The award-winning dance production BLKDOG by choreographer Botis Seva and Far From The Norm (United Kingdom) will launch the 27th Cyprus Contemporary Dance Festival this weekend in Limassol, organised by the deputy ministry of culture and Rialto Theatre.

The festival will run until June 21 and present six productions and seven performances from England, France, Greece, Cyprus, Belgium and Finland.

Following Saturday’s performance, at 9.30pm, audiences are invited to continue the evening at the Rialto Theatre’s outdoor bar for the festival opening party, featuring music by DJ Christina Papakyriakou, in an atmosphere that officially launches the festival.

BLKDOG is a sharp and deeply poetic commentary by Seva on the emotional experience of young people navigating a world that is not built for them. A highly physical hip-hop dance performance, the work explores the fragile and often violent relationship between self-discovery and self-destruction.

Drawing on personal experience, childhood memories, and adult trauma, Seva constructs a labyrinth of memory in which movement becomes a language for what cannot be spoken. His artistic trajectory, rooted in hip-hop culture and the grime/rap scene, has evolved through dance as a form of expression and release, closely connected to lived personal and social realities.

The work was developed through the collective creative process of Far From The Norm, formed in a youth club in Dagenham, London, as a space for experimentation and exchange of movement languages. This collective foundation remains central to the dramaturgy, with each performer bringing their own lived experience onto the stage.

In its current form, BLKDOG has evolved from its 2018 iteration, gaining greater emotional complexity and a refined balance between darkness and light, with a strong focus on how childhood experience shapes adult identity.

The performance unfolds as a rhythmic, fragmented journey through memory, where the music by Torben Sylvest, lighting by Tom Visser, and costumes by Ryan Dawson-Laight create a dense and atmospheric stage world. Without a linear narrative, the work operates as an experience in which each spectator is invited to decode images, memories, and emotional fragments, forming their own reading.

Seva, one of the most influential voices in contemporary choreography, has received major international recognition, including the Olivier Award (2019) and the CHANEL Next Prize (2022).

27th Cyprus Contemporary Dance Festival

Choreographic performances from Cyprus, England, France, Greece, Belgium, and Finland. May 30 – June 21. Rialto Theatre, Limassol and Nicosia Municipal Theatre, Nicosia. 8.30pm. €10 per performance. Tel: 7777-7745. https://rialto.interticket.com/