NOD

liminal‘s collaboration with the Athens Epidaurus Festival enters its second year. As part of this year’s programme, the Festival is presenting two productions with accessibility services for audiences with sensory disabilities at its Pireos 260 venues.

We kick off on Monday, June 22, 2026, at 22:00 with NOD, a dance duet by Alexandros Vardaxoglou, performed in conditions of accessibility for audiences with visual disabilities.

Two men — one in a grey jacket, the other in a brown one — hold each other in a tight embrace reminiscent of a wrestling hold. Their faces pressed together, eyes locked, they leave the interpretation open: a confrontation, or a moment of absolute tenderness.

A choreographic drift

Two men meet by chance. They wear the same clothes, inhabit the same body, perhaps even share the same past. Their encounter becomes the point of departure for a choreographic drift in which their synchronised movements – at times insistently repeated – begin to falter and mutate, generating a subtle disorientation; steps collapse into falls, embraces turn into struggles, gestures warp into desperate configurations. What emerges is a reckoning with the limits of proximity and distance, where even the costumes they wear become instruments in this volatile tug-of-war.

What is NOD?

Nod, or the Land of Nod, is the place to which, according to the Book of Genesis, God banished Cain after the murder of his brother Abel – one of the earliest recorded acts of fratricide in human history. Beyond even the reach of the divine gaze, it is imagined as the threshold of humanity’s darker wandering, a realm suspended between dream and oblivion.

A young man in a light grey suit is leaning against the white wall behind him, pushing away the face of a dark-haired young man in front of him who is grabbing him by the lapel. Their legs are intertwined, and the posture of their bodies creates a charged ambiguity between attraction and repulsion.
A young man in a light grey suit stands in front of a slightly taller dark-haired man in a light brown suit. His arms raised, he wraps the dark-haired man's head in an embrace that at times recalls a headlock. The other man, from behind, grips him by the lapels of his grey jacket, fists clenched. Their expressions — serious, laden with tension — sharpen the ambiguity of this strange bodily encounter.
A young man in a light grey suit grabs a dark-haired man in a brown suit with a purple t-shirt underneath from behind. Holding him under the arms, he forcefully immobilises his body, while the other reaches back with his right hand, trying to grasp his head.

Anonymous and unmoored from memory, the two men who meet in this land lay bare the relentless – and at times bleak – cycle of human existence: from love to violence, from closeness to rupture, from union to murder, from Cain and Abel to us.

The music

The sonic fabric of the performance relies inventively on Requiem by Alfred Schnittke, interweaving instrumental and vocal textures, fixed and live electronics, and absorbing the ambiguities of its heterogeneous materials – from lyricism and melody to abrasion and noise.

Through digital processing, the musical substance is distorted, and – mirroring the choreographic vocabulary – amplifies the sense of a fractured, disfigured reality.

In NOD, the thorns and harsh terrain of coexistence are confronted head-on, through a choreography unafraid to tread barefoot across this merciless ground once inhabited by Cain. In doing so, it reveals something elemental: the fragile, fierce beauty at the heart of human connection.

Accessibility Services

liminal creates accessibility services for audiences with visual disabilities, offering:

  • Guided Touch Tour and
  • Audio Description

Credits

Choreography: Alexandros Vardaxoglou
Music: Yannis Angelakis
Set design: Evangelia Bakogianni
Costume design: Christina Lardikou
Costume construction: Francesco Infante
Set construction: ROKANI collective, Evangelia Bakogianni
Lighting design: Vangelis Mountrichas
Assistant to the choreographer: Vasia Bakogianni
Photography: Christos Symeonides
Production: Ars Nova Experimentalis Non-profit Arts and Culture Company

Performed by: Alexandros Vardaxoglou, Nontas Damopoulos

Special thanks to: Katerina Metaxopoulou, Nikos Salvaras, Thanos Karagiannis

Accessibility credits

Audio Description Script: Alexandra Georgovasili, Maria Thrasyvoulidi
Audio Description Narration and Guided Touch Tour: Maria Thrasyvoulidi
Quality Check: Eva Gkritzali
Accessibility Services Design: liminal
Co-ordination: Christos Papamichael

Useful information

Days and times of accessible performance: Monday 22 of June 2026 at 22:00
Guided Touch Tour: 21:00
Location: Pireos 260, Venue B
Duration: 50 minutes

The venue is is wheelchair accessible.

🎟️ Although this performance may appear as SOLD OUT, you can still make a reservation:

Via e-mail: [email protected]
By phone: 2104834913 (Monday – Friday 10:00-17:00)

When making your reservation, please specify which accessibility services you need.

For assistance with the reservation process, please contact us by email at [email protected].