One more festival is about to join the summer cultural agenda bringing art and entertainment to Nicosia’s old town. The Faneromeni25 Arts Festival, an annual institution by the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation will kick off its 2025 programme, which will run until September, with the mesmerising theatre and dance performance Aphrodite(s) by the Yasemin Collective on June 26.

This all-women performance is a multidimensional proposal focusing on the female experience, identity and Cypriot multiplicity, directed and artistically curated by Natalia Panagiotou. Theatre, dance, music and poetry coexist in a polyphonic stage landscape, where Cypriot women creators from different artistic fields come together to renegotiate the image of Aphrodite: not as a Goddess or a myth, but as a living symbol of root and rupture, beauty and trauma, belonging and transition.

“The Aphrodite(s) are many,” say the organisers, “as are the voices, bodies, experiences and identities that appear on stage. What does it mean to be a woman in Cyprus today? A female artist? Which identity do you carry, and which one do you claim? How do memory, histories and language converse in a place divided but shared? How does this division affect collective memory and identity?”

The performance will last for one hour, welcoming on stage performers Despina Chrysanthou, Annie Sofokleous, Konstantina Xenophontos, Natalia Panagiotou, Stalia Nikolaou, Nasia Kelepesi and Maria Kasapi. Aphrodite(s) will open the festival and lead the way for a summer-long journey of free cultural evenings under the Nicosia night sky.

Aphrodite(s)

Theatre and dance performance by the Yasemin Collective. Part of the Faneromeni25 Arts Festival. June 26. Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation, Nicosia. 8.30pm. In Greek. Free