Athens & Epidaurus Festival presents Armin Hokmi’s play Shiraz on July 1 and 2, 2026, at Peiraios 260 (Venue H) at 10:00 p.m.

In 1967, the Iranian Empress Farah Pahlavi, wife of the Shah of Persia, inaugurated the Shiraz Arts Festival amid the ruins of Persepolis, one of the most radical cultural initiatives of the 20th century, which hosted music, theater, and dance performances from around the world, striking a perfect balance between innovation and tradition. In 1977, the festival was held for the last time, and two years later, the Islamic Revolution banned it, sealing its archives. How does one honor ten years of systematic artistic creation that were abruptly cut short? Is there a way to revive a festival through a dance performance? Armin Hokmi and his team explore precisely these questions with imagination and ingenuity.

Born in Bushehr, Iran, Hokmi studied and now lives between Norway and Germany. Capturing fragments of that artistic utopia, the choreographer navigates the archives of the banned festival as if trying to listen to a past he never got to experience.

The revival of Shiraz is set in the present in the form of a dance performance that serves both as a tribute to the past and as a newly formed foundation for the imagination. Through this, the creator seeks to reconstruct the aspirations of that celebration—the festival’s love for the performing arts and their autonomy—as well as the shared roots that transcend the limitations of geographical borders.

In Shiraz, seven dancers move together and yet alone to a striking musical score; a pulsating, industrial rhythm—enhanced by melodic elements from the Iranian musical tradition—propels them into an almost ecstatic, hypnotic state. Holding their palms close to their faces for most of the piece, the dancers focus their gaze within the minimal space of a single movement. And precisely because their steps become a unit of measurement for time, tracing fluid trajectories that bring them into fleeting formations, the piece moves inexorably in the present.

With an unwavering commitment to the associative impulses born of the dancers’ movements, Shiraz brings dance to the forefront as an exercise in collective memory—an exercise in love.