Nightwater
Nightwater is a performance-installation by Thanasis Deligiannis, featuring musicians from Ensemble Klang and Greek folk musicians. It premiered at Muziekgebouw Amsterdam on 12–14 September 2025, co-produced by Muziekgebouw Production House and Stichting I/O. This page gathers the production and touring materials for the project.
Brief description
Nightwater is conceived as a hybrid experience between an immersive installation, a performance and a concert, which adjusts in scale in order to be in a dialogue with the venue it is presented in. The project has its starting point in the ongoing research by Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos, from the performance ENA ENA (Gaudeamus & Onassis Stegi, 2021-23), to the large-scale Margaroni Residency (Onassis Stegi, 2022-23), and Xirómero/Dryland at the Venice Biennale (national participation of Greece, 2024). It creates a dialogue between contemporary rural and urban realities, enacting an uncanny celebration of belonging, as well as of absence and dysfunction.
Nightwater can have two versions; Condensed and Expanded:
— A condensed 90-minute immersive performance that can be repeated consecutively, without intermission, multiple times in one day.
— An expanded immersive experience throughout the various spaces of a building/venue as a hybrid performance-installation.
CONDENSED version
I/O has worked on a condensed version of Nightwater that can be presented in a relatively large space, whether a theatre or an industrial venue. This version of the performance-installation includes a repurposed functional irrigation machine, 6 musicians (folk/improvisers/new music performers), multiple video & audio sources, and installation elements completing the scenic environment. The performance itself lasts ca. 75′, with 15′ of reset, repeated multiple times in a day (ideally x3). The condensed version can be adjusted to the dimensions of the venue, as well as offer to the organiser modules of expansion (e.g. elements that can be installed in the foyer).
EXPANDED version
Nightwater is conceived as a peripatetic immersive experience. Its hybrid format brings together performative elements, musicians, visual & audio installation elements. The work installs within an urban institution, such as a city performance venue or industrial warehouse, a world shaped by agricultural culture. In doing so, it creates a dialogue with the building that hosts it and with the audience moving through it. It takes the panighíri (Greece’s rural open-air folk feast) as a condition of people coming together, to unfold an experience of a rather dark celebration; one that includes atmospheric walks and electronic dance music, underlying dysfunctions and uncanny absences, while aiming to challenge the audience’s preconceptions of what a cultural institution today stands for.
The expanded version at Muziekgebouw Amsterdam took the form of a three-day event, including an electronic dance night in collaboration with the series The Rest Is Noise. The performance installation was conceived as a 2-hour-long composition taking place throughout the building, repeated twice. In these 4 hours (19:30-23:30) the audience would enter in slots (50 persons every 30′), with every group entering Nightwater in a different moment of the overall experience, wandering through the building at their own pace and for as long as they wished.
The Muziekgebouw version was supported by the Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, Het Cultuurfonds, Onassis Touring Program, HVA International, Greek Embassy in the Netherlands, Aegean Airlines and the Greek House in Rotterdam.
Team on tour
Thanasis Deligiannis (NL) – concept, direction, composition & sound design
Yannis Michalopoulos (FR) – concept, dramaturgy & research
Gerco van Veenen (NL) – technical director
Kostas Chaikalis (GR) – sound engineer & assistant sound designer
Stephanos Droussiotis (GR) – light designer, programmer & operator
Frank van der Weij (NL) – project manager
Rania Mavriki (DE) – production manager
Natasa Tsakiridou (GR) – singer
Lina Alatzidou (GR) – singer
Alexandros Papageorgopoulos (GR/NL) – clarinetist
Saskia Lankhoorn (Ensemble Klang) (NL) – keyboardist
Peter Harden (Ensemble Klang) (NL) – electric guitarist
Joey Marijs (Ensemble Klang) (NL) – percussionist
Videos