Lia Haraki is an artist working across the disciplines of performance, choreography, devised theatre, music and spoken word. As a creator, she is occupied with issues related to identity, community and value and believes in the power of art as a medium that can trigger shifts in perception towards a fairer world. Beginning from self-sarcasm and working with satire she enjoys finding ways to crack carefully constructed social identities and reveal the illusion we have of them as real. Usually, in her pieces, socio-political norms and the heteronormative are questioned and challenged, while fragility and empathy are underlined as human necessary strengths. Her work takes the form of staged theatre works, dance pieces, site-specific pieces, one on one performances, sound installations, stand-up shows, music bands and performances in shops.
Lia’s works have been presented in festivals like Julidans Amsterdam, the Athens Festival, Royal Festival Hall London, Bozar Brussels, Unesco Paris, The Place London, Tanec Praha, Kleines Haus Dresden, Korzo The Hague, Euro-scene Leipzig and other. She has been one of the artists who represented Cyprus in the Venice Biennale for visual arts in 2013 with the solo Tune In curated by Raimundas Malašauskas (Special mention for the Cyprus and Lithuanian Pavilion). She has been awarded two times the choreography award at the Cyprus dance platform (2003, 2005) and her works were two times short listed by the Aerowaves network (Evergreen – 2004, Pretendance – 2009).
Some of her long-term collaborators include amongst others dramaturge Guy Cools, performers Alexis Vassiliou, Εleana Alexandrou, Arianna Marcoulides, sound artist Yiannis Christofides, technical manager Yiangos Hadjiyiannis.
Lia’s largest scale project called The Performance Shop Concept focuses on the value of performance and in 2016 it was selected as one of 25 best practices in Europe by the EDN (European Dance House Network), which answered the question of “how dance can become relevant”. Lia has developed several methodologies which she teaches as workshops and coaching projects at universities, festivals and dance houses internationally like The Οnion – coaching for artists, Performing biography – the stand-up way and The IntuNition ritual.
She is the initiator of Dance House Lemesos and the president of its committee. She is also a part-time lecturer the Dance Programme of the University of Nicosia. Her Tedx talks Whatever you perform is right, and The necessity of performance inspired audiences to embrace performance as a practice accessible to all.
10.04.2022
