The Nutcracker, staged by Bolshoi Ballet's chief choreographer of the last 30 years Yuri Grigorovich, will fill the Alexandra Trianti Hall with music and spectacle from 20 to 30 December, once again bringing the magic of the unrivalled Russian ballet to Greek audiences.
Contributors
Renowned choreographer Grigorovich, who turned 90 this year, brings his own style to the classic fairytale of The Nutcracker to the Athens Concert Hall in an adapted libretto by Marius Petipa. The principals and leading soloists will once again demonstrate Russia’s supremacy in classical dance to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as scenery and costumes fill the stage with magic to captivate young and old.
Performance schedule
The Nutcracker ballet in two acts, based on a fairytale by Hoffmann titled The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, opens on Wednesday 20 December and runs through 30 December. Performances are at 4 and 8 pm on most days. Whichever show you choose, you are sure to leave the theatre under its spell.
Christmas Oratorio for just one performance in Athens
This holiday season, Bach’s landmark Baroque work Christmas Oratorio will fill the Christos Lambrakis Hall at the Athens Concert Hall in a performance by Les Musiciens du Louvre, one of France's best known musical ensembles.
Les Musiciens du Louvre are internationally known for their expert renditions of the pre-classical and classical repertoire. This work by Johann Sebastian Bach is considered one of most beautiful compositions of sacred music of all time. At their performance on 20 December, Les Musiciens du Louvre will be playing period instruments under the direction of Marc Minkowski, accompanied by internationally known singers.
Their name: Pilobolus; their performance: Shadowland; their art: contemporary dance; their audience: more than 800,000 spectators throughout the world; their success: indisputable!
A company of contemporary dancers based in New York, Pilobolus has captured audiences through surprise, startling subversions, and their play with light using their own shadows as the vehicle. In Shadowland, a young girl travels to the world of dreams on the wings of dance and shadows. Precision lighting, multimedia, and moveable alternating screens present a dance spectacle of shadows where people are transformed into objects, animals and mysterious creatures that change faces to frighten, bewitch, seduce and mesmerise.
Perfection in movement and modern technology
The members of the Pilobolus dance group, with their solid training in modern dance, along with technicians led by lighting director Neil Peter Jampolis, use the cloth as their blank slate to create their own surprising story. Follow the young girl's journey and let her sweep you along to a land of shadows and excitement. For five days and eight performances.
A museum for both children and adults. A museum you want to enter just to remember, to relive those childhood moments, to learn, to absorb fresh impressions, to smile with wonder and joy. A museum until now missing from the grand constellation of museums in Athens – but which the Benaki Museum has now made reality: the Museum of Toys, which opened its doors to the public on October 26 and which now constitutes a new and delightfully different cultural portal.
The building and the exhibits
In a splendid building circa 1897 -1900, donated by Vera Kouloura in memory of her husband the Hydriot shipowner Athanasios Koulouras, is displayed the toy collection of Maria Argyriadi, one of the ten largest toy collections in Europe, featuring children’s toys, clothes, miscellaneous objects and books from Asia, America, Europe and Africa.
The Museum is open every Thursday through Sunday and is wheelchair accessible.
From November 7 through March 5, 2018, the unique works of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh will be presented at the Athens Concert Hall in a special exhibition combining image and sound to create an interactive relationship between visitors and these remarkable paintings. 3,000 sketches and paintings of Van Gogh will be projected on 1,500 square meters of walls, columns, ceilings and floors using a new system of advanced technology capable of producing 3-D images of startling clarity and fidelity, further enhanced by high-quality sound.
A journey into the life and emotions of the great painter
The aim of the exhibition’s curators is to produce a multi-featured digital journey through the works of the great Dutch painter and to bring to life the places where he lived and created. With the help of technology, this digital journey explores Van Gogh’s art and career and delves into his troubled emotional “universe”, which impelled him to the extremes of creativity and demanded agonizing efforts for its achievement.
The exhibition has already toured 35 cities around the world and has been visited by more than 10 million people.
