IT'S THE END OF
THE AMUSEMENT PHASE
2025
CREDITS
Performance – Material Co-creation Sofia Pouchtou, Christina Skoutela, Chara Kotsali
Assistant Choreographer Vassia Zorbali
Set & Costume Design Periklis Pravitas
Lighting Design Eliza Alexandropoulou
Dramaturgy Consultant Dimitra Mitropoulou
External Eye Κοnstantina Georgelou
Line Production and Tour Production Chara Kotsali & TooFarEast
Warm thanks to Evangelia Chatzitzanou, Katerina Spyropoulou, Spiros Papadopoulos, Stathis Ioannou, Aliki Kazouri, Giorgos Kotsalis, Aspa Aroni, Dimitris Mpourzoukos, and all the ‘unknown’ and ‘renowned’ choreographers and musicians that gave us inspiration during the creative process.
The research for “IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE” was supported by Onassis AiR and Réseau Grand Luxe. Special thanks to TROIS C-L Luxembourg, CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva (Porto), Grand Studio Brussels, and L’Abri Geneva.
DATES
Onassis Dance Days 3-6.04.2025
Dance Days Chania 22.07.2025
Dance Laboratory, Rhodes 10.9.2025
Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg
Scène européenne 6-7.02.2026
Springforward 2026, Guimarães, Portugal 9.5.20266
Moving Balkans 2026 Showcase, Novi Sad, Serbia 16.5.2026
Španski Borci, Ljubljana, Slovenia 19.5.2026
Dance Week Festivan, Zagreb, Croatia 21.5.2026
Globe Festival (Théâtre Paris-Villette), Paris, France 27-28.5.2026
One Dance Festival, Plovdiv, Bulgaria 6.6.2026
Julidans Festival, Amsterdam, Netherlands 3-4.6.2026
Kalamata International Dance Festival, Kalamata, Greece 20.7.2026
ImPulsTanz, Vienna, Austria 30.7 & 1.8.2026
Tanz im August, Berlin, Germany 14-16.8.20226
Tanzhaus NRW, Düsseldorf, Germany 12-13.9.2026
Sirenos Festival, Vilnius, Lithuania 5.10.2026
Romaeuropa, Rome, Italy 8.10.2026
Theater Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany 21.11.2026
Sadler’s Wellls, London, UK (Part of the Rose Prize 2027) 29-30.1.2027
more to be announce soon
In a dance marathon that spans the historical continuum, three women regress between personal and collective history.
Focusing on the dancing body and using sound and poetry as materials, the piece grapples with the notion of progress as the most exhausting linear narrative. In the wake of a technological and social revolution that ultimately did not happen, “ΙT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE” attempts to speak of the present’s emotional history.
Three female dancers interact on stage with the past that lies ahead of us and the future we have left behind. They engage in a dance that exhausts their emotional and physical resources. It is a choreography about the ambivalent relationship of the individual and collective body with history, about the link between progress and destruction, about dances of fun, pleasure, and propaganda.
The piece was selected for Aerowaves Twenty26 and presented at the Aerowaves Spring Forward Festival, and was also selected for and showcased by the Moving Balkans Platform.For this work, Chara Kotsali has been nominated for the 2027 Sadler’s Wells Bloom International Prize.
Choreographer’s note:
Broadcasting from a place in the South that has never sent a rocket into Space and grew old with slow internet, I wish to compose a messy kinetic and sonic chronology of the collective feeling created by launching into Space and simultaneously diving into cyberspace for bodies floating like space debris, for spectacle as the most durable fetish.
I draw inspiration from the dialectical relationship between continuity and discontinuity in how history is portrayed, discussed, and experienced. I experiment with both forms of linear flow (the cinematic single-cam setup, the musical ison, timeline) and discontinuity (collage, mashup, and medley).
“ΙT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE” is not another eschatology for use, nor is it another declaration of nostalgia for an exoticized past, but rather an acknowledgement that the experiment has thankfully failed. The end of the world has not yet come, and certainly not the end of history. The poetics of vertigo emerges as the most tender gesture in this hour of the fall.
REVIEWS
Anastasio Koukoutas
https://springbackmagazine.com/read/onassis-dance-days-2025/
Chara Kotsali’s It’s the end of the amusement phase could unapologetically be called a noise manifesto, in the same trajectory as her previous work, creating the kind of whirling nausea that’s so typical of our devastating times. Here, along with electrifying performers Sofia Pouchtou and Christina Skoutela, she not only charges the stage with an inventory of dance-steps and video clip moves (one soon recognises references from Bob Fosse to Trisha Brown and Beyoncé that become a mélange of body automatisms) but creates an aurally dense performance, with high pitch guitar chords and drummings that mess with your heartbeats. Kostali’s choreography feels like a capsule rocketed in time, from a complicated past straight into a vast unimaginable future. A carousel of feelings, facts, images, parade on stage, at times marching to their ridiculous glory, at times defeated yet withstanding, making the performers look like uber-marionettes in this puppetry of absurdity. Cheerleaders of menacing optimism, crushing a birthday cake, covering themselves in body paint, like charlatans in a hyper-nothing realism, they delve into a choreography which becomes a synecdoche for chasing our own tales. If history repeats itself like a farce, then this performance reads the disarming farcical potency of history with courage, pausing our own dark present for one moment to breathe, even though the dancers are left breathless, maybe ascertaining one’s human limits or as Kotsali fiercely recites: ‘Unable to land, unable to take off. So, I pray for a crash in my cyber rabbit hole.’\
Genevieve Charras
https://genevieve-charras.blogspot.com/2026/02/its-end-of-amusement-phase-chara.html#comment-form
How beautiful and powerful dance becomes when it raises the fist without showing it,when it is a forum, an agora of firm and deliberate geopolitics.The space is chosen for a stance that is resolute and claimed, evoking the jolts of the world, the physical detonation of conflict, the overwhelm of events beyond our control. Chara Kotsali embodies exhaustion and loss, without weariness or surrender. Forward goes the dance—steps and movements, outside and within—echoing Jean-Luc Nancy’s idea of “dance outside,” as if we push it away so that it may return stronger, more present than ever, flag held high, red carpet unfurled, a clear path opened without obstacle.
Dan Mussett
IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE – Chara Kotsali
Imagine your whole life flashing before your eyes on a turbo-charged carousel, and you might approach what Chara Kotsali achieves in IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE. With breathtaking virtuosity, Kotsali and dancers Sofia Pouchtou and Christina Skoutela become vessels channeling the cacophonous noise of contemporary culture. This end-of-times girl group is a high-octane radio, flitting from Beyoncé to Trisha Brown to the Can-Can (and too many other iconic dances and references to mention) with dizzying, electrifying speed.
Most impressive of all is the way this dazzling show just keeps on surprising us. Kotsali holds our eyes wide open, Clockwork Orange-style, overloading us with images that tumble endlessly into one another. We barely register the fake blood, the plastic babies, the smiley-faced piñata, before the next prop appears.
In a post-Covid world where literally anything could happen next, this masterfully crafted performance speaks loudly to our times, keeping us on the edge of our seat from beginning to end. You might need a Xanax to sleep afterwards.
Stella Charami
“IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE” is a bitter and sarcastic commentary on the flimsiness of Western culture and capitalism. “Go West, fuck the rest”, one of the mottos you manage to grasp during Kochali’s merciless rapping. The modern individual’s heavy grief for a present that has no future becomes an angry and, ragingly energetic, choreography by three dancers (in addition to Kotsali, Sophia Pouchtou and Christina Skoutela), a historical monument to the dystopia that passes us by. A performance that has all the guarantees to find its way to stages abroad, especially at this time of global chao
