‘I was always enjoying squeezing balloons, pressing them with my fingers until they pop… It has not been up until now that I realized why…’


Awarded with the public prize in Metamorphoses 2014 competition. 

BalloonTheories (2013)

Concept / Choreographic direction: Fouli Stylianidou

Dance /Co creation: Christianna Eftychiou, Ivi Hadjivassiliou

Music: Dimitris Savva

Photos: Yiorgos Eressios, Sergio Vaccaro

DanceCyprus

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Disruption was created as a projection of the emotions that people and especially artists felt in the lockdown. Yet another form of creativity born through the numerous lockdowns, the performance moves between feelings of fear, calm, anger, passion, frustration and the uncertainty of the future where the need for love, understanding, acceptance and support is essential for all in the world.

Disruption - Scene 7 excerpt: Alone with nothing and everything (2021)

Disruption - Scene 6 excerpt: Together (2021)

Disruption - Scene 5 excerpt: The noise inside (2021)

Disruption - Scene 4 excerpt: Coming together again (2021)

Disruption - Scene 3 excerpt: Everything reflects their own (2021)

Disruption - Scene 2 excerpt: Coming together (2021)

Disruption - Scene 1 excerpt: Restrictive measures (2021)

Echo the nymph of reflection (2020)

Stereo electroacoustic composition

Composed in the composer’s personal studio

Performers recorded: Machi Dimitriadou Lindahl [dance] and Agnese Banti, Iliana Karaliga and Fotini Dakaki [singing performance] 

Programme note: Echo is a tragic nymph. She is the nymph that was punished with the curse of not being able to speak her own words, but only being able to repeat the last words spoken by another person. This cruel punishment led to her tragic end. She lost her body and became a spirit, existing in all those places-spaces that echo our voices back. 

Echo did not consider the consequences of her actions, she failed to reflect on them and, as a result, she received this cruel punishment. Is it possible to think of Echo as a symbol of a process that can lead to completion? When Narcissus asked Echo “Who are you?”, he received the echorepetition of his question. This triggered something inside him; it made him realise that he is the son of the rivernymph. What he really wanted then was to reconnect with his mother and his real nature, to become one with the source of his creation. This liberated him, but, at the same time, brought his human life to an end. 

The myth could be a reminder that reflection is a way to understand and realise things about ourselves. Echo is one of these reflections; she can make our voice, which is asking the question “Who are you?”, return to us and ask us who we are. How do we feel when we hear our voices ask us who we are? Can this, as previously suggested, lead to an understanding and realisation, or is it also possible for it to lead to destruction? The easiest, but, also the most honest answer, is that both are possible. If both realisation and destruction are possible, then can we choose which of the two we want? If it is possible to choose, what would you choose?

Echo The Nymph Of Reflection (2020)

Moments of Liberty I: Outside and Insight [excerpt] (2016)

Stereo reduction of an 8 channel surround format.  

Composed in USSS, University of Sheffield, UK.  

Programme note: “From there to here ...” 
Moments of Liberty as an extra musical concept stands, evolves and progresses around a human, whose existential being seeks to become and experience liberation or what is thought to be liberation in moments. Seeking is seen within this conceptual frame as an extremely intense and dramatic need to become liberated. A need that is a response to a to the state of being enslaved. The need and its creation also suggest that there was a moment of realisation of what the current state is, signifying that before it there was another state; that of ignorance. 

Moments of Liberty I: Outside and Insight abstractly explores these stages by presenting a state of apparent calmness and tranquillity that violently and suddenly breaks, giving its place to tension and agony. This transition symbolises the realisation from the character that he is enslaved, contained and ignorant. The journey to find liberation commences from this point inside a voluminous and reverberant space. A space that symbolises the subconscious of the character, that which he entered violently after his realisation, and that which he attempts to understand.

Moments of Liberty I: Outside and Insight [excerpt] (2016)

Moments Of Liberty II: Falling Within [excerpt] (2017)

Stereo reduction of an 8 channel surround format.

Composed in USSS, University of Sheffield, UK.

Performers recorded: Tara Baker, Dawn Webster, Madeline Shan, Machi Dimitriadou Lindahl and Dimitrios Savva

Programme note: “From here to nowhere...” The character continues his journey from where he left it in Moments of Liberty I. Inside the reverberant space -his subconscious- the character moves, opens doors and lights matches in an attempt to find, to understand, to perceive and to shed light into this unknown territory. Through exploration the character reveals new female characters. These symbolise deep elements of his subconscious that come to the surface to express: agony, drama, tension and the continuously present theme of being enslaved, of being contained and of seeking liberation. As the journey continues, a metaphorical upwards movement appears symbolising momentarily illusionary moments of feeling liberated. There follows a number of intense percussive movements that express the constantly failing attempts to penetrate through the state of containment. The journey concludes by creating questions of an inevitable state of containment; a continuous failing to pass through and a constant falling from any attempt to reach liberation - or what is thought to be liberation.

Moments Of Liberty II: Falling Within [excerpt] (2017)

Moments of Liberty III: Standing Without [excerpt] (2018)

Stereo reduction of an 8 channel surround format.

Composed in  ERHMEE Studios (Lab for Electroacoustic Music Research and Applications), Corfu, GR.

Performers recorded: Alejandra Caro, Maria Jesus Intostroza [movement] and Fotini Dakaki [singing performance].

Programme note: “From nowhere to somewhere...” In Moments of Liberty III the characters continue their journey with more intense, dramatic and conscious attempts to break their state of containment. Through these dramatic attempts, the characters experience moments of liberation,  or what is thought to be liberation. For the characters, these are moments of release, moments where the drama is eased and experienced from a distance. A distance that becomes central as it makes the characters wonder if the moments of liberation are experienced when they get distant from a relatively fixed system of perception, interpretation and response; a system that is no other than the self.

This self is a relatively fixed and defined system of perceiving-interpreting and responding-reacting to what has been perceived and makes the characters further wonder if the content of what they have perceived is created by the same system of self. Thinking the possibility of this proposition to be true, the characters further wonder if their dramatic experience of being enslaved, with all the agony and tragedy it includes, is a prearranged, made up and fixed response of themselves. A proposition that further indicates that the content of this response could be a made up construct, an imaginary act of themselves. The most tragic inference of this scenario is that the idea of liberation is also an imaginary thing, a made up construct. This suggests that it is not possible for a real exit to happen since wherever the characters decide to go, the place-situation reached is a construct of the system of self. Being enslaved thus refers to a state of being enslaved to the self. Consequently, the only real exit, revealed from the moments of liberty, is the exit from the self. The greatest wonder is then created in the characters and that is, if it is possible to exist without the self.

Moments of Liberty III: Standing Without [excerpt] (2018)

Moments Of Liberty IV: Towards the Sea [excerpt] (2019)

Stereo reduction of an 8 channel surround format.

Composed in ERHMEE Studios (Lab for Electroacoustic Music Research and Applications), Corfu, GR.

Performers recorded:  Vasiliki Makou.

Programme note: “From somewhere to everywhere.” Moments of Liberty IV concludes the journey by suggesting the exit of the male character from his space-place of containment and enslavement. A female character in a realistic nature-soundscape as a symbol of an existential consciousness enters the space-place of the character’s containment and enslavement and through an abstracted interaction she guides him outside. This act proposes that it is unnecessary to break the containment-enslavement space-place-state. What rather seems necessary is to realise that an entrance was used, deliberately or not, to enter this space-place-state and by using the same path in the reverse direction it is possible to simply exit it.

While this narrative attempts to direct what is happening, it fails because the composition itself, in an imaginary condition, goes beyond its included characters, turning to itself in an attempt to become liberated. Based on this condition the composition is seen as an entity that attempts to break free from its predefined prearranged aesthetically and narratively driven compositional self; discarding principles of coherence, consistency, balance, meaning, structure and form causing in this way the disruption and tearing up of the narrative thread. The question is then set by asking if the previously proposed exit is the exit from one unpleasant containment-state to a different, more pleasant containment-state. If this is the case, the question continues by further asking if the only way to attain liberation is by destroying the system of perception; the self. That which is the creator of the containment and enslavement space-place-state; that which is the creator of the drama and its resolution; that which is me and you.

Moments Of Liberty IV: Towards the Sea [excerpt] (2019)

Program note: " Mediterranean dreams of the nordic..."

Nordic (2020)

Thalassa (Θάλασσα), Sea. The word was chosen to be presented in Greek language because of the sounds that the specific word involves in it ( ‘th’ ‘Θ’ and ss); a strong reminiscent of the real – world sounds produced from the sea. Thalassa is a soundscape composition that uses sounds produced from the sea and sound that have a metaphoric connection with it. It explores the flow and the inner pulse of the sea and attempts to create the impression of a viewer and listener who moves from a realistic prospect to an abstract experience of a mythical and atmospheric sea world.

Thalassa (2013)

Title: Echo

Choreography/dramaturgy/text/interpretation: Machi Dimitriadou Lindahl  

Music: Dimitris Savva 

Video art: Christoforos Larkos 

Scenography/costume: Machi Dimitriadou Lindahl 

Light design/technical support: Yiangos Hadjiyiannis

"What does it mean to feel trapped into your own body?        Not to be able to speak out, to shout, to sing, to cry?                To feel like being a silent cry?"

Echo who has been punished by Hera to repeat only the last words uttered by others, and she has been deprived from her own voice, falls hopelessly in love with Narcissus who drowns in the dark waters of a lake, absorbed by his own reflection to which he falls in love.

The myth becomes the base for a research on the sound of the body and the "body" of the sound. Through repetitions of gestures and movement phrases, music soundscapes of emotional intensity and visual images that create an outline of the myth, the narration at times dissolves into an unidentified darkness and at times reveals like the choreographic language, the essence of the myth in a direct, detailed and crude way.

Ηχώ/Echo - Scene: Introduction (2014)

“The cries of the infants, the noise and the pure sine waves”

The work was  commissioned by the fine artist Kleopatra Hatzigiosi to accompany her mixed-media installation work Stage/Theatrical Space.

Noise Triangle

Music composition for the contemporary dance Πνοή/Breath by Asomates Dynameis Dance Company.

Concept / Choreographic direction
Andromachi Machi Dimitriadou Lindahl
Music Dimitris Savva
Video art Christoforos Larkos
Lights George Lazoglou
Dance /Co creation Christianna Eftychiou
Loizos Constantinou Πάνος Μαλακτος
Fouli Stylianidou
Photos Giorgos Stylianou

Beginning and end, creation and destruction of the world, immaterial, life giving, omnipresent, Primordial and necessary, continuous and incessantly, rhythmical and eternal, mysterious and marvellous, sacred and intelligent. 

Conscious life force. Breath/thought, thought/breath. The gift of God. 
In joy, in sadness, in fear, in anger, in surprise, in sorrow, in suffering, in love, in cry, in birth, in death. How conscious are we about its value? 
What is this breath, the air we share, living in an ecosystem which exists thanks to it?   

A dance work with ecological allusions formed  and created via the coexistence and  enacting of dance and sound as  it is structured during the investigation of the performativity, the expression and the musicality of the polyrhythmic sounds of the human breath

Πνοή/Breath - Scene 6 excerpt (2019)

Πνοή/Breath - Scene 5  excerpt (2019)

Program note:

 '' From Chaos came Erebus and black Night, But of Night were born Aether and Day, whom she conceived bore from union in love with Erebus.''

                                                                           The Theogony of Hesiod, v.49 - 51


                            



Erevos (2012)

I am an electroacoustic\electronic and soundscape music composer, sound designer, live-electronics performer, researcher, and educator. I hold a Bachelor's degree (distinction) in music composition from the Ionian University, a Master's degree (distinction) in Electroacoustic composition from the University of Manchester and a fully-funded PhD degree from the University of Sheffield. 

My compositions have been performed in a total of 86 international music festivals such as In Sonic 2017: Immersive Future [ZKM Center for Art and Media], Cube Fest 2019-Sound in Focus III [Moss Art Centre, Blacksburg], ICMC 2014 [Athens], New York Electroacoustic Festival 2021. Many of my compositions won prizes in prestigious competitions such as Metamorphoses 2012 -2014 -2018, Iannis Xenakis 2018 and SIME 2019. Ten of my works have been published on important collective records (indicatively: Metamorphoses 2012-14-18-20, Anthology of Contemporary Music from Greece and CIME 2020). I have also collaborated with artists and researchers across various mediums, including contemporary dance, performing arts, video art and installations, documentary, and VR projects, to design sound and compose music and soundscapes for their works.

As a live-electronics performer, I have played in the ensembles like ASABE, Tyto Alba, [DI]AFANEIS HEROES, and have also performed solo acts in concerts including Machines of Mantic Stain, Confusion / Irrational Collectiveness. As a visiting lecturer, I have taught the course Electronic/Electroacoustic music and Sound Arts at the Department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts of the Cyprus University of Technology and the course Sound and New Media at the Department of Fine Arts. Additionally, I have served as a teaching assistant for the Music Technology course at the University of Sheffield and the Electroacoustic Music Composition and Live-Electronics courses at Ionian University.

I have been invited to give seminars and workshops on topics such as electroacoustic music composition, ambisonic recording and multichannel compositional techniques, soundscape theory and composition, acoustic ecology, soundwalking, deep-listening and my own compositional method called dramatised-performative narrative (Franz Liszt-SeaM 2014, Weimar; 11th Sonic Arts - Summer Academy and Festival, Akousmata, 2017 and 2018, Corfu; Cyprus University of Technology, 2022, Limassol).

As a researcher, I explore compositional methods and practices and presented my findings in my PhD thesis, "Dramatised-performative narrative in electroacoustic composition" and the conference paper, entitled as "Expanding the classification of narrative phenomena in electroacoustic music: from intra and inter musical narrative to performative and dramatised-performative narrative". I have also worked for two years as a research associate at the Cyprus University of Technology, contributing to various projects as a composer, sound designer and editor.

Dimitris Savva

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