Icarus Festival for Dialogue between Cultures is an international music festival that began in the summer of 2006 in Ikaria.
The festival is an annual event organized by all 3 municipalities of Ikaria, a Greek island in the northern Aegean that bears the name of the mythical flyer Icarus.
Its purpose is to host performances by artists or groups whose music is a product of multicultural participation or inspiration.
The first Festival took place in July 2006. The artistic directors were Vangelis Fampas and Klaudia Delmer.
The groups and artists that have so far participated or will be participating in the Festival's functions, include: Etnika (Malta), L' Ham de Foc (Spain), Motion Trio (Poland), Mimis Plessas - Klaudia Delmer (Greece - Poland), Encardia (Greece - Italy), Tangarto - Tanguero (Greece - Argentina), Maria Bermudez - Chicana Gypsy (USA - Spain), Vassilis Lekkas - Giannis Spathas (Greece), George Psihogios (Greece), Theros - Lamia Bedhioui (Greece - Tunisia), Christos Tsiamoulis - Halil Karaduman (Greece - Turkey), Fabien Ballejos - Gina Nikolitsa - Novitango Quintet (Argentina - Greece), DROM (Romani - Greece), Ship of Fools (Holland - Europe), Djamel Benyelles - Djam & Fam (Oran, Algeria - France), Marta Sebestyen - Kostis Avyssinos (Hungary - Crete), Voces Del Sur (Chile - Scotland), Sotiria Leonardou - Vangelis Fampas - Panos Fourtounas (Greece), Ypogeia Revmata (Greece), Makis Seviloglou - Kaiti Koullia (Greece - Balkans), En mia Nykti - Fide KÖksal - Cihan Turkoglu - Solis Barki (Turkey - Greece), Margarida Guerreiro (Portugal), Luna Piena Trio (Italy - Sicily), Quartaumentata (Calabria, Italy), Leonardo Gomez - Amor Latino - Janet Kapuya (Chile - Greece - Uruguay), Monika (Greece), Cabaret Balkan (Greece - Balkans) etc.
The Festival has, since 2008, expanded to other forms of art, such as dance, theater, photography & painting exhibitions, dance lessons and cinema. In particular the Icarus Film Festival, supported by the Greek Film Center, the Mediterranean Film Institute and the cinema club of Agios Kirikos has been inviting a great number of film directors to Ikaria for an in person presentation of their works.
A brief history of Ikaria
In Mythology, the island has been named Ikaria by Hercules after the fall of Icarus into the Icarian Sea, close to the shores of the island (the rock where Icarus fell, can be seen today near Agios Kirikos).It is also believed that Dionysus was born in Ikaria, in the cavern of Ieron, an amphitheatrical beach close to the village of Faros. Ikaria was also the mythological place of retreat for the goddess Artemis (A temple of Artemis exists in Nas). Ikaria of today is still a land where people do things “in their way”. Hospitality, friendliness and the wisdom of taking things slow are characteristics of the Icarians of today.
Famous quotes containing the words festival, dialogue and/or cultures:
“The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment one’s own growing inner self.... The mind’s dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one’s own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one’s confrontation with one’s own mortality.”
—Harold Bloom (b. 1930)
“Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)