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Born in Athens in 1981, Selamsis is an artist balancing between contemporary concert music and music in theatre. He studied piano in Athens and composition at the Koninklijk Conservatorium, The Hague. Residing again in Athens since 2011, Kornilios has been actively participating in the cultural life of the city as a composer of concert music as well as in theater, taking part in more than 60 new creations and occasionally participating as a live performer and improviser on stage.

His works have been commissioned and performed, amongst others, by the Athens State Orchestra, the Łódz Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Artéfacts, the Nieuw Ensemble, the ASKO Ensemble, Ensemble Ereprijs, Ventus Ensemble, Molyvos International Music Festival, musicAeterna, the Onassis Foundation, the Greek National Opera and the Athens Festival, in several venues in the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Canada, France and Switzerland. Selamsis composed a full-length opera based on Georg Büchner’s comedy Leonce and Lena. The piece was commissioned and performed at the Athens Festival in July 2016. His sound installation of 40 speakers Agathophron was on show in the Benaki Museum throughout the summer of 2018.  

He has also been an active conductor performing numerous premieres of contemporary works.

In the fall of 2015, Selamsis was appointed by the Greek National Theatre to organize a workshop for Composition in Theatre. In this three-year-long composition course, numerous young composers have studied and formulated a vibrant community for contemporary music.

Photo credit: © Julian Mommert

Born and raised in Germany, where he began training in breakdance at 12. During his studies at Codarts University in Rotterdam, he completed an internship with 18 Monkeys Dance Theatre in Bangkok.

After graduating, he worked with Roberto Olivan Performing Arts in Spain and created a solo piece, Fine Line,  with the support of Dansateliers Rotterdam.

In 2020, Horn relocated to Athens to join Dimitris Papaioannou’s production Transverse Orientation, which led to the creation of INK.

After finishing a world tour with Transverse Orientation, Horn is currently touring with INK while also occasionally teaching classes for students and professionals.

Photo credit: © Julian Mommert

Born in Athens in 1964, Dimitris Papaioannou gained early recognition as a painter and comics artist before his focus shifted to the performing arts as a director, choreographer, performer, and designer of sets, costumes, make-up, and lighting. He was a student of the iconic Greek painter Yannis Tsarouchis before studying at the Athens School of Fine Arts. 

He formed Edafos Dance Theatre in 1986 as an initial vehicle for his original stage productions, hybrids of physical theatre, experimental dance, and performance art. Originating in the underground scene, the company challenged perceptions and gained an expanding number of dedicated followers. Medea (1993) marked the company’s transition to big theatres and is considered its iconic work. The Edafos company spanned 17 years to 2002 and set its indelible stamp on the arts scene in Greece.

Papaioannou became widely known in 2004, as the creator of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. Restarting in 2006, with his production 2, he found himself in the odd position of creating avant-garde works in major theatres in Athens that enjoyed record-breaking long runs, with over 100.000 tickets sold. 

In 2009, he began using this platform to create theatrical experiments on a large scale: NOWHERE (2009) for the inauguration of the renovated Greek National Theatre and INSIDE (2011) for the Pallas Theater.

In 2012, stripping down his work to bare essentials, he created Primal Matter for the Athens Festival, with him back on stage after a ten-year absence. On the same quest for simplicity, he created Still Life (2014), the first work that toured extensively in Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia.

In 2015, he created the opening ceremony for the Baku 2015 European Games.

Papaioannou’s 25 productions range from mass spectacles with thousands of performers to intimate pieces. They have appeared in a wide variety of venues, from his famous underground squat theater in Athens to the ancient theatre in Epidaurus and from Olympic stadiums to Théâtre de la Ville – Paris and Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza.

In 2017, he created The Great Tamer, his first international co-commissioned work with ten co-producers, including the Festival d’Avignon. The Great Tamer toured for two and half years through 4 continents, 23 countries, and 38 cities. It was presented a total of 112 times before over 90.000 spectators. The work was bestowed with the Special Prize in the Europe Theatre Prize 2017 in Rome, and Papaioannou was nominated = for Outstanding Achievement in Dance in Olivier Awards 2019. 

In 2018, Papaioannou became the first artist to create a new, full-length work for Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Since She premiered in May 2018 in Wuppertal (Germany) and was presented in Amsterdam, London, Athens, Paris and Catanzaro.

His second international co-production, Transverse Orientation, premiered in June 2021 and was presented in more than 30 cities worldwide. The production was nominated for Best New Dance Production in Olivier Awards 2022.

In 2020, INK, a duet performed by Papaioannou and Šuka Horn, premiered at the Torinodanza Festival and was invited to the 75th Festival d’Avignon in 2021. INK is on world tour in 2023-24, co-produced by Sadler’s Wells and the Biennale de Lyon.

Photo credit: © Julian Mommert