The Collective

• Manolis Tsipos [active member until 2011]

  

  He was born in 1979 in Athens, Greece. He is active in the contemporary performing arts field as maker, dramaturge and writer. In 2015-2016 he participated as a choreographer at the Research Studios #2 at P.A.R.T.S. His staged work (performance/choreography) has been presented in Greece and abroad, in various contexts (festivals, biennials, conferences, site-specific).

  He is founding member of the performance collective “Nova Melancholia” - in which he has been an active member until 2011 - and of the Institute for Live Arts Research |Π|, both based in Athens. He holds a MA degree on Environmental Sciences and Politics [1997-2002]. He is a DasArts alumni [2010-2012]. In the past he has been the Mentor of the 3rd year students of SNDO in Amsterdam [2012–2015]. Often he works as performance/dance dramaturge for other artists. He also moderates workshops on the DasArts Feedback Method, internationally.

  As awarded writer of prose and poetry, his hybrid texts have been presented in the Avignon Festival IN, FRASCATI Amsterdam, the Greek National Theatre, the Athens Festival and elsewhere. Texts of his have been published in Greek and French.

  vimeo.com/manolistsipos 

• Vassilis Noulas

  

  He was born in New York in 1975. He is a theatre and film director and a visual artist based in Athens. He is founding member and the main director of the theatre collective Nova Melancholía. In his work, he attempts to re-approach elements of the Greek and the European traditions of "melancholy", hence gradually constructing his personal spiritual genealogy. Recent projects in theatre/performance: Imagine a Heroic Landscape (texts by Rosa Luxemburg, Festival Primavera dei teatri - Castrovillari, Italia & The Eight - Athens 2019), Spleen (texts by Charles Baudelaire, appartment in Athens 2018), Anestis Logothetis, Expansion (Greek National Opera 2017), Hot Maritime Baths (texts by Elias Papadimitrakopoulos, Athens Festival 2017), The Age of Innocence (text by Doukas Kapantais, Onassis Cultural Centre - Athens 2017), The Dead Man (text by Georges Bataille, Onassis Cultural Centre - Athens 2016), Ectoplasms (poems by Miltos Sahtouris, UM Gallery - Prague 2016).

  He graduated from the Department of Drama Studies (University of Athens), he received a Master's degree in Theater-Performing Arts (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3) and he graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts. He is founding member of the Institute for Live Arts Research |Π|, of the Mavili Collective, and of Kolektiva Omonoia– a variable group of theorists and artists. 

  Five books of poetry and prose of his are published by Gavriilidis Editions, in Athens.

• Vicky Kyriakoulakou

   

  

   

  She was born in Athens and works as an actress, director and teacher. She has a BA in Finance Management and Banking from University of Piraeus, a BA in Acting from Santa Barbara Drama School and a MA in Performance Making from Goldsmiths's University of London. She has co-founded Nova Melancholia in Athens (2006) -of which she is basic performer- and Vacuum Theatre in London (2012), where she acts, directs and writes. During 2017, she performed in the "Age of Innocence" by Doukas Kapantais at the Onassis Cultural Center and in "Maritime Hot Baths" by Ilias Papadimitrakopoulos at Athens' Festival, both productions of Nova Melancholia. She also directed "Yvonne, the Princess of Bourgoundy" by Witold Gobrowicz, perforemed by Vickings, a group of students of hers. Finally, she presented at Battersea Arts Centre in London her last work which she co-created, co-starred and co directed with Kit Redstone, which is called "Pootopia"!

   

  vickykyriakoulakou@yahoo.com

  vickykyr.blogspot.gr

  vimeo.com/user14423505

   

• Emi Kitsali

  

  She was born in Athens in 1975 and still lives and works there. She is an architect and a teacher.

  She studied Architecture in Thessaloniki and received a master degree in Urban Studies in Paris. At the moment she studies once more in the postgraduate program Cultural Management in Athens.

  She teaches design and history of art in the secondary education and she works with student theater groups. In the past she has participated in architectural and urban projects.

  She is member of Nova Melancholia theatre company since 2006 as a graphic designer and more.

• Despina Chatzipavlidou

   

  

   

  She was born in Kavala in 1971. She lives in Athens and works as an actress while teaching motion and contact improvisation. With her work she aims to the expression of personal freedom, grounding - consciously and without limits - in the body any other mental or spiritual impulse that arises during the creative process.

   

  She studied film directing at the Stavrakos School and acting at the Akis Davis theater workshop. Brought in the modern theater and improvisation by Roula Pateraki and Mirka Giementzaki, she studied the relationship between body and voice. She studied release technics next to Christina Kleisiouni, conscious movement, improvisation and contact improvisation. Trained in Authentic Movement (3 year program) by Helen Levidis.

  
  She creates shows of motionimprovisation and authentic movement with the "3=4" company. She collaborates as a dancer with the 'Helix' company. She directed and dramatized 5 traditional Greek tales in the show "And if you believe it", funded by the Ministry of Culture. She has choreographed the show "Cut project" for "Entropy" theatre in Berlin and Athens with the support of the European Cultural Foundation (ECF).
  He played in the movie "Thief or Reality" of Antoinette Angelides and was nominated for the National Actress Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in 2001.

   

  She collaborates with Nova Melancholia since 2007.

   

  desapoin@otenet.gr

  contactiongr.blogspot.gr

   

• Dora Economou

  

  She is a visual artist based in Athens. Dora Economou visits places, text and materials she has had a relationship with, either literal or fictional, takes samples and builds them into sculptures. She contemplates on whether their memory can still be recognized once their evidence has been removed.

  She has presented four solo shows in Athens (A Modern Hug : 2013, By The Spring Of Production : 2011, Dekapedaugustos : 2007, The Lost State Of Grace : 2005) and participated in group shows nationally and internationally. Selectively: LUSTLANDS AT Family Business, NY (2013). After Abstraction, Greek Art Institute (2012). Monodrome: Athens Biennial 3, Greek art, Sem-Art, Monaco (2011). Cabinets of Miracles, Zone D, Athens (2010). Strutture Precarie, San Vito al Tagliamento, Italy (2009). Point of Origin, Artspace Visual Arts Centre, Sydney, (2008), In Present Tense, Young Greek Artists, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2007). Art Fab 'Women in Europe', Saint Tropez (2006), 4th Deste Prize, Deste Foundation, Athens (2005). So much…so great…, Larissa Contemporary Art Center (2004). In March 2013 she started the fanzine “Kypseli”.

  She collaborates closely with the performance group Nova Melancholia and the choreographer Kostas Tsiukas .

• Kostas Tzimoulis

  

  He is a visual artist based in Athens. In his work he experiments with various mediums such as sculpture, video, photography, performance and publications. His work evolves around the issues of boundaries between private and public, home and city, inside and outside. The exploration of the boundaries has been primal in his work, in a conscious but mostly subconscious level. He seems to be attracted by places or areas that stand in-between two contrasting situations. 

  He has presented three solo exhibitions (Contemporary Art Gallery of Pancevo, Belgrade, 2007. ArtisCausa Gallery, Thessaloniki, 2008. Green Park, Athens, 2015) and he has participated in many group exhibitions and collaborative projects in Greece and abroad. He was co-organizer of the Performance Biennial "No Future" in Athens and Cythera in June 2016.

  Since 2014, he collaborates closely with the performance group Nova Melancholia.  

• Alexia Sarantopoulou

  

  She was born in Athens. She is an actress and director. She studied Sociology in Panteion University in Athens, dance in Laban Centre in London and completed the Programme of Postgraduate Studies Research in Architecture: Design- Space- Culture in the National Technical University of Athens. In 2010 she started collaborating as an actress with the Italian theater company Motus. She collaborates with Nova Melancholia since 2014. She is based in Athens and in Rome.