At the end of this week, the Cyprus Contemporary Dance Festival will be begin for the 27th time at the Rialto Theatre, which has organised it in collaboration with the deputy ministry of culture. Performances will be held at the Rialto in Limassol and the Nicosia Municipal Theatre from May 30 to June 21.
Dance companies from Cyprus, England, France, Greece, Belgium and Finland will showcase a wide range of contemporary choreographic voices.
Having established itself as the leading contemporary dance institution in Cyprus since 1998, the festival once more brings pioneering productions from Cyprus and abroad to local audiences. Dance lovers, choreographers and beyond get to enjoy a modern look at today’s dance scene.
International works were selected by the festival’s artistic advisor, choreographer Fotis Nikolaou through an open call while the Cypriot participation was chosen from works funded under the Support Programme for Creation and Research in Contemporary Dance – TERPSICHORE 2025.
Through diverse artistic approaches, the selected works explore the body as a vessel of memory, experience and transformation, offering audiences an immediate and vivid encounter with contemporary dance.
The festival opens on May 30 with a performance by the UK’s Botis Seva. Titled BLKDOG, the piece is a sharp, poetic commentary by Seva on how young people today respond to a world that wasn’t built for them. It is hip-hop dance performance full of emotion.
On June 3, Hervé Koubi from France presents The Barbarian Nights, a piece rooted in the awe-inspiring story of the Mediterranean basin. Five years have passed as France and Algeria, on opposite shores of the Mediterranean – the sea that lies at the origin of these uprooted people – share a common lineage and fundamental background, and whom we call Mediterraneans.
Next up is the Greek performance Sirens on June 10. Ermira Goro’s dance performance Sirens invites the audience on a sensual and mysterious journey into the world of desire and its social expression. The performers are transformed on stage, unfolding a story of dreams and freedom. The two bodies embrace and reject stereotypical gender roles, creating an idiosyncratic language of self-expression.
The Cypriot production, Ode by Elena Antoniou, will be presented at the Rialto Theatre on June 13 and at the Nicosia Municipal Theatre on June 15. Ode is about togetherness, about no woman being alone and explores the core of female strength through gaze and movement.
Later in June, Jan Martens from Belgium presents The Dog Days Are Over 2.0 on June 18 at Rialto Theatre. In 2025 Martens and GRIP recreated this successful show with a new cast. In the performance the dancer is defined as a pure performer, striving for perfection. Subjected to a complex, mathematical, vigorous and exhausting choreography executed in forced uniformity, the eight dancers ultimately slip up. And then their masks fall. Where does the thin line between art and entertainment lie?
The final performance brings a production from Finland. Artist and magician Kalle Nio and choreographer Fernando Melo present Tempo, a performance based on a text by Harry Salmenniemi, as well as wordless scenes built around dance and stage illusions, where time slows down, reverses and comes to a standstill. Tempo prompts the audience to question how the experience of time is formed and in what ways time can be understood.
Brazilian choreographer Fernando Melo creates gravity- and time-defying choreography for three outstanding dancers. Slovenian dancer and puppeteer Barbara Kanc, Italian dancer Luigi Sardone and Swedish dancer-acrobat Winston Reynolds move through a landscape between dance, theatre and acrobatics. Catch them live on the final day of the festival, on June 21 at Rialto Theatre.
27th Cyprus Contemporary Dance Festival
Choreographic performances from Cyprus, England, France, Greece, Belgium, and Finland. May 30-June 21. Rialto Theatre, Limassol and Nicosia Municipal Theatre, Nicosia. 8.30pm. €10 per performance. Tel: 7777-7745. https://rialto.interticket.com/
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