Conversations in ten questions 88: Konstantinos Rigos

Waiting for Golden Age (Stavros Niarchos Hall - Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens - 17 May 2025) 

© Mehmet Kerem Özel

The latest work by Greek choreographer and visual artist Konstantinos Rigos, Golden Age, which premiered on 12 April 2025 at the National Theatre of Serbia in Novi Sad as a co-production of the Greek National Opera (GNO) Ballet and the Belgrade Dance Festival, was presented to Athens audience for five performances between 9 and 17 May at the Stavros Niarchos Hall, the main stage of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre used by the GNO. Golden Age, which played to sold-out houses, received full marks from the audience and an enthusiastic standing ovation.

In Golden Age, Rigos looks back on his life experience and what he has accumulated in his 35-year artistic career as a dancer, choreographer, founder of the independent dance company OKTANA, movement designer for theatre shows, theatre/opera director, stage designer, visual artist, artistic director of the dance department of the National Theatre of Northern Greece (NTNG), and since 2018, ballet director of GNO. He has revisited references and images that have influenced him, accompanied by various pieces of music he constantly listens to and using the dance vocabulary he has created over the years. 

Rigos does not approach his past with nostalgia, nor with the logic of a collage, nor with the distance of a retrospective, but rather by interweaving past and present in a continuous and amorphous way, like the narrative technique of the film Everything Everywhere All at Once. 

As if looking into the colourful interior of a kaleidoscope, the audience experiences many different emotions about Rigos' inner world, which he presents to the audience with all his sincerity and non-proposal. In that sense, Golden Age is as minimal, emotional and melancholic as it is restless, provocative and exuberant.

A wild, glittering, never-ending party is taking place on a stage covered in gold ribbons on three of its sides. Archive footage, live camera images, texts and slogans stream onto a giant mobile phone screen in the background. In the final quarter of the piece, a huge sculpture by Petros Touloudis dominates the space. Suspended above like a slaughtered animal's carcass, it is covered in gold.

Golden Age is a 80-minute rollercoaster ride performed with great dedication, devotion and, of course, joy by the entire 16-strong cast, most of whom are Greek ballet artists. Vaggelis Bikos, the principal dancer of the GNO Ballet, represents Rigos' alter ego and is a cut above the rest with his aura and performance.

The playlist ranging from the melancholic arias of Bizet and Verdi to Greek songs, from Hotel California to Sound of Silence, combined with the original scores composed by Ted Regklis, with costumes designed by Daglara, with lighting design by Christos Tziogkas and video footage by Vasilis Kehagias, Golden Age gives the audience exactly the feeling of Hotel California's lyrics "Some dance to remember, some dance to forget". 

Applauding Golden Age (Stavros Niarchos Hall - Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens - 17 May 2025) 

© Mehmet Kerem Özel

Now it's time for Golden Age's creator Konstantinos Rigos to answer our questions.

What is the essence of performance in your opinion?

To create a different tension with the audience, escape the narrow confines of a technique or genre, and be able to combine different tools to achieve a goal beyond the boundaries of a specific art form.

Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How? 

Art changes the artist, the dancer, the actor; it changes the person, and through it, societies change. Everything we see is recorded in a "latent" way within us and follows us throughout our lives. Our hard drive fills with images, information, and feelings. Memories are created that have nothing to do with our personal lives, but with the public work that becomes common property.

When working on a piece, what sources inspire you? Do dreams play a role in your pieces?

I am inspired by what happens around me, by what I see, hear, and feel; dreams complete my thoughts. I wake up at night when I create a performance and fill in the gaps; I change the structure. I don't call them dreams; they are more like awakenings of thoughts.

When do you decide to give a title to a piece you are working on, if it does not already have one?

Most of the time, if a piece I work on has no title, the first thing that comes is a title that reflects my thoughts, the topics I want to talk about, and the content I want to include. And when all of this is summarized in a title, the process of creation begins, which usually takes a long time.

Are there any artists or persons who you think influenced your art most? And if there is such an artist or person, who is that?

No, I think my art was influenced by many different personalities and many different currents, and this continues in Golden Age through a text* about my beliefs. 

When you consider the current state of the world in every sense, what is the most important and urgent issue for you as an artist?

To talk about today, to be precise in one’s opinions, to ask questions, and to show what one feels. We often hide behind a style, an aesthetic line that can be a fashion period. I feel that we have to go beyond that, and even if there is a fear of not achieving something, we should at least dare to try.

Over the last 20-25 years, Greek choreographers and theater directors have been increasingly making a name for themselves worldwide. What do you attribute this success to?

I think it all comes down to the distinct identity they have acquired.

Since 1989, you have gained extensive experience in the performing arts as a choreographer and theatre/opera director, as well as in the visual arts with your photographic and video works. You usually design the scenography of your pieces. You have also taken on artistic and administrative roles, such as artistic director of the dance department of the NTNG (2001-2005), and since 2018 you have been director of the Ballet of the GNO.

Your latest piece, Golden Age, which premiered at the Belgrade Dance Festival last April as a co-production of the festival with the GNO, “serves as a reflection of a mixtape of your 35-year career, while also aiming to speak about the present and future of dance,” as I read in the introduction. So, when you look back on your 35 years of creation, I'm sure every stage is valuable. Is there a particular period that you see as a breaking point for your art, or a work of yours that you place in a different place than others?

My work has gone through different periods, always depending on the way I choreographed, the context in which I worked, and the organization I was part of. So, a significant period definitely was the OKTANA era, followed by the NTNG dance theater phase, and then the time of large mixed-technique spectacles (dance, theater, music). Now, in the current period, I am at the GNO. Certainly, the turning point was in 2000 when, following my time in the group, I found myself in large organizations serving in both administrative positions of responsibility and creative roles.

You've directed many plays in the past, including an adaptation of Brokeback Mountain in Athens last year. While plays are mostly text-based, dance is often wordless, with narrative and meaning constructed through movement. As someone who studied dance, how do you approach directing plays?

Through my experience in theatre: for many years since the start of my career, I have worked alongside many important directors from whom I learned the secrets of stage theater, how it could be “infectious” and engage audiences. From the beginning, I felt more like a director; for me, choreography is a direction of movements. However, texts interest me as a discourse, a mental and physical state, and a context where I can place my thoughts.

We are moving into a time of increasing integration of digital technology, into a world where people are being urged to find the information they are looking for and the emotions they want to experience, in front of screens, without even moving. As mentioned in the quote above, you also want to talk about the present and future of dance in Golden Age. How do you see the future of dance in a world where people are increasingly prevented from moving?

Golden Age speaks of this. It is created like an endless scroll on a mobile phone. The images come by themselves, creating an associative dramaturgy. This is how the work was created, and then its units were formed. I believe it is necessary for bodies to move, to continue going beyond their limits, and to be daring.

_______________

*An excerpt from the text by Konstantinos Rigos used in Golden Age, which is also included in the booklet of the show (Rigos, ‘Note of the choreographer’, in Golden Age, edited by Sophia Kopotiati, Greek National Opera Publication, No: 162, Athens 2025, p. 100): 

“…I believe in Madonna, Seferis, Tchaikovsky, and Francis Bacon; I believe in Da Vinci, Visconti, Fellini, Verdi, and Dostoevsky; I believe in Gene Kelly, Baryshnikov, Zaha Hadid, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Bob Fosse, Rembrandt, Kate Moss, and David Bowie; I believe in reading novels under the sun; I believe in Pina Bausch…”

[The Turkish version of this article was published in unlimited.]