Music

Rizitiko REload — Music-Theatre at the Vlisidis Theatre

Two Rethymno companies take apart the rizitika, western Crete's oldest songs, in live music-theatre. Sunday 25 October, 21:00.

The rizitika are the old songs of the White Mountain villages, the ones sung at weddings and tables and not usually messed with, and Rizitiko REload is two Rethymno companies, the Scarmi theatre group and Theatro Antivaro, deliberately messing with them. Their first joint piece uses the songs as raw material rather than a museum exhibit: voice, bodies, live music and soundscapes, built through improvisation, pushing the tradition up against memory, identity, violence, gender and desire. It was made as a co-production for the ΜΠαρΤ 13 festival (Γέφυρες, with the music-theatre workshop ΣΜουΘ), premiered there, and now comes back to Crete, where it was born. It plays the Vlisidis Theatre on Sunday 25 October at 21:00. Expect something closer to contemporary performance than a Cretan night, and in Greek; if you only know the rizitika from a glenti, that is exactly why to go.