28th Kalamata Dance Festival

The leading contemporary dance encounter in Greece, the Kalamata Dance Festival, is taking place for the 28th consecutive year from 15 to 24 July 2022. This year’s 28kdf2022 artistic programme hosts a total of 26 productions, 14 international companies from 10 countries, 12 companies from Greece, 3 world premieres, 6 side events, an intensive training programme for professionals, as well as dance and movement workshops for different ages and population groups.

A rich and varied program comprising the performances of the Main Stage, the productions of the Kalamata Dance Megaron’s Black Box, and the performances that will take place at the Kalamata Main Square. The programme features dance performances that encompass different styles and disciplines, ranging from modern and classical dance to acrobatics, breaking and krump. The international artists who will present their work here come from 10 countries, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, Mozambique, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary and Cyprus.

This year's programme, entitled Ode to Beauty, highlights the great and philosophically, morally, socially and artistically inexhaustible subject of Beauty. In this ever-changing world, art continues to provide us with fertile ground for the study of Beauty. When it comes to the art of dance, our bodies become our protagonists. Our inspiration is movement itself, life itself. From the smallest organism to the largest mountain range, from the simplest children’s game to the movement of galaxies, everything that moves is an essential part of life. The artist’s mission, however, is to discover our own relationship with life through our work. Beauty is only possible through goodness, solidarity and love. Their essence is not theoretical; it emanates from the bodies, their gestures, their words, their actions, and the relationships forged between them. This is what we exalt: The embodiment of beauty.

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28KDF2022 trailer:

Please find the 28th Kalamata Dance Festival full and detailed programme on our website at:

http://kalamatadancefestival.gr/index.php/en/

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The Kalamata International Dance Festival is the key event in the year of the city's cultural activities and the leading contemporary-dance encounter of Greece. The festival, was organised for the first time in the summer of 1995, and since then it has been charged with supporting and promoting the art of dance via research, education and artistic creativity.

Recognising dance as a basic human need, its main objective is to be a Festival open to the international community, to all age groups, to the arts and to collaboration with other organisations – a Festival dedicated to education, research and innovation, supportive of and generous to artists, a festival that is morally and philosophically inspiring for the public. It pursues the dialogue between dance and all the arts, promoting reflection and engagement with the human body and movement at all levels – the practical, philosophical, artistic and educational.

After twenty eight years as an active presence in the Greek dance scene, thanks to the support of the local authorities the Kalamata Dance Festival has earned itself a special place on the festival map of the Mediterranean South, and built bridges to international dance creativity.

A number of influential figures, whose work is shaping the history of contemporary dance made their first Greek appearance at Kalamata, while the Festival has also taken care to promote and support Greek creativity in the field by commissioning works from talented Greek choreographers and supporting new companies in their experimental explorations.

Another integral part of the Festival are the workshops and talks aimed at dance students and professions alike, while other parallel events include publications and video dance productions.

From the very start, the Festival was programmed with two considerations in mind: the wide range of trends in contemporary dance and the ever-larger audiences this art-form attracts. Today, twenty eight years down the line, every year sees a widely-varied audience enthusiastically respond to the call of the Festival.

Kalamata, the city of dance, hosts its 28th annual festival from 15 to 24 July, 2022.