Kalamata International Dance Festival

We are pleased to announce that the 27th edition of the Kalamata International Dance Festival will take place this year on 16-25 July 2021.

In 2020, the Kalamata Dance Festival was one of the few festivals in the world that not only were not canceled but were indeed held live, offering a full and rich programme, with international and Greek artists and companies, while taking all the necessary measures to ensure a safe environment for both the public and the artists.

31 productions, 18 foreign companies, of which 14 appear in Greece for the first time, performances in other cities of of the Region of Peloponnese, three world premieres, new powerful collaborations and a rich educational programme for professionals but also for the citizens of Kalamata, are the main features of the 27th Kalamata Dance Festival.

Dance performances that combine different genres, from contemporary dance and hip hop to acrobatics and current urban African dances. The foreign artists presenting their work at the Festival come from France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Israel, Ireland, Nigeria, and Slovakia. Out of the 18 foreign artists and companies, 14 appear in Greece for the first time.

The title of this year’s programme On The Move. Constantly On The Move. Together; Or Alone? summarizes the Festival team’s need to fuel the discussion on the human condition in the modern era by recording the personal and collective experience. It focuses on the importance of community and the role of each person within it, the coexistence of people everywhere and always, and the need to create a common place for meeting and communicating as ways to survive and prosper. The artists participating in this year’s Festival speak through the language of dance and the power of the body, unfolding their stories on stage and inviting us to feel all of the notions resulting from the relationship between community and individual—notions such as trust, solidarity, and acceptance, conflict, negotiation, autonomy, individual identity, and freedom. These notions are neither self-evident nor given.Like last year, the Festival will implement safety measures against the pandemic, closely following the health protocols dictated by the authorities and the special safety measures for art and culture venues as outlined by the Ministry of Culture and Sports.

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27KDF2021 trailer:

Please find the 27th 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 seven years as an active presence in the Greek dance scene, thanks to the support of the local authorities the Kalamata 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 seven 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 27th annual festival from 16 to 25 July, 2021.