Despina Sanida Crezia (b.1998) is a choreographer and performer from Athens. They are an alumna of the Dutch Art Institute (MA), the History & Archaeology department of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (BA), and the National School of Dance in Athens. Their practice addresses the politics of embodiment, focusing on insurgent physicality and sociality. Through physical effort and labor, they seek to reveal the affective and choreopolitical potential of the corporeal. In their work, sound, music, and various other cultural references serve as devices for connection, communicability, and immersion. They are also interested in collective study, which is why they host a monthly study group in Athens.

Their work has been presented in dance and visual arts contexts throughout Europe. Their first research and performance piece, 

, was presented in Athens in 2021 and 2023 (TAVROS, KEIV). In 2023, their piece 

 premiered at the MIR Festival in Athens and was later presented in Brussels (Pas si fragile!), Paris (PERFORMISSIMA), Madrid (Festival Domingo), Loulé (Verão Azul), and Rimini (Supernova). Their performance 

, commissioned by the DESTE Foundation and the New Museum, was first presented in 2025 and in 2026 at the Arc For Dance Festival. They also participated in Art Athina 2025 with their piece 

. They are a Live Works fellow (2026-2027).

As part of the VIGIL artistic duo, they have collaborated with PCAI (2022), Flux Laboratory (2022-2023), and they have been Onassis AiR fellows (2024-2025). Sanida Crezia’s online radio show, 

, is hosted bimonthly on Stegi Radio. They have interned at the National Library of Greece's Archives, Manuscripts and Special Collections department (2020).

 (performance maker, performer) /official premier at Teatro das Figuras in Faro, Portugal (upcoming, September 2026)

 (performer) /presented in Replika Teatro in Madrid (April 2026) and at B Motion-Opera Estate festival, in Bassano del Grappa (August 2026)

 [work in progress](performance maker, performer) /at the Arc for Dance Festival in Athens

performance maker, performer, visual artist) /performance & installation in Upper Ankyle

 (performance maker, performer) / at Art Athina, commissioned and produced by Flux Laboratory Athens, curated by Nicolas Vamvouklis

 (performer) / Latitudes Contemporaines Festival in Lille

 (performance maker, performer) / part of 

 exhibition at Benaki Museum, organised by the New Museum and DESTE Foundation 

 (performer) / Spring Festival in Utrecht

 (choreographer, performer) / Supernova Festival in Rimini, Italy

 (choreographer, performer) / Verão Azul Festival in Loulé, Portugal

 (performer) / performance by Fotini Stamatelopoulou. Premiere at Onassis Stegi in Athens

 (choreographer, performer) / at Replika Teatro in Madrid, in the frame of Festival Domingo organized by La Casa Encendida

 (choreographer, performer) / at PERFORMISSIMA festival in Paris organized by Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, curated by Caterina Zevola

 (dancer) / performance by Tzeni Argyriou at the Athens and Epidaurus Festival 

Die Gesellschaft für Neue Musik Ruhr Residency

 (co-creator, performer) / research residency and performance in collaboration with composer Jeph Vanger

 (choreographer, performer) / at Les Halles, Brussels as part of the (Pas si) Fragile! Festival curated by Antoine Pickels

(resident) /bimonthly hosts a music show named 

 (choreographer, performer) / premiere at MIR Festival. Funded by the Greek Ministry of Culture, co-produced by MIR Festival

 (dancer) / performance by Iris Karayan funded by the Greek Ministry of Culture

 (choreographer, performer) / performance in the Temple of Poseidon and Amphitrite in Tinos, funded by the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Greek National Opera. Produced by Atopos cvc

 (initiator, performer) / research residency at P.A.R.T.S. Summer Residencies



 (dancer/performer) / performance by Androniki Marathaki at the Athens and Epidaurus Festival



 (performer) / performance presentation of Moriah Evans’ research at Onassis Stegi, Athens



 (performer, artistic director, creator) / performance at KEIV project space, Athens



 (performer, co-creator) / performance and installation by VIGIL duo at Flux Laboratory, Athens


 (performer, co-creator) / residency program at Flux Laboratory, Athens



 (performer, co-creator) / performance by VIGIL presented PCAI’s Sheltered Gardens exhibition



 (performer, co-creator) / performance by VIGIL (Despina Sanida Crezia & Fotini Stamatelopoulou) at ‘π’ Pavilion at Delphi, produced and supported by PCAI



 (dancer) / dance performance by Marianna Kavallieratos at Synchrono Theater, Athens



 (performer) / dance performance by Fotini Stamatelopoulou at ONC9 at Onassis Stegi

2021


 (external eye, movement assistant) / collaboration with Fotini Stamatelopoulou in MIR Festival, Athens



 (dancer) / collaboration with Cie Ioannis Mandafounis and Flux Laboratory



 (dancer) / dance commission of short dance videos



 (artistic director, performer) / research project hosted and supported by Duncan Dance Research Center, Athens / presented at TAVROS.space gallery, Athens



 (performer) / video performance in collaboration with DETACH duo, presented at the Athens Biennale 7

2019


 (dancer) / in pieces of Cyril Baldy, Ioannis Mandafounis, Christos Papadopoulos at the Athens and Epidaurus Festival


STUDIES


 (BA), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2016-2023)

Off, off x Teatro das Figuras

They are speaking a speechless language. The language of the flood, one could say.

. Moving in or under, they meet themselves in the middle of the night, halfway, sweating. The space implodes within them, which means they overstayed and overflowed. Because hereness is not a metaphor. 

. Obsessions can be a vocabulary towards language; however, stuck in the towardness as a means without end. Obsessions can be portals, can be gestures, can be the conditions of possibility of floods. We just need to stick to it and let entropy do the labor – make us collide, hug, merge. We conspire in the footnotes, floodnotes – sweat still being the divine liquid of the soul.

Performed by BiBi, Billie Meiniche, Despina Sanida Crezia, Dory Samuel, Gianco Colla, Giuliana Beya Dridi, Ilja Schamle, Leo Hugendubel, Ollie Turvey, Seta Astreou-Karides, Sharon Romie, Tara White.

 https://dutchartinstitute.eu/page/31348/despina-sanida-crezia-~-deep-floods-and-high-hopes

Deep Floods and High Hopes

 [work in progress] presented in Arc for Dance Festival 17 in Athens. 

 explores remix, bootleg, and fandom culture as practices of repurposing and recontextualizing, questioning the value of authenticity and originality in the art industry. The performer’s body and the space become milieus of layered references and gestures from a dizzying array of genres — from viral TikTok dances to avant-garde choreography, from sports and rap gestures to internet meme aesthetics.

With an emphasis on what it means to be a “loser” and a “fake,” mimicry and reproduction are used as forms of eulogy, criticism, redefinition, encrypted communication, identity building and deconstruction.

Choreography + Performance by Despina Sanida Crezia

Off, off x Arc for Dance 17

 was presented as part of the KITCHEN program of the Dutch Art Institute. 

: Billie Meiniche, Despina Sanida Crezia, Dory Ikonen, Gianco Colla, Giuliana Beya, Leo Hugendubel, Ollie Turvey, Seta Astreou-Karides, Sharon Romie, Tara White. 

Yes, But at What Cost? 

 is a study group that focuses on studying and discussing revolutionary texts that we believe are significant to read, as a way to empower anticolonial, antiracist, abolitionist, queer feminist, anticapitalist, and anti-imperialist resistance practices, and to cultivate historical and transhistorical thinking, as well as translocal solidarity networks. Via Side Plan, we hope to create a community based on relation, sociality, and solidarity to find new pathways towards research, knowledge acquisition, and action.

Side Plan [study group]

 is a performative activation of Sanida Crezia's installation in the frame of the 

Performance and Installation by Despina Sanida Crezia

I’ve been lying to you all this time. Neither time nor water will ever be enough to cleanse me from the options I didn’t pick. I’ve told you a million times that sweat is the divine liquid of the soul, but you keep on voraciously swallowing it. Neither time nor water will ever be enough to flatten my garbage throne, but you keep on asking, “and what about this”, “and what about that”, “and what about when they…”. For those watching, I choose to be on the bacteria’s side and shout: they not like us, they not like us, they not like us, they not like us.

Soapborne

 was presented in PAF's chapel as part of the KITCHEN program of the Dutch Art Institute. 

It is a playground, and it is the internet itself. Each creature explores its own character based on their favorite personas, objects, or notions. They co-exist in an entropic environment where different worlds collide, hug, and merge. A hypertextual undercurrent is constantly flowing beneath their feet, between their arms, and through their mouths as they read a never-ending text composed of lyrics, poems written by Sanida Crezia, performers’ words from the creation process, and quotes from famous people we admire. All the material used ends up in a melting pot of a wrestling collective where they hold each other tight.

Performed by Billie Meiniche, Despina Sanida Crezia, Dimitris Chimonas, Dory Ikonen, Fagner Lima, Sharon Romie, Tara White.

Text assembled by and written by Despina Sanida Crezia

DoYouDoYou?

Such A Crybaby is a performance exploring youth and fan base culture through sound, movement, and voice. Entering into a space of low-fi aesthetics at the periphery or the cradle of Western culture, the performer seriously and gradually reveals to the audience that they are actually a loser, slow, and always in preparation for a show to come. Their music and pop culture references carve the space they move in, the basis of their action. They balance on a youngster’s tightrope of defeatism while unfolding their rage and sadness in an attempt to answer the question “why am I such a crybaby?”

Choreography, performance, music, text: Despina Sanida Crezia

Commissioned and Produced by Flux Laboratory Athens

Such A Crybaby

 is a work-in-progress performance exploring remix, bootleg, and fan base culture as practices of repurposing and recontextualizing, questioning authenticity and originality.

The performer’s body and the space become milieus of layered references and gestures from a dizzying array of genres—from viral TikTok dances to avant-garde choreography, from sports physicality and classic hip hop to internet meme aesthetics. With an emphasis on what it means to be a “loser” and a “fake,” mimicry is used as a form of eulogy, redefinition, reinvention, encrypted communication, and survival.

 was initially commissioned by the New Museum and the DESTE Foundation as part of the exhibition 

Off, off

 was presented at the Supernova festival in Rimini, Italy, in its third edition, a showcase of performative arts curated by Motus (Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande), organized in collaboration with the Santarcangelo dei Teatri Association and the Municipality of Rimini, and with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region.

Down to Under x Supernova

 is a solo performance, as well as a visual installation, in collaboration with Dimitris Tampakis and Panos Alexiadis.

 deals with the body as a site of conflict. It explores ‘near-to’ experiences of body illness, transformation, and failure. A series of acts unfolds gradually, blending spoken words, protective symbolic objects, and intense physical states. With deliberate yet brute gestures, gargoyle-like facial expressions and by activating self-defense physicalities, the piece reveals an incessant composition that shifts between silence and rage.

Concept, Choreography, & Artistic Direction

 Latitudes Contemporaines, SPRING Performing Arts Festival, MIRfestival | 

 the European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists (EFFEA) | 

 the Grand Luxe Network choreographic platform and Onassis AiR (Athens), L'Abri (Geneva), TROIS C-L (Luxembourg), Pôle-Sud (Strasbourg), Grand Studio (Brussels), and Theater Freiburg

Near Misses

 was presented at Nida Art Colony in th frame of Dutch Art Institute KITCHEN presentations

For a promise is meant to be broken like a piecrust.

Anyway, the periphery imitates the center

No reason pretending to be a denier nor an offender,

Just as the little puppy waits for its master tender.

It is our role – as loyal beads on the European fringe.

I’ve given it all - I’m out of despair

Why Are You Such A Crybaby?

presented at PERFORMISSIMA festival in Paris at Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles.

Down to Under x PERFORMISSIMA

In a distortive environment composed by baile funk and hip hop sound samples, high volume levels and low frequencies that get physical, Jeph and Despina use voice, scream, autotune, physical effort and other tools in order to communicate and explore notions of gender, identity and pop culture.


Concept: Despina Sanida Crezia, Jeph Vanger
Performance: Despina Sanida Crezia
Music: Jeph Vanger

Curated by Filippos Raskovic & Roberto Beseler Maxwell

HYPER!

Co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union

 Eleni Roberts Kazouri & Despina Sanida Crezia

Down to Under X Les Halles

Artist's Studio - Your Spine is A Language

Radio Shows

 explores the choreopolitics in the ubran space.

In view of video gaming, internet and Generation Z culture, the urban space works as an algorithm, a playground, a battleground, a living space, as well as a confinement. Within this realm of urban decay, the performers delve into their bodily archive, blending TikTok dances with the physicality and gestures from underground music subcultures, such as emo rap, noise, metal and hardcore punk, exploring gender representations and forms of social disobedience through movement and sound.
These young obnoxious figures, overwhelmed by the bombardment of internet stimuli, city stress, and the weight of social injustice, channel their confusion, despair, frustration and rage into physical expression while proactively and playfully appropriate the urban environment. Their intense physical and emotional effort transforms into vulnerability and intimacy, culminating in a gesture of tenderness towards one another.

Concept, choreography, artistic direction

 Eleni Roberts Kazouri, Despina Sanida Crezia | 

: Despina Sanida Crezia & Blind Mind Editions | 

Contact me to request a link to the full performance video. 

Down to Under

Perfomance in the approximately 20 million-year-old petrified forest of Plaka at Sigri, Lesvos. In the context of Xeno Festival 2023. Supported by Lesvos Petrified Forest Museum and the Northern Aegean Region.

 by Irini Georgiou, Despina Sanida Crezia | 

Maroon

Ships traveling long distances, such as cruise ships and cargo ships, in their effort to maintain or increase the stability of the vessel, collect seawater in their tanks (sea ballast). Marine species, so-called invasive or “lessepsian migrants” such as lionfish, hare fish and purple jellyfish, are often trapped in them, traveling from one marine ecosystem to another. This phenomenon is also found in the mediterranean sea, where invasive species, which have themselves lost their natural environment, interrupt the balance of the region’s ecosystem. Bodies floating into the land explores the impacts of sea travelers on local biodiversity, health and the economy in relation to climate change. The artists reflect on the vulnerability of all “bodies of water” starting from the island of tinos.

Poseidon, the god of the sea, usually appears as a punisher and is associated with extreme phenomena such as omens, storms, earthquakes, sinkholes and volcanic eruptions. However, in tinos, he was worshiped as a healer and his wife amphitrite as the patroness of female fertility. Drawing inspiration from this positive quality of poseidon, a message of comfort in the face of environmental distress and a hope of planetary healing, a holistic view of the health of people and ecological systems are conveyed.

: Despina Charitonidi (visual artist), Mihalis Kalkanis (musician), Despina Sanida Crezia (choreographer) | 

: Leda Diochnou, Eirini Georgiou, Elton Petri, Thanos Ragousis, Foteini Stamatopoulou, Stefanos Tsogkas | 

Eleni Riga, The Office of Hydrocommons | 

: Alexandra Masmanidi & Giorgos Athanasiou

Presented in the ancient Temple of Poseidon and Amphitrite in Tinos, in the framework of “All of Greece, One culture,” a program of the Greek Ministry of Culture. Supported by Onassis Air.

Bodies Floating into the Land

HOWEVER is an ever-going research performative process which emits from readymade internet text tutorials. We use + transform the easiness of tutorials’ language into the motivator of our mental + physical engagement + effort.

HOWEVER is an ever-going research performative process which emits from readymade internet text tutorials. HOWEVER will never be perfect, for it doesn’t want to. HOWEVER will always be a newborn -always starting from zero- never holding enough knowledge of the world and, whilst it constantly tries to know more about it, it is always tangled up in a process of learning and unlearning. HOWEVER was born as a joke that later offered us new insights on body, physical and mental effort, performative strategies of sustainability, companionship and further reflection on ‘how to perform’, ‘how to learn’, ‘how to know’, ‘how to not know’, ‘how to try’, ‘how to run’, ‘how to keep going’, ‘how to cuddle’, ‘how to fold a gum wrapper heart in 9 simple steps’.

: Leda Diochnou, Irini Georgiou, Aliki Leftherioti (saber._.rider), Despina Sanida Crezia, Fotini Stamatelopoulou, Stefanos Tsogas | 

Contact me to request a full performance video link. 

HOWEVER X KEIV

In November 2022, VIGIL started working on site as artists-in-residence, taking over an old chemical factory to conduct their artistic and choreographic research. The project title "[a] border of dying", challenging the boundaries of the words 'dying' and 'dyeing', refers both to the subject and process of the performative piece and the installation, as well as to the original identity of the building itself – a symbol of chemical industry - which is now lost.

 is an interdisciplinary collaborative research project that focuses on visual arts through the prism of textile use and discoloration, as well as movement through which the human body is approached as a tool and the concepts of corrosion and change are explored.

VIGIL’S movement research is structured around the notions of skin, time, transformation and corrosion, effort and coexistence. The project investigates the dipole of existence/non-existence and the body’s resistance to it, but also the dipole of vigor/passivity that permeates this resistance.

The process of discoloration of textiles is approached through the terms of territoriality, border, and the fragmented “death”, but also through a process of effort and patience.

 (Fotini Stamatelopoulou & Despina Sanida Crezia)

[a] border of dying

A walk in the Diomedes botanical garden (Athens) with two different starting points. The two performers communicate by distance and without visual contact with walkie-talkies guiding and encouraging one another or just chatting. A combination of direct stimuli from the surrounding space and from scores that conduct their patrol and action in the garden. Guards is a performance-observation on trust, friendship, loneliness trying to explore new modes of companionship.

: VIGIL (Fotini Stamatelopoulou & Despina Sanida Crezia)

 exhibition produced by PCAI. Athens, 2022.

GUARDS

ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YgqJnLEmr0&ab_channel=AutowNiteSuperstore

ITHOUGHTILOSTYOU

Within a specially configured sound installation set inside Onassis Stegi’s basement Exhibition Hall (-1), two performers, two amplifiers, and 14 speakers each render – before onlookers – the superchaos that is the coming of age process.

Interpretive movements derived from present-day visual stimuli are intermingled to create a new movement vocabulary. Original pieces of music developed through collective composition practices and/or songwriting – created exclusively for this specific choreographic project by Aliki Leftherioti (Saber Rider), Dimitris Apostolakidis (Fred Afraid), Yannis Voulgaris (John Vulgaris), Christos Bekiris (bhukhurah), Complex Shadow, and the two performers – are heard here for the first time.

Inside a dark (scenic) environment possibly reminiscent of an underground club, a synthesis of the two performers’ independent yet connected soli co-exists with a multi-channel sound installation for 45 minutes. Felipe Vareschi’s specially configured sound design creates a captivating atmosphere. The performers negotiate the ways in which the soundscape’s intensities and rhythms, its pauses and words impress themselves upon and stimulate the body, proposing a practice for seeking out new connections and assimilating degrees of friction and conflict during the formulation and acceptance of our identities and body image.

As a piece, “optimal soft” explores the limits of expressing vulnerability during the course of coming of age processes that unfold as a collective act. The body of the two female performers and the music tracks form a “body” of their own that relates the collective and personal experiences and thoughts of seven individuals in the city of Athens. This sound permeates the bodies, pierces through the space, and beams us directly into what it feels like to be young, strong, and vulnerable.

: Despina Sanida Crezia, Fotini Stamatelopoulou | 

: Aliki Leftherioti (Saber Rider), Dimitris Apostoliakidis (Fred Afraid), John Vulgaris, Christos Bekiris (bhukhurah), Complex Shadow | 

optimal.soft

, translating the search engines’ results into action. The main object of research is the 

 it makes within it. The bodies through their 

 exerting to find a solution to the tasks that concern them. In the HOWEVER platform the persons explore and redefine the function of the collective and of individuality through an ever-evolving performative practice.

: Irini Georgiou, Alexandra Domniki Drandaki, Leda Diochnou, Despina Sanida Crezia, Fotini Stamatelopoulou, Stefanos Tsogas | 

: Zachos Varfis, Despina Sanida Crezia | 

 TAVROS.space | With the support of Duncan Dance Research Center

HOWEVER X TAVROS

A piece by Cyril Baldy in the frame of Growing! for the National School of Dance students. Presented in Athens & Epidaurus Festival.