HYSTORY

Name: HYSTORY
Start: 2026-06-18T18:30:00+00:00
End: 2026-06-18T19:40:00+00:00

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Patricia Apergi / Aerites Dance Company
Greece
At the Klaipėda Drama Theatre Grand Hall
1:10 (without intermission)

Premiere 2025

Dance

Concept, Choreography Patricia Apergi
Dramaturgy Roberto Fratini Serafide
Composer Vassilis Mantzoukis
Set Designer Evangelia Therianou
Costume Designer Alegia Papageorgiou
Light Designer Nikos Vlassopoulos
Sound Design & Sound Engineer Christos Parapagidis
Associate Light Designer Sofia Alexiadou
Assistant to the Choreographer Savvina Xhaferaj
Assistant Costume Designer Nikoleta Anastasiadou
Assistant to the Set Designer Genevieve Athanasopoulou
Lights Programmer Tasos Nixalian
Production technical coordinator Nikos Charalambidis
Understudy Nefeli Kafentaraki
Executive Producer “Polyplanity Productions” (Yolanda Markopoulou, Vicky Strataki)
International distribution “PLAN B – Creative Agency for Performing Arts”

Performers: Evini Pantelaki, Caterina Politi, Myrto Stolidi, Mariana Tzouda, Eleanna Zoi

A production of Athens and Epidaurus Festival 2025
Performance in Greek with Lithuanian surtitles (translated into Lithuanian by Evelina Venckutė)
Strobe lights are used during the performance

Since the early feminist movements, the trajectories, transgressions, deviations, registers, and events inscribed upon women’s bodies and minds have provided painful yet vital materials in life and art.

The current work by Patricia Apergi, a choreographer of significant influence on the global dance realm, focuses on women’s struggles throughout the centuries. A sequel to “Planites” (2012) – a previous production by Aerites Dance Company, which featured an all-male cast exploring the street as a site of wandering and searching for a better tomorrow – “Hystory” unfolds through a predominantly female perspective. It draws its meaning from the interplay of concepts embedded in its title: ‘hystera’ and ‘history’. In ancient Greek, ‘hystera’ means womb, a term that gave rise to hysteria, long archetypically associated with the female gender. Specifically, the once pervasive ‘wandering womb’ theory stated that the uterus could move within the body, causing physical and psychological complications. This reinforced the historical notion that women were, by nature, prone to emotional instability. “Hystory” – seen as the female counterpart to “Planites” – shifts the focus to today’s women: those demonised yet glorified for their defiance, who become the wanderers of the contemporary condition. In “Hystory”, “Planites” (“wanderers”) are those who do not stop. They are the ones propelled forward by necessity, the ones left behind and never allowed to begin the journey, yet were never misled. These are the women who do not need to perform gender, who dig and hide, in gardens and in concrete, anything they need to preserve: data, seeds, labour, legends, chants and dreams.

According to the creator, the piece is “a journey to places real or dreamlike.” It represents our very own wandering in all those identities attributed to women or the identities they accepted themselves. It explores the failure or success of manipulation, everything missed by them and by us, and everything that remains to be said to move a little bit forward.

A production of Athens and Epidaurus Festival 2025

About The Creator

Patricia Apergi was born in Athens and trained in dance, theatre, and choreography at the Kapodistrian University of Athens, the Niki Kotaxaki Dance School, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, and Middlesex University in London.

In 2006, she founded Aerites Dance Company in Athens, developing a radically contemporary dance idiom, deeply rooted in Greek tradition, exploring a kinetic language that combines movement with theatrical expression. Aerites’ works include “The House of Trouble” (2023), “U(R)TOPIAS” (2021), “Hero” (2020), “Polittes (Citizens Defeated)” (2018), and “TANZheimer” (2014), among others, and have been performed at major European venues and festivals.

Apergi has choreographed theatre and opera in collaboration with prominent Greek and international artists, including Katerina Evangelatos, Yiannis Houvardas, Thanos Papakonstantinou, Georgina Kakoudaki, Emilios Chilakis, and 4frontal Company. She was selected as a modul-dance artist for the European network EDN (2013–2014) and as an associate artist at Maison de la Danse, Lyon (2016–2017). She has also been invited as a guest choreographer to EgriBiancoDanza (Turin, 2017), Aterballetto (Reggio Emilia, 2019), the Greek National Ballet (2021), and Bodhi Dance Company (Salzburg, 2022).

She served on the Board of Directors of the Athens & Epidaurus Festival (2020–2022) and co-authored “History of Theatre and Theatrical Education” (Greek Ministry of Education, 2007). Apergi teaches dance and theatre at Leonteios School, has taught choreography at Anna Petrova – Maro Marmarinou School, and leads workshops at the Onassis Cultural Centre and ARC for Dance Festival. In 2021, she founded Greece’s first Academy of Choreography, in collaboration with Elefsis 2023 – European Capital of Culture, as part of the broader artistic vision of Aerites, titled “U(R)TOPIAS”.

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