SOFIA NIGHT PERFORMANCE
Author
An evening with Ina Dobreva, Sofia Dimova, Silvia Cherneva, and Karakashyan & Artists.
When
11 July 2025
Where
Oborishte District, under Dondukov Blvd.
We are pleased to invite you to Sofia Night Performance – the main event of the second edition of the Nine Elephants Festival. This special evening will take place immediately after the opening of the festival and will bring together four artists to activate different urban spaces through theatre, dance, performance and music.
Sofia Night Performance is the first event of its kind in Sofia, where theatre, choreography, visual art and play practices intertwine in an exciting evening stroll through the city. We invite everyone to immerse themselves in this fantastic experience.
The evening begins with Ina Dobreva and a performance in the very building she has lived in for years. The focus of her latest work is the inner world and the secrets we hide, as well as the apparent surface that only remains accessible to others. Ina comes from the field of theatre, but in recent years her work has developed in the realm of installation and performance, with a focus on documents, archives and personal histories.
Then Sofia Dimova will lead us to one of her urban interventions, in which she transforms unused commercial signs into carriers of messages related to historical events and current political issues. Through performance and visual language, she draws attention to the hidden layers of the urban environment.
Next Silvia Cherneva will take the role of an inspector of “playfulness” in an urban environment and will give a very short lecture. The event will be held in one of the areas with a record low number of pleasant outdoor public places in Sofia. In the context of prevalent parking lots, locked schoolyards and overgrown digs, Silvia, also a resident of the neighborhood, will present her research on where and how one can spend time outside without being tied to shopping or alcohol consumption. An exercise in urban imagination and rethinking space – and perhaps the playfulness of a place is not just dependent on it, but mostly on the attitude of the person playing?
The finale of the evening is Juicegroove by Kosta Karakashyan & Artists – an interactive dance performance for three dancers, directed by Kosta Karakashyan and choreographed in collaboration with the performers from the dance troupe Karakashyan & Artists. In the performance, dance becomes a way to connect with those around us, creating new connections between audience, performer and music. The piece boldly combines the diverse dance aesthetics of contemporary and commercial dance, inspired by the sensation of synesthesia – a mixed perception of the senses, combining sound, touch and picture in an unpredictable way.
Sofia Night Performance will transform the city overnight, as well as the perception, the space and the relationships between people – an encounter with fantastic artists in a slightly different Sofia.
Schedule of the evening
19:00
ul. “Chumerna 42 with Ina Dobrev and ‘A Story from the Bottom’
19:45
ul. “Tsar Simeon” 75 B – Sofia Dimova and When There Are No Words Left, with your route passing through ul. “Kiril and Metodiy” 26 to get something you’ll need later
20:30
At the triangle of ul. “Iskar” 3 – Silvia Cherneva and “Lecture with a Demonstration from an Inspector on the Playability of Public Spaces”
21:15
At the intersection of ul. “Veslets” and ul. “Tsar Simeon” – Karakashyan & Artists and Juicegroove
Free admission. Follow for information on social networks.
Movement between locations is free; for better orientation, please follow our volunteers.
Sofia Dimova (1996) is a multidisciplinary artist born in Varna. She graduated from Minerva Art Academy (Groningen, Netherlands) with a degree in Fine Arts in 2019. In her practice, Sofia Dimova combines various materials and techniques that help her create an interconnectedness between personal, fundamental, and socio-political issues.
Ina Dobreva graduated in Acting from NATFA in 2009 and then specialized in Paris. Since her return to Bulgaria in 2012 until 2017 she has been working as an actress at the Stoyan Bachvarov State Theatre, Sofia. In the years after that she worked as a freelancer. She realized her first solo exhibition “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in the framework of “Plovdiv 2019 – European Capital of Culture”. In Alibi (2021), she explores the effects of the coronavirus pandemic through an installation of hundreds of silk cocoons. The documentary installation I Found These Letters (2023) tells the story of two letters found under strange circumstances and their sender 30 years later. The project unravels the theme of life in the 1990s was presented in Varna 2023 and in Paris 2024. In 2024 he realized the performance “Salt is not lent” within The Artist At Play – a platform for young artists. Ina Dobreva’s latest project “Siyazh” is dedicated to perfumes, stories and fragrances collected for nearly 30 years.
Sylvia Cherneva works with dance, performance and cinema. She is interested in the poetics of everyday movement, politics in public space and play as a way of creating and connecting with each other. In her debut performance Critical Mass, in which the performers hang from the ceiling by ropes, she discovered that the audience also enjoys hanging and swaying when given the opportunity. From then on, Sylvia took it as her mission to create more opportunities for people of different ages to play. She is conducting research on the topic as a Trilateral Exchange resident in Budapest, Sofia and Philadelphia in 2023-2024, and her current project, Unstable Ground, presents a kinetic installation for public places. In her spare time, Sylvia works as a self-appointed playability inspector of public spaces, occasionally reporting her activities on social media.
Karakashyan & Artists is a multidisciplinary company of dance artists from Bulgaria that boldly explores various formats and disciplines, with an emphasis on movement and telling powerful social stories. United by director and choreographer Kosta Karakashyan, the troupe creates innovative projects such as the dance-culinary immersive performances “KITCHEN” and “Tales in Space: Unearthly Mysteries,” the ecological immersive performance “The Last Sunset,” as well as the experimental video-game-style immersive show “Insert Coin / Player One,” a co-production of One Dance Festival. Their performances take over alternative spaces such as kitchens, waste depots, hotels, public spaces, offices, clubs, and beaches. Partners and supporters of the company include HRC Culinary Academy, Goethe-Institut, Singer-Zaharieff Foundation, Columbia Ballet Collaborative, One Dance Festival, and National Culture Fund.
In partnership with Oborishte district.
Представянето на Силвия Чернева е част от проекта „Създаване на нови културни продукти в градска среда – представяне в София (фестивал “Девет слона”) и Берлин (C*Space)“, финансиран чрез Компонент 11 „Социално включване“, Инвестиция 6 „Развитие на културните и творчески сектори“, Процедура BG-RRP-11.020, Схема за безвъзмездна помощ „Създаване на български продукции и копродукции в сектора на КТИ и промотирането им на европейските и международни пазари за изкуства““ от Плана за възстановяване и устойчивост.
Links
Presentation of an audio guide that can be listened to alone or in a group during a walk in the city