🇬🇷 Contact Improvisation in Greece

Overview

Contact Improvisation's roots in Greece reach back to Konstantinos Mihos, who first read a description of the practice while living in Athens in 1980, then trained with choreographers in New York and San Francisco before beginning to practice it himself in 1984 and teach it in 1989. In 1988 he co-founded the Wrong Movement Dance Studio, which grew into a hub for CI teaching, jams, and performances, and he organized the European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange (ECITE) in Athens in both 1993 and 2004. A few years into his own practice, Christina Klissiouni added another thread, training in New York from 1986 to 1991, including with Merce Cunningham, and has been practicing and teaching CI in Athens ever since; she founded Present Body Studio there in 2009. Athens has grown into one of the country's most active hubs, with a weekly jam open to everyone from complete beginners to seasoned dancers, and a growing circle of teachers, organizers, and musicians building the scene there. In Thessaloniki, Konstantinos Gerardos has organized Contact Improvisation jams since 2004, alongside decades of teaching, choreography, and international collaboration through his company Vis Motrix. A community group now gathers CI practitioners across the whole city and beyond. Summer is when the scene really comes alive, spread across several corners of the country. CI Camp Greece gathers a self-organized, practitioner-led community at the Liveloula eco-project in the northern Peloponnese, while over on Corfu, Fall & Fly and the Corfu Land & Water CI Festival draw people to the villages near Arillas each year, alongside touch-focused workshops on the island. In Thessaly, Tending Soil offers a CI-based residency close to nature. Pedro Penuela, who has practiced CI internationally since 2006, curated the 2024 ECITE gathering (the European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange) from his base in Greece. Crete had its own dedicated Contact Improvisation festival too, running annually from 2011 to 2014, and its community still keeps a website for practitioners on the island. On Aegina, a short boat ride from Athens, Daphne Percy Chorafa organizes Contact Improvisation workshops and gatherings at Oikia Karapanou, a retreat center that has also hosted international CI trainings and served as a Global Underscore site in 2024.

Last updated July 2026