AEF2025: Vagabundus

The Athens Epidaurus Festival celebrates its 70th edition in 2025, with 95 days of artistic brilliance featuring over 3,000 artists from 14 countries. From iconic venues in Athens like the Herodeion, Pireos 260, and the revived City of Athens Lycabettus Theatre, to the grand finale in Epidaurus, the festival brings the world’s top performances to Greece’s stages.

This year’s programme includes world premieres, new commissions, and exciting artistic strands such as Contemporary Ancients, which reimagines Greek tragedy, and Fierce Women in Performance, exploring gender and power. The GRAPE – Greek Agora of Performance platform highlights emerging Greek talent, while the Subset Festival brings experimental sounds to the stage. Cycles Roots revisits folk traditions with a fresh twist.

Check out our curated picks from this year's programme here.

In Vagabundus, Mozambican choreographer Idio Chichava turns the stage into a space of movement, music and memory. Drawing from the Latin word for “wanderer”, the piece explores migration as both a shared experience and a deeply personal journey. Thirteen performers move and sing as one, blending traditional Mozambican melodies with gospel and baroque influences. The performance unfolds with no fixed beginning or end — like migration itself.

Rooted in the ritual dances of the Makonde tribe, Vagabundus channels collective memory through the powerful interplay of voice and body. For Chichava, dance is incomplete without song, and true expression only emerges when performers are fully in tune — physically and vocally. No elaborate set, no dramatic lighting. Just presence, movement and sound.