ODE is about togetherness, about no woman being alone. About the ways we can find in order to expand the space that is ours as women. A bodily poem that explores the core of female strength through gaze and movement.

ODE is an act of embodied poetry – dynamic, melodic, distilled. Choreographer and performer Elena Antoniou and musician Maria Spivak meet on stage for the first time at Onassis Dance Days. After LANDSCAPE, which for a third year continues to travel to festivals across Europe supported by the Onassis Stegi Touring Program, Elena Antoniou’s new work follows that path that shifts the gaze, space, time, and the relationship with the spectator.

In ODE, the two artists redefine each institutional venue that presents it as a field of attunement, and stand where rupture and renewal meet. The gaze determines, seeing with an eroticism that claims the right to draw close, to unite. Vulnerability becomes a passage toward another kind of power. Hierarchies and roles recede. Presence asserts itself and becomes sound, movement becomes vibration, and coexistence becomes a form of claiming. As Audre Lorde says, “Your silence will not protect you.”

Elena Antoniou’s ODE is supported by NEON through its annual Grants Scheme.