19 November 2025

Cyprus will participate in the Aerowaves #Twenty26 artists programme with choreographer Panos Malactos’s work “NO IM NOT”, the Deputy Ministry of Culture’s Contemporary Culture Department announced.

Malactos was selected in October at a session in Budapest by a jury panel comprising 52 dance professionals from hundreds of works as one of the most promising choreographers in Europe for 2026. The work premiered in 2024 at the 24th Cyprus Choreography Platform organised by the Cyprus Contemporary Culture Department and Rialto Theatre.

Aerowaves is a European dance network through which the most promising new works by emerging choreographers are recognised and promoted for performances across Europe. The Aerowaves network has partners in 34 countries, including Cyprus, giving choreographers the opportunity to present their work to new audiences. Cyprus participates in the network through the Limassol Dance House.

Each October, these partners convene and select 20 artists for the following year from hundreds of works. The selected works are initially presented at the Spring Forward Festival, which in 2026 will take place from 6-9 May in Portugal.

About the choreographer

Panos Malactos is a Cypriot dancer and choreographer who explores the intersections of queer identity and transformation through a raw, physical and emotionally charged language. His practice draws from everyday gestures and surrealist images, creating spaces where tenderness, absurdity and awkwardness coexist.

Deeply rooted in movement but open to theatricality, his works unfold like personal encounters—intimate, playful and simultaneously political. Trained in musical theatre at Bird College and in ballet and contemporary dance at Rambert School, he combines technical precision with strong performative presence.

His artistic universe is shaped by his curiosity about the body as a site of contradiction, memory and resistance. His work has toured throughout Europe and New Zealand, inviting audiences into landscapes where movement becomes a way of redefining identity, vulnerability and belonging. In 2019 he received the Young Choreographer Award at the Cyprus Choreography Platform.

Cyprus’s participation in the programme is an important step towards further recognition of Cyprus’s dance scene and its talents on the European dance map, according to the announcement.

The full list of selected works includes choreographers from Portugal, Lithuania, Greece, France, Germany, the UK, Czechia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Romania, Iceland, Spain, Denmark, Cyprus, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland:

Fábio (Krayze) Januário with ‘Musseque’ (Portugal)
A. Lisičkinaitė & I. Shugaleev, Be Company with ‘CLAP & SLAP’ (Lithuania)
Chara Kotsali with ‘IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE’ (Greece)
Johana Malédon with ‘(titre provisoire)’ (France)
Paula Rosolen/Haptic Hide with ‘NOICE|NOISE’ (Germany/France)
Charlie Morrissey & Markéta Stránská with ‘Scáling’ (UK/Czechia)
Bast Hippocrate with ‘Joyaux lourdement sous-estimés’ (Switzerland)
Nik Rajšek with ‘ KINK’ (The Netherlands/Slovenia)
Fabla Collective/Inan Sven Du Swami & Mojca Špik with ‘Do Birds Dream of Flying?’ (Slovenia)
Supergroup x QWERTY/Solène Wachter x Bryana Fritz with ‘Logbook’ (France)
Simona Dabija with ‘BPM–Beats per Millennium’ (Romania)
Gleym-mér-ei/Forget-me-not with ‘Femme Physique’ (Iceland)
Inka Romaní with ‘Volvamos al baile’ (Spain)
Marie Kaae with ‘Wired’ (Denmark)
Panos Malactos with ‘NO IM NOT’ (Cyprus)
Annabel Koele with ‘MAGNITUDE’ (The Netherlands)
Company Furinkaï & Théâtre de l’Entrouvert with ‘Mizy’ (France)
Mufutau Yusuf with ‘Proses On Neither Here Nor There’ (Ireland)
Francesca Santamaria with ‘GOOD VIBES ONLY (beta test)’ (Italy)
Soraya Leila Emery with ‘TURN ON’ (Switzerland)