Vassia Valkanioti is an actress and multidisciplinary theater-maker, born in Athens. She studied theatre at Dilos Drama School (Athens), dance in Indonesian Institute of the Arts (Yogyakarta) and holds a MA in conflict/disaster management, specialising in the role and position of art for both the individual and the community within crisis situations.
Seeing theatre and physical performance as a pathway towards active citizenship and collective emancipation, Vassia often engages artistic practices in community-based projects as in the case of Street Horizons, in the context of Athens Festival 2017 and Piraeus Festival Bridging Diversities. As a fellow of Robert Bosch Stiftung, she initiated Flying Duets, a duet method of bringing together people with diverse social and cultural identities, through art and experimental movement. She currently collaborates with UrbanDig Project, Fabrica Athens and Curing the Limbo, in saBarBar, an open participatory platform in the neighbourhood of Exarchia, where oral history material will be converted into songs, serenades and a theatrical polyphonic performance.
From 2013 to 2016, she collaborated and performed with the multi-disciplinary artist collective Teater Garasi in Yogyakarta (Playing Catch with the Fleeting, After the Voices, Time is Transient-We Are Eternal and Je.Ja.L.An for OzAsia Festival Adelaide in Australia, under the direction of Yudi Ahmad Tajuddin and The Golden Way with Yennu Ariendra as director). In Indonesia, among others, she collaborated with film director Dirmawan Hatta (short movie InaLefa), while she also practiced Indonesian martial art White Crane Silat.
Earlier in 2020 Vassia collaborated as a choreographer with the director Lyssandros Spetsieris in the play Love’s Labor Lost.