BLACK BOX
Pavlina Veremi, with the intention of offering students the opportunity to present their ongoing works in choreography within the School, created the Black Box at the National School of Dance In the historic building, in collaboration with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which undertook to finance its design and construction in full, the new performance space had a capacity of one hundred seats and was well equipped to meet the technical requirements of an auditorium.
The Open Studio, was a good idea that became a favorite habit. In this annual event of the National School of Dance, the doors of the School opened and the students invited the audience to take a look at their world through the presentation of their work in performance settings. The original creations, the demos of contemporary dance techniques and the repertory pieces that were presented, were the fruit of the labor that had been done in the course and reflected the process of study and research promoted by the School.
The fortnight of performances at the Black Box was an enormous success each year. It gave the younger dancers the opportunity to take to the stage and the entire student body the chance to cultivate skills, solidarity and collaboration.
The aim of these events was to create a fuller experience for the audiences who embraced the Black Box small theatre and its performances. It also had other functions, to animate the building as an organization with a history and to enhance the sensory awareness of the audience, to encourage personal creative initiative and to promote an ethos of collaboration and teamwork between students, staff and visiting artists. And further, to create practical references to the works of well-known artists and in this way to combine teaching and learning with performance production, including the concept of interdisciplinary performance in traditional dance education systems.
