When the international performing arts festival ConTempo takes over the heart of Lithuania in early August, the city of Kaunas becomes unrecognisable. Since 2019, the festival has grown into one of Lithuania’s key summer cultural events, expanding into the surrounding region and increasingly further afield – this year to Visaginas, Kaišiadorys, Alytus and Rokiškis. In this way, ConTempo becomes not just a local but also a regional phenomenon, bringing international performing arts to towns often left on the margins of cultural life. This signals a strong mission – the festival chooses to be accessible and open to as wide an audience as possible.
ConTempo is ambitious because it balances between two poles. On the one hand, it is an international festival presenting renowned names in contemporary dance, theatre and circus. On the other, it is a community event involving local artists, volunteers and even small businesses. Its mission is not only to show performing arts but also to let them unfold in the city – in courtyards, by the river, in squares and familiar everyday spaces.
The city as scenography
The festival has flourished particularly after Kaunas 2022 – European Capital of Culture, so it is no surprise that the city became its laboratory. Kaunas was chosen not just for its infrastructure or audience but also for its layered identity. It is industrial, modernist, yet also marked by historic churches. Its spaces shift between the old and the new. This diversity of spaces adds dramaturgy. In some places art becomes intimate. In others it feels monumental. Sometimes it even blends into the fabric of daily life.
This year’s festival, held from 2–9 August, hosted 44 performances and guests from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, France and, of course, Lithuania. Events unfolded in 23 locations – by the Nemunas River, in the Old Church of Zapyškis, the Musical Theatre garden, the sports hall of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, libraries, hidden corners, even next to a shopping centre. For the week that Kaunas turns into a festival city it evokes Santarcangelo di Romagna in Italy or Avignon in France, yet with its very own intimacy and warmth.
A distinctive feature of ConTempo is its relationship with the audience. Volunteers here are more than matching-T-shirt helpers. They greet, guide and chat so that visitors feel welcome. The organising team, led by artistic director Gintarė Masteikaitė – who also directs the New Baltic Dance festival in Vilnius – does not shy away from stepping into the spotlight. Before performances the team welcomes the audience, introducing the programme and reminding us of the ‘Support the Festival’ tickets that help keep part of the programme free. This creates closeness. The festival feels less like a large institution and more like a celebration where you are welcomed as a family member. At the same time, the festival integrates into the city. Cafés and ice cream shops offer special desserts. Bars create drinks inspired by the programme. Everyday life temporarily becomes part of the festival.
Promised risk
The publicity around two works by the Dutch company Panama Pictures / Pia Meuthen promises dance, circus, risk and surprise. The Weight of Water certainly looks striking – set in open water, it features a floating structure of counterweighted stairs and a platform, over which the six performers move boldly, sliding along its edges, falling into the water, fighting gravity with grace. Visually powerful and physically convincing, it nevertheless loses force as the imagery grows repetitive, despite the two musicians creating atmosphere with voice and instruments. The final gesture – both arms raised – recalls fatigue more than climax.
Into Thin Air offers dance in the air, on a suspended flight of small steps that later becomes a dance floor. Three dancers climb the tilted structure, as if scaling a wall with grace and energy. Gradually their movements spread outward: they balance on slender ledges, lean into precarious angles and use one another for support. What begins as an ascent turns into sliding, hanging and crossing paths, until the whole structure becomes a shifting stage for encounters. At moments it is strikingly effective and in theory it plays with risk; yet in practice is feels overly calculated.
Still, both pieces leave an aesthetic impression, and show ConTempo using promising visuals to attract audiences who may be visiting the festival for the first time.
Transformations of flags
Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi’s duet AeReA works in a completely different way. With their flag-waving technique, the artists cover and uncover their bodies, throw the faded black flags upwards, catch them, and swing them with full force.
The piece was to be presented in four different outdoor locations – but one was moved into the Old Church of Zapyškis because of strong winds. At first this looks like a setback, but it becomes a revelation. The stone walls of the church add a ritual, almost funerary weight to the gestures. The performers’ faces shift from anger to pride, censorship and exaggeration. The flags look marked by history. Elsewhere – for example in the Musical Theatre garden – the performance takes on other meanings. The flags become symbols of conquest, colonising the surroundings. The more space the performers are given, the more they occupy. Outdoors, their gestures are bolder, the flags more predatory.
The performances show that space does not simply frame the piece but becomes part of its content. Each viewer can read their own symbolism into the faded cloth: the threat of war, the representation of power, or perhaps a call for equal rights. AeReA is one of the strongest examples in the festival of how contemporary dance transforms with context rather than being confined to form.
A rave that infects
If Panama Pictures / Pia Meuthen do not quite fulfil their promise, and AeReA enchants with ritual force, true festival euphoria came from While We Are Here by Lisa Vereertbrugghen / CAMPO.
After this performance in the sports hall of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, the body feels exercised – like after a night of raving in a German club.
Five performers create a fifty-minute rave that turns spectators into companions. Each woman joins the dance floor in turn, increasing the tempo and creating patterns that only they understand. Even if you do not step in, your body starts to move. A foot taps. A head nods. The whole body sways. The women’s energy comes in waves, sweeping the audience along. As each dancer passes close, she charges you and recharges herself. At the end, the sound of singing – like folk songs being chanted – dissolves the sense of time. The audience feels tired yet elated. The body vibrates long after. This is collective experience at its most physical.
For children, enchanting adults
In Kuris Kurį, Raimondas Klezys and Sebastiano Geronimo of No Shoes Theatre prove that a dance performance for children can also enchant adults. The Lithuanian-Italian duo, accompanied by live musicians, play with sports themes: badminton, obstacle courses, flag games, horse riding, etc. Under the direction of Ieva Jackevičiūtė, the sports elements, playful situations, music (even Puccini’s Nessun Dorma sung in Italian and translated into Lithuanian) all turn into a shared dance involving everyone transforming a Kaunas schoolyard into a lively oasis, even in the middle of summer.
The action is dynamic. Each spectator chooses how much to join in – cheering, competing, taking a role or just observing. The performance crosses the boundary of children’s theatre and becomes a celebration where high culture and play meet on one stage.
Local voices: from echoes to hypnosis
Choreographer Gabrielė Bagdonaitė (Be kompanijos) presents Saitais – a half-hour miniature that invites the audience to imagine lichens communicating through invisible threads. The three performers build layers of sound and movement: they hum, whisper, and speak in slow, even tones, their words carrying little emotional amplitude, echoing the careful pace of their gestures. At times their utterances seem to imitate the resonances of nature, or the failure to connect – like the hissing shhh of an old landline or the ‘snow’ of an analogue television. This soundscape, paired with cautious, deliberate movement, creates a fragile harmony. An interesting choice is to give each her own small speaker, allowing sound to travel in one direction and voice in another. For brief moments, the performers’ voices seemed to pull us into a lichen forest, making you want to close your eyes, sink into the cacophony, and experience the piece as much by listening as by watching.
Yet without the programme note, the theme is not fully clear. The choreography lacks movement and the Lithuanian text spoken into microphones gets lost in the library space. Still, the piece stands out for its attempt to weave voice, sound and movement into one fabric – a potential direction worth developing further.
Very different is Oksana Griaznova’s solo Po Saule, produced by Be kompanijos. On a small metal platform she sets up a pattern of eight steps – the space is just large enough for a square circuit. Then she deliberately breaks her own rule, shrinking the pathway until her feet sketch a smaller square inside the larger one. At times she steps as if about to stumble, but the movement proves solid and she carries on – it is only the spectator who is deceived. The steps circle clockwise, then suddenly reverse, unsettling the rhythm just as it seems to settle. She accelerates, interrupts, and manipulates these shifting patterns until you catch yourself in a trance. Watching the sequence of her feet, you wait for a mistake. Instead the tension turns into a pleasant fatigue. Though presented as a work in progress, the piece already feels solid and stands on its own.
Weaving a story
At Tadas Ivanauskas’ homestead-museum Obelynė in Kaunas district, Marion Even of French company La Migration asks us to reconsider the relationship between gender and nature in Women Weave the Land, to reflect on humanity’s place in the world, and to merge with the environment.
On a round wooden stage, a carousel-like metal structure rises like a flower opening from the ground. The four female performers weave their story through a sequence that begins with steady walking and turning, almost ritually. Gradually they climb and hang from the structure, their bodies flipping in the air and tracing arcs above the stage. They test both height and balance, sometimes in unison, sometimes in solos. This ebb and flow gives the sense of a woven fabric, while a musician’s voice and melody saturate the space, binding the action into one field of sound and movement. A striking red colour accompanies the piece. Its meaning is not only symbolic but also material – cochinilla dye, brought from the Canary Islands and made from insects. Since ancient times it has been one of the most precious natural pigments. The detail adds another layer of meaning – a reminder of the fragile link between human and nature, which is both material and inspirational.
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ConTempo 2025 balances between promise and experience, and while it is not perfect, it takes risks, seeks new paths and changes with the city, and beyond. If it finds more courage, surprise and dialogue, it can become not only a local celebration but a major international performing arts point in the Baltic region. ●
2–9.08.2025 Kaunas, Lithuania