Interview with Georgia Tegou
Extracts from Georgia’s interview ahead of one of her works being presented at Dublin Dance Festival 2026.
What do you love most about dancing and choreography?
What I love most about dancing is the feeling of freedom, the possibility of transcendence, of moving beyond words into something instinctive, visceral and honest. Choreography, for me, is a form of world-building. A way of decoding ideas through rhythm, space and feeling, an urgent creative need to organise experience into patterns that are emotional, spatial and musical. Dance communicates through sensation and imagination, but also through form, function and structure. I love the craft and strategy of composition, of bringing together movement, musicality, imagery and spatial design to create immersive experiences. Choreography is about creating spaces where audiences can feel and imagine.
Who or what first inspired you to become a choreographer?
I think the impulse to choreograph was always there. I’ve always had a need for creative composition. I began as a musician, performing and composing from a young age, but being a visual thinker, I was imagining worlds that bring together imagery, movement and music. I loved dance, and made a conscious decision to follow it professionally, and as a performer I felt a strong need to make my own work. A pivotal influence was Natasha Hassiotis, my legendary teacher at the Greek National School of Dance. She pushed me creatively and challenged me intellectually, and she was the one who first told me to believe in myself as a choreographer and follow this road. Natasha was not an easy person to convince about your talent so coming from her it was a big manifestation. It was her who encouraged me to pursue choreography studies abroad. The scene was also very active in Greece at the time I was training, and I was exposed to the work of great artists, which inspired me and gave me the confidence to follow the dream.
Do you remember attending dance or theatre shows with your parents when you were a child? If so, what sort of impact did those shows have on you?
I remember going to the theatre as a child, though not so much dance. Growing up in a small town in northern Greece, there weren’t many opportunities to see it live. But I loved dance from a very early age. I remember watching ballet performances on TV and literally hanging from the screen. There was always something about dance that resonated with me, it spoke straight to my heart. Those early encounters, even from a distance, expanded my imagination and my sense of what might be possible.
Did you dance at school or in local productions as a child?
Not much again, growing up in Grevena, there was no dance school, so I always wanted it but there wasn’t much available. What was available was rhythmic gymnastics, so my parents took me there as the closest thing they could find, and I performed as a gymnast when I was a child. My first proper ballet class was when I was 18 at university, the beginning was very difficult, but there was no turning back.
Where did you train and where have you worked as a choreographer since you graduated?
After intensive training in Thessaloniki, Greece, during my university years, I moved to Athens to continue my studies at the Greek National School of Dance and the Rallou Manou Professional Dance School. Following graduation, I performed with dance companies in Greece and then moved to London in 2011 to pursue an MFA in Choreography at the University of Roehampton. Since then, my work has reached several notable milestones, including opening the Dance Umbrella International Festival in 2022, and presenting works at Sadler’s Wells, the Royal Ballet and Opera, the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Onassis Stegi, the Greek National Opera, the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, The Place, ZfinMalta National Dance Company, and Southbank Centre.
Could you tell us a bit more about your ‘design-led’ approach to dancing and choreography?
My approach is design-led in the sense that choreography doesn’t sit on top of space; it grows out of it, as an expanded practice that goes beyond the choreographic. I think of dance as a form of design, where movement, objects, light and costume are choreographed together, guided by an attention to affordances, what a situation, space or context can offer, and held together by a musical arc. Space becomes an active partner, shaping how bodies move and how meaning emerges. I’m interested in what can be choreographed within an environment, and how structure, form and atmosphere can open up human, emotional experiences for an audience.