Beatrix Simkó
Beatrix Simkó is a dancer, choreographer and media artist. She is constantly in a vivid dialogue on intercultural perspectives about social structures. In her works she engages the environment surrounding us through the expressive tools of the physical body. In her stage works she has a strong focus on visuality, and so often combines other mediums. In connection with her performative works she initiates reach-out projects, by engaging the audience in different formats.
She graduated from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest and the Hamburg University, where she studied performance and media art. She has been an active creator and performer for fifteen years of the Hungarian dance scene, and in the last eight years she has worked in many international theatre and dance collaborations.
Currently she is working on several international co-productions, mainly related to Germany.
She is an Aerowaves and Life Long Burning selected artist, and works in a close partnership with the Budapest-based Workshop Foundation.
Her latest work ‘It Contains Hard Parts’ was realised by the support of the Goethe International Coproduction Fund.
She also created choreography for Central Europe Dance Theatre, Csokonai Theatre Debrecen and Junges Ensemble Stuttgart.
She has presented her works at several international venues such as Festival d’Avignon, Aerowaves Festival, Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, Španski borci Ljubljana, Hessischen Staatsballett in Darmstadt, Tanz NRW Festival, Kampnagel, Kuopio and Oulu Dance Festival.
Prodromos Tsinikoris
Prodromos Tsinikoris works as a freelance theater director, dramaturg, and performer. Born in Wuppertal, Germany, to Greek immigrant workers, his work includes documentary and devised theater performances. He has collaborated, among others, with the Athens Epidaurus Festival, the Onassis Stegi, the National Theater of Greece, the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, and the Münchner Kammerspiele. From October 2015 to July 2019, in collaboration with Anestis Azas, he was the artistic director of the Experimental Stage [-1] of the National Theater in Athens. Since 2020, he is co-curating the International Forest Festival for the State Theater of Northern Greece in Thessaloniki.
Prodromos Tsinikoris and Anestis Azas have been co-writing and co-directing their performances since 2011.They revolve around sociopolitical topics such as immigration and refugees, the rise of the far-right and the concept of Greekness, the state of homelessness and mass touristification, and the privatization of public organizations such as the Greek railways.
Their work has been presented in many international venues and festivals: Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin; Münchner Kammerspiele; Le-Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg; Chantiers d’Europe, Paris; Lessingtage Theater Festival at Thalia, Hamburg; Heidelberger Stückemarkt; Hellerau, Dresden; Zürcher Theater Spektakel; Mladi Levi Festival, Ljubljana; Sirenos Festival, Vilnius; Festival Grec de Barcelona; International Theater Amsterdam (ITA); MESS International Theater Festival, Sarajevo; Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne; IKSV International Theater Festival, Istanbul; Ballhaus Naunynstrass, Berlin, among others.
Prodromos Tsinikoris was a participant of The Critical Practices Program of Οnassis AiR 2019-20 and of the Tailor-made Fellowships program 2022-23.
Mario Banushi
Mario Banushi is a director and performer. He was born in 1998 and lived in Albania until the age of six, before moving permanently to Greece. He studied acting at the Drama School of the Athens Conservatory. He graduated in 2020 and made his first short film “PRANVERA”, which participated in the 2021 TIFF Film Festival. In 2017, he worked as an assistant to Euripides Laskaridis in the performance THIRIO, which took part in the Athens Biennale. He has been active in the field of performing arts since graduating in 2020, and his most recent collaboration was the work „Marcel Duchamp” (2022) with Nova Melancholia. His first work as a director was the performance “RAGADA”, a part of which he presented at Gerasimos Kappatos’s ROOMS2022 Festival, before it opened at the Sala theater. His next work was „GOODBYE LINDITA”, which was presented at the experimental stage of the National Theatre, while his third work, „TAVERNA MIRESIA MARIO BELLA ANASTASIA”, the final part of the trilogy, was presented in July 2023 at the Athens and Epidaurus Festival.Mario Banushi is an Onassis AiR Fellow for 2023-24 through the Dramaturgy Fellowship.
Christiana Kosiari
Christiana Kosiari is a professional dancer, dance teacher, and choreographer born in Athens. She graduated from the Greek State School of Dance in 2012 and from the Athens University of Economics and Business in 2008. In 2021–22, she participated in the U(R)TOPIAS Choreography Academy in Elefsina, where she presented two works, “Bouboulina” and “Bouboulina’s.” In the 2022–23 season, she was selected to continue her studies at the Academy for a second year and present „Bouboulines” as a site-specific work in July 2023.
As a choreographer, she presented her piece „Chained” at several festivals, including Arc for Dance Festival 15, Dance Laboratory Rhodes 7, Patras Art Festival 3, and Masdanza Dance Festival 28 in October 2023, where she won the second jury award. She also choreographed the video dances “Sink” and “Bouboulina,” which were presented at various festivals, such as Dance Days Chania, Athens Video Dance Project, Patras Art Festival, Moving Images Videodance Festival (Cyprus), Land Art Moving Biennial specializing in video-dance (Portugal), Zêzere CineDança Festival (Portugal), Emergentia (Switzerland), and Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions (UK).
As a dancer, she participated in Romeo Castellucci’s “MA” and is currently touring with Siamese Dance Co’s project “Lamenta.” She has been continuously attending seminars and teaching dance since 2007.
Choy Ka Fai
Choy Ka Fai is a Berlin-based Singaporean artist. His multidisciplinary art practice situates itself at the intersection of dance, media art and performance. Through research expeditions, pseudo-scientific experiments and documentary performances, Ka Fai appropriates technologies and narratives to imagine new futures of the human body.
In 2019, Ka Fai started working on the CosmicWander series exploring shamanic dance culture in Asia. CosmicWander produced a collection of performances, exhibitions and VR works. It premiered in 2021 with a solo exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum, followed by a VR experience “Blue Sky Academy” at Tanzhas nrw dussendolf. In Berlin, the performances of “Postcolonial Spirits” premiered at Tanz Im August Festival in 2021 and “Yishun Is Burning” was presented at Tanzplattform Deutschland in 2022.
Ka Fai’s projects have been presented in major institutions worldwide, including Sadler’s Wells (London), ImPulsTanz Festival (Vienna) and Kyoto Experiment (Japan). He was the resident artist at tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf (2017–2019) and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2014-15). Ka Fai graduated with a M.A. in Design Interaction from the Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom.
Ladder Art Company
Ladder Art Company is an emerging art company based in Budapest, Hungary. We have been organizing cultural events, workshops and collaborations between artists working in different areas of art, and producing theatre productions since our establishment in 2016. Our purpose is to encourage responsibility, consciousness, acceptance, open-mindedness, and supportive way of life through artistic projects.
In their performances, they combine new circus, clowning, physical-, movement- and visual theatre elements, which go beyond classical theatre genres, with the aim of creating a special world that attracts the attention of our audience to innovative theatrical concepts and contemporary art forms. They believe that theatrical tools have a social-forming power. That is why they take great emphasis on choosing themes and issues that affect a broader section of society.
Their projects are gaining professional recognition, they have been touring in several national and international festivals (Valley of Arts Hungary, Infinite Dance Festival Oradea, Voila! Europe London, Istanbul Fringe Festival, Bergen Fringe Festival).
As well as creating productions, their association plays a significant role in the further training of national and Europian theatre profession.
Enkidu Khaled
Enkidu Khaled (born in Baghdad, based in Brussels) is a theatre maker and performer.
He studied theatre until 2006 at the Institute of Fine Arts of Baghdad where he began working in cinema. In 2008 he had to leave Iraq because of the emerging war. Later settling in Belgium, he created several internationally recognized theatre productions.
During his study in Amsterdam (2014-2017), he developed the “Working Method” which he implements in his art education practice addressing professionals and amateurs.
In 2016 „The Working Method” project for stage won the “Big in Belgium” award and was presented at the Edinburgh Festival. For his documentary theatre piece „Baghdad“ (2017) he got awarded with the Best Acting Performance at the MESS International Theatre Festival Sarajevo in 2018. His theatre play “Bar by bar, night by night, story by story, onward!“ adapted for stage the debut novel of the Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim and premiered in 2021 in KaaiTheatre Brussel. In 2022 he brought on stage the collective performance “Tank Tink/One” in the frame of ECOPOLIS annual rendezvous for those committed to a sustainable future. 2024 „Donja Hota” premiered at KaaiTheatre Brussel, where he deals with the legacy of the Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician Nawal El Saadawi. Furthermore, he teaches in Belgium and internationally, and is since 2021 associate artist at Toneelacademie Maastricht.