Elena Topalidou: Dance is in her DNA

By Christina Katsantoni

Dancer, actress and an outstanding presence with great experience on stage, Elena Topalidou, is a special figure in the field of performing arts in Greece.

Born and raised in Chalandri, she started doing ballet at the age of nine at Elena Vakalopoulou's school. She took Panhellenic examinations and was shortlisted in the department of Mathematics of the University of Athens, but at the same time, she devoted herself to her studies in dance at the National School of Dance.

Before graduating, she started collaborating with Konstantinos Rigos and the group OKTANA, with which she starred in great performances from 1993 to 2004 (such as "The Wedding", "Daphne and Chloe", "Orpheus and Eurydice", "The lady with the camellias", "Crazy happiness", "Winter traveler" ...). During the first years she also collaborated with Dimitris Papaioannou in "Medea" and "Orestes".
 

Watch the Leaders Talk Here

After 2004, she devoted herself mainly to theatre and later to cinema, with performances in plays such as "I Imeri", "Roberto Succo", "Demons", "The Persians", "The Red Lanterns", "Vyssinokipos", "Lysistrati", "Hamlet", "Operetta", "Wake up Vassilis", "Giannoula the bun salesman", "The Misanthrope", "milk, blood". For her performance in the film "Bella" by Thelyia Petraki, she won a female acting award at the 2020 Drama Short Film Festival.

Dance could never be out of her life. Today she choreographs and teaches ballet at the National School of Dance and at Aktina School.    

In her Leaders Talk, Elena Topalidou, the protagonist of the dance theater that changed the modern dance in Greece but also the woman who made the most successful transition from dance to theatre and cinema, describes the two sides of ballet: the creative one of brightness and beauty and the dark one of rejection and extreme physical suffering. Elena Topalidou talks about the importance of discipline and talent, competition, the future of dance in our country and the justice that defines ballet because despite what it offers, at the same time, it has its requirements. 
 

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