Ioannis Mandafounis
Choreographer

Born in Athens in 1981, Ioannis Mandafounis studied dance at the National School of Athens and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris. Before becoming a freelance choreographer, he was part of the Gothenburg Opera Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater II and was a member of the Forsythe Company from 2005 to 2009. In parallel, he formed the “Lemurius Company” in Greece with whom he created several pieces such as Provalondas tin Skia (2005), Anthropines Diastasis (2007), Crosstalk (2009) and Yperparagogi (2011). In 2007 he created a new version of L’Après-midi d’un Faune for the Ballet of the Greek National Opera.

In 2007 he began collaborating with Fabrice Mazliah, with whom he co-created P.A.D. (2007), which was produced by the Athens and Epidaurus Festival and was presented at the Swiss Contemporary Dance Days (2011) among other platforms. Together they also created HUE (2006), produced by the Forsythe Company for Bockenhimer Depot, and Eifo Efi in 2013. «Cie Projet 11» was born from their collaboration. When May Zarhy joined them in the collective Mamaza, they created together Z.E.R.O. (2009), Cover Up (2011), Pausing (2012), The Nikel Project- songs&poems (2012), as well as several choreographic installations: Asingeline (2011), Context without Content (2012) and Garden State (2014), which were and still are shown and co-produced by numerous venues and festivals.

During the same period Ioannis multiplied his collaborations with chosen choreographers, such as Olivia Ortega for Ouïe-Voir (2009), Nikos Dragonas, Katerina Skiada and Olivia Ortega for Twisted Pair (2013), Elena Giannotti for ApersonA (2014), Aoife McAtamney for the performance One One One (2015), Laurent Chétouane for Soli (2015) with Roberta Mosca and Michael Marklund, and famous Peter Brook’s actor Bruce Myers for Ossip Mandelstam. A performance (2016) with Elena Giannotti and Roberta Mosca. The performance NU was the result of his encounter with choreographer Emilia Giudicelli (2017). He chose to try his dance improvisation tools to music by collaborating with dancer/musician Manon Parent in Sing the Positions (2017). He pursued his experimentation with music in the performance “Make sure you have exhausted all that is communicated through stillness and silence” with music composer/ cellist Brice Catherin (2017). His collaboration with actress/ musician Antigone Fryda on Faded (2019) marks a turning-point in his career, whereby he progressively stops performing in his own pieces, in order to focus on choreographing for/on other artists and companies.

He has received commissions from internationally renowned theatre and dance companies to create original works: Viel|leicht for the Theater Junge Generation in Dresden (2016), MayaBuff - a delirium from Mayakovsky for the National Theatre of Greece in Athens (2018), It finishes when it finishes for Corpus Ensemble at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen (2018) and Fearful Symmetries for the Grand Théâtre de Genève (2019). In 2020 he will create Point of No Return for the Ballet of the Greek National Opera (2020), Bis.N.S as usual for the Lyon Opera Ballet (2021), If Only I Knew for Norrdans (2021). 

Ioannis Mandafounis also teaches improvisation workshops and classical ballet from his specific approach as a Budo practitioner. He has been a guest teacher in famous dance institutions such as P.A.R.T.S. Brussels, Palucca Schule Dresden, CNSMDL in Lyon, K3 Kampnagel Hamburg, Tanzlabor 21 Frankfurt, the Greek National School of Dance Athens, among others. He has also been commissioned to make work on students, for example In-Formation (2011) and Howl (2012) for the Ballet Junior de Genève, and HA for La Manufacture in Lausanne (2017). He will create a new work for the Amsterdam ATD (2020), and Dancing in your head for the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon (2020). 

In 2015, Ioannis Mandafounis received the Swiss Dance Awards in category Outstanding Male Dancer accolades.

Mélanie Fréguin
Administration, production, communication, diffusion & mediation

Mélanie Fréguin holds university diplomas in the fields of history and art, sciences and communication, as well as in international law. In 2004 she began her career as an artistic assistant, charged with the communication for the Monaco Dance Forum – a biannual dance and multimedia festival in Monte Carlo (2004 and 2006 editions).

In 2007 she was invited to join the team of Dança em foco festival in Rio de Janeiro (Br), where she worked with international artists programmed by the festival. She decided to continue her adventure by joining the Panorama Festival de Dança team, also in Rio de Janeiro (Br). Working on the festival's exterior relations, she coordinated hospitality for the artists and international programmers, co-developed the “videoteca panorama,” a social project for nationwide choreographic education, and co-hosted the broadcasting platform “south-south.info”, a news website on contemporary dance in the South of Brazil.

In 2010 she encountered Gilles Jobin, a choreographer based in Geneva, who invited her to return to the European dance scene. She then took on his company’s productions of “side projects” before meeting Ioannis Mandafounis the next year. A close collaboration soon followed: charged with the management and development of Cie Ioannis Mandafounis, she became the choreographer’s associate, giving amplitude to his creative work and greater scope in the diffusion of his projects, and finally anchoring the company locally, with a high reputation nationally and internationally.

In 2015, she created the association Overseas Culture Interchange with the desire to develop cultural exchange programs within underprivileged communities. She organized her first project in Brazil "Kitchen # Natal" in 2016, followed by "Kitchen # Beirut" in 2017 and a third one, Kitchen # Madagascar in 2019. The projects invited international artists to collaborate with local artists over the course of residencies in the community (www.ociproduction.com).

Parallel to her work with Ioannis Mandafounis, she has also worked for l’Ecole de Danse de Genève | Ballet Junior de Genève (2011-2016), where she was appointed head of administration and communication, as well as coordination of associations. In addition she was charged with projects for the Rencontres Professionnelles de Danses – Geneva from September 2011 until September 2014. Professionally active in Geneva’s independent dance scene, she initiated and co-signed the study concerning the conditions of creation, production, functioning, and subsidizing, of contemporary dance companies in Geneva.