This year’s festival builds on an extended programme that began in September 2025, including public presentations, inclusive movement jams, online talks, and in-person workshops, strengthening community engagement and deepening conversations around accessibility as a creative and political practice. With these preliminary activities now concluded, the festival moves into its main programme, presented in December.
A key focus this year is the re-staging of Cypriot works previously shown throughout 2024, selected for their alignment with access-driven practices and aesthetics. These include works by Marios Pavlou, Kostantina Skalionta, Milena Ugren Koulas, and The Council Collective. This section also features the collaboration between Queer Wave and Beyond DisDance through the exhibition Seeing (Me) Through, which presents works by Maria Philippou, Sylvia Robin Gionti, and Mel Baggs, as well as the film screening Sylvia Robyn by Panayiotis Evangelidis, further enriching the festival’s commitment to intersectional dialogue.
Central to Beyond DisDance is its residency programme, which in 2025 hosted four artists — Korallia Stergides, Arianna Markoullides, Zoe Georgallis and her team, and Victoria Antonova — supporting their artistic processes while offering capacity-building in crip culture and the aesthetics of access. These artists will present the final outcomes of their work within the main body of the festival.
The 2025 programme also introduces a fresh selection of international works, including Zer-brech-lich by Alessandro Schiattarella & Ensemble, alongside performances by Manolis Saridakis, Philip Pawlak, Yiota Peklari, and the internationally acclaimed drag collective Drag Syndrome. Additionally, Alessandro Schiattarella and Yiota Peklari will share their artistic practices through free workshops offered during the festival, expanding opportunities for public engagement. Many of these works embrace experimental formats that challenge normative expectations of the body and functionality, offering a crip-intersectional approach to disability.
Beyond DisDance continues to promote crip culture and access-led creativity, creating a space where audiences and artists experience performance through multiple modes of perception and participation. The aim of the initiative remains to contribute to shaping a more inclusive cultural landscape in Cyprus and to support events in which access functions as an applied human right and a source of artistic expression.
Crip is a reclaimed term used by disabled people and activists to express disability as an empowering, intersectional, and political stance.
This year, the Festival received the EFFE Label, attributed by the European Festivals Association (EFA), acknowledging its commitment to the arts, active community involvement, and international openness.
Production: Ipogia SkiniInstitutional Sponsor: Deputy Ministry of Culture – within the framework of the KYPRIA and Culture 2021-2025 ProgramsSupporters: Onassis Cultural Centre, Pro Helvetia, Limassol 2030, Nicosia Dance House, NEA KINISIPartners: Queer Wave, Cyprus Association for People with Autism, University of Cyprus – Department of Education, Liminal, Performing Arts Committee BL/BS (FA DK).Communication Sponsor: RIK
