Athens
Actress, performer, director, choreographer.
She has taught contact improvisation and authentic movement since 2005, and works as a Gestalt mental health counsellor.
When the body moves, you never know what it will reveal. All we need is to be there, with it.
Stage work and dance, mostly with the group Nova Melancholia.
Authentic movement outdoors: on hills, in gardens, among rocks, in the city.
Weekly classes, workshops and cycles of meetings.
Individual sessions, since 2025.
Autumn 2026
Classes and meetings running this season, and recent work. Booking is required for all of them.
Open to everyone, with or without experience. There is care for beginners and experienced dancers alike.
€30 per month (4 classes) · €80 for 8 classes within 4 months · drop-in €13.
Contact improvisation for women, femmes and non-binary people
“The invitation to women and non-binary people is perhaps a resistance to the ‘verb’, to ‘I do’, and an opening to sensation.” The meetings are open regardless of experience in movement or contact. The fee is €50 for the whole cycle (10 hours).
A participatory performance with Anna Tzakou (geopoetics). Body, place, deep time: a walk through the historic landscape of Athens.
Nova Melancholia’s new show, directed by Vassilis Noulas, at M54.
the act of touching
The beginning happens in the moment of touch.
Selected
Performances, outdoor works, films and collaborations. Further down, the full archive since 2001.
Performance and video installation with Anna Tzakou.
A dance piece by Androniki Marathaki.
Photographs from a creative process around contact and the body.
A durational action with Anthi Mouriadou, part of the permaculture programme “Moving Ground” at the I. & R. Duncan Dance Research Center.
An anniversary show for the group’s 15 years, directed by Vassilis Noulas.
With Anna Tzakou (geopoetics), among the boulders of Volax on Tinos.
Teaching since 2005
Two practices built on attention to the body: one with another person, in contact; the other with eyes closed, in front of a witness.
Two bodies in contact move together in improvisation, exploring and at the same time giving in to physical forces and the pull of gravity.
We approach physical contact with respect for the other’s body and with attention to listening. We explore support: first our own, in connection with the ground, and then the support and the bridges between two bodies.
Through suspension and play with weight, we feel our way towards unexpected directions in space. We soften the touch and develop a creative, imaginative dialogue. We learn to connect.
Classes are open to everyone, whatever their experience. They are built on the idea that we all learn from each other, with respect and humility.
A practice that brings our inner movement, impulse or action to the surface and into the present.
With eyes closed and in the presence of a witness, we feel our way into the movement as it arises and let it unfold, together with the sensations, feelings, thoughts and images of memory and imagination it carries.
Speaking afterwards slowly helps us notice the unspoken links between a movement and its “content”, and our relationship with others.
In recent years Despoina has been holding open-form authentic movement meetings outdoors, inspired by nature and especially by the urban landscape.
Gestalt
Despoina has completed her training as a Gestalt mental health counsellor at the Gestalt Foundation.
Since 2025 she has been working with individual clients. For information, or to arrange a first session, please contact her by phone or email.
About
Despoina Chatzipavlidou lives and works in Athens as an actress, performer, director and choreographer. Her work ranges from the queer scene and questions of gender and sexuality to the practice and teaching of somatics, such as contact improvisation and authentic movement.
Her aim is the expression of personal freedom: to ground in the body, consciously and without limits, every psychological or spiritual impulse that arises in the creative process.
As an actress she is a core member of the visual and theatre performance group Nova Melancholia, appearing in Vassilis Noulas’s productions at the Onassis Stegi, the Athens Festival and M54. She has also worked with Savvas Stroumpos (Simeio Miden group), Anna Tzakou and Androniki Marathaki, among others. On screen she appeared in Antoinetta Angelidi’s Thief or Reality (2001) and played the lead in Vassilis Noulas’s The Lair (2019).
She has taught contact improvisation and authentic movement since 2005. From 2021 to 2023 she was part of the teaching team of SYNASKi, a programme applying somatic methods to dance practice in Greece. From 2015 to 2017 she taught theatre and movement to the theatre group of HIV-positive inmates at Korydallos men’s prison, and directed their performance The Box.
In recent years she has developed outdoor works through the practice of authentic movement: An Enclosed Place of Dreaming (Pnyx, 2019), On the Hill (2020) and Dream Practice (2021–22). From the first two, she and Anthi Mouriadou made the feature-length film An enclosed place for dreams – On the hill.
She is a Gestalt mental health counsellor (Gestalt Foundation) and has been working with individual clients since 2025.
From her archive
Moments from performances, outdoor work and journeys.
Tinos, 2021
Photo: Sissy Morfi, 2024
2025
Marcel Duchamp, Nova Melancholia, 2022
Moving Bodies, Inhabited Gardens, 2026
2024
Photo: Sissy Morfi, 2024
Painfully Painless, 2023
From a car window, 2021
Nova Melancholia, 2022
Outdoor authentic movement, 2025
2024
Painfully Painless, 2023
On the way to Livada, Tinos, 2021
Photo: Sissy Morfi, 2024
2026
contaction, since 2007
Despoina writes about her practice on her blog. Excerpts from texts written for workshops and projects, translated from Greek; the full texts are in Greek.
By giving value to the humble and the familiar, the unpretentious, the seemingly artless, we enter lightness.Read in Greek →
Movement as a lighthouse that makes rhythm and light; contact as an absorbing experience of “reading”.Read in Greek →
Our body, perhaps the only thing that truly belongs to us, offers paths, shifts and resting places, like the relief of a landscape.Read in Greek →
We cultivate the earth as we cultivate and explore the place within the body.Read the full text →
Experimenta Art Co.
Konstantinoupoleos 138, Metaxourgeio, Athens
On the map →
A few minutes’ walk from Metaxourgeio and Kerameikos metro stations.