University Press, 1991), My Body, the Buddhist (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) and Using the Sky. A Dance (Routledge Books, 2016 / Wesleyan University Press, 2019). Hay’s choreographic practice focuses on freeing the body from habitual movement patterns, expanding the field from which movement material can emerge.
She is among the 21 dance artists from the United States honoured at the inaugural Doris Duke Artist Awards in 2012. Her work has been supported by, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts, the US Artists Friends Fellowship and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York. In 2015, she was honoured by the French Republic with the insignia of the Order of Arts and Letters.
From 1998 to 2012, Hay ran an annual Solo Performance Commissioning Project, through which more than 300 dancers from around the world created their own adaptations of her solo works. The documentary Turn Your F^king Head* (dir. Becky Edmunds, Independent Dance, Routledge, 2015) documents the final SPCP. In 2012 she became the first choreographer to be invited to participate in the Motion Bank research programme, an initiative of William Forsythe. This collaboration produced a database of her choreographic practice: scores.motionbank.org/dh/
Festivals and museums have organised extensive retrospectives of her work, including RE-Perspective by Tanz im August, Berlin 2019, covering Hay’s work from 1968. Her work was also presented in MoMA’s exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done in 2018.
Myrto Katsiki is a dance researcher and dancer. She lives and works between France and Greece. She studied dance at the Greek National School of Dance and is a graduate of Panteion University. She pursued postgraduate studies in the Dance Department of the University of Paris 8, where she completed her doctoral research entitled Activations of neutrality in dance: Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Laurent Pichaud, Merce Cunningham (Onassis Foundation fellow).
A significant part of her research focuses on the practices of postmodern American dance choreographers, with a particular interest in the work of Deborah Hay, on which she has published articles, taught and given lectures. In 2017 she collaborated on the French edition of Hay’s book My Body, the Buddhist (Mon corps, ce bouddhiste, La Manufacture/Les presses du réel). In 2026 she curated the tribute to Deborah Hay as part of the Athens Epidaurus Festival, as well as the Greek edition of Hay’s Using the Sky. A Dance – Χρήση ουρανού. Ένας χορός (translation and introduction), published by the Athens Epidaurus Festival and Nefeli Publishing.
She teaches at the Dance Department of the University of Paris 8 and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, where she is research coordinator in the postgraduate programme for dancers. From 2013 to 2025 she collaborated with the exerce postgraduate choreography programme of the ICI-Centre Chorégraphique National in Montpellier, teaching and contributing to the design of the curriculum.