Meet Lydia Perakis

We were lucky to catch up with Lydia Perakis recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lydia, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

Dance, creative direction and community building have always been essential and healing components of my life and upbringing. Growing up in Crete, a Greek island located in the southernmost part of Europe, I experienced a sense of non belonging and isolation from a very young age. Being raised in a heavily patriarchal society that rejects creative expression deemed as too “feminine” as well as experiencing various environments of abuse pretty early on, led me to discovering dance and movement as a (what I didn’t know at the time) was a self-soothing and nervous system regulating outlet. Dance became this form of radical resistance to the limiting voices dictating the amount of space I was taking up. For years, I was directly and indirectly encouraged to shrink, tone my voice down, doubt my intuition and reject my sense of self-trust. These processes led me to naturally gravitate towards the ways dance and movement practices aspire to do quite the opposite; empower people to take up more space, be in tune with our inner emotional landscapes and externalize our own personal narratives in a way that invites others into that journey through strong physical bonds. All of these qualities naturally made sense to me in ways that maybe I couldn’t articulate at the time but made it pretty clear that being in tune with movement and facilitating spaces where others could do the same, is what I inherently consider my life’s purpose.

After a lot of efforts and research, I was able to leave Crete and move to New York at the age of 17 to study dance at NYU-Tisch and eventually start working as an artist. My work as a dancer these years has included performing work of various choreographers, collaborating with artists in multimedia projects such as films, music videos and site specific installations, creating my own choreography, working in show productions and teaching dance to many communities. Living in New York for the past 8 years and trying to sustain myself as a working artist, has brought on its whole set of challenges but if it has highlighted one thing is that of the power of community. Moving here by myself right as I was becoming an adult, triggered the expected culture shock and a whole different sense of non-belonging and isolation (commonly found in the immigrant experience). Guy Cool discusses in the book “In-Between Dance Cultures” the concept of “the creative confusion of the migrating body” which deeply resonated with me and encapsulated the polarity of my experience. It was the sense of non-belonging and the big need for community through all those different stages of my life that eventually led to the founding of ESTIA Creative Home.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Alongside my own performance and choreographic work, I am also the co-founder & artistic director of ESTIA Creative Home. ESTIA is an ecosystem of the arts that fosters collaboration between artists from all disciplines and connects them to new audiences by producing performance and educational opportunities around the New York area. It was founded in the Spring of 2022 alongside my collaborator LOLA and is a registered LLC in NY State and fiscally sponsored by New York Live Arts.

We currently produce 3 types of programming:
-The ESTIA Variety Show (bi-weekly variety shows featuring all types of mystery acts in different nightlife venues around Brooklyn)
-ESTIA Day Fest (a multidisciplinary, all-day, arts festival featuring creatives of all mediums in a 360 live museum format)
-ESTIA Community Classes (movement donation-based classes fostering community through collective embodiment)

ESTIA being named after the Ancient Greek Goddess of the home and “ecos” translating to home, there’s a heavy emphasis in finding a sense of belonging in a literal and metaphorical aspect facilitated through our programming that also coincides with my own personal mission. In all ESTIA programs, artists are called to investigate their own perception of home. We encourage them to explore how bodies of work function as archives storing information which guides them to reimagine their futures both individually and communally. ESTIA events are rooted in sustainability and community and are an ecosystem of reciprocity. The circular pattern includes the ESTIA team sourcing funding to support artists when they show and practice their art. Artists then employ collaborators and present a meaningful body of work that gives back to the community. We pride ourselves in the fact that the majority of our events are fully self-produced with support of grassroot donations, a collective community effort and a lot of the time are the epitome of DIY and “figure as we go”! Finally, ESTIA has no limitations in the art forms it presents and completely dismantles any hierarchy, systematically placed on what art forms carry more value than others.

During just our first 2 years of operation, we’ve produced over 40 events featuring 426 artists of all storytelling forms, welcomed over 1,500 patrons in all of our partnered spaces and collaborated with over 13 ESTIA team members & external collaborators. We have also seen so many new collaborations and work opportunities generated amongst ESTIA community members after initial connections made through our events.

We are currently working very hard on the production of our next ESTIA Day Fest happening on October 5th, 2024 at Brooklyn Art Haus in Williamsburg! This will be our fourth festival and will showcase a total of 15 artists presenting multiple bodies of work in various spaces simultaneously. The day will culminate with a non-proscenium sit down performance and discussion in efforts of community building and collaboration fostering. This event is made possible with the very generous support of the Brooklyn Arts Council.

More information on our next ESTIA Day Fest can be found on our website (www.estiacreativehome.com) & Socials (@estiacreativehome)

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Being a freelancing artist comes with so much uncertainty, risk and a lot of times can feel like an isolating experience. Maintaining a sense of groundedness, staying closely connected to your mission and core and having a supportive community that can carry you through the times of self-doubt and disconnect from your craft, is really essential to a long lasting path on any creative field (and honestly just any field in general even if it isn’t “creative” per se). The skills and tools that have been especially helpful for me so far are nervous system regulation techniques, the overall practice of mindfulness, realizing that opportunities can be self-created when they aren’t directly offered to you (and a lot of times won’t look like what you had initially envisioned), the value of consistency and finally the notion that change comes from a lot of barely visible small steps instead of one loud and clear major leap.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

One of my challenges as a small business owner but also a currently active artist, performer and teacher is constantly code switching, wearing all the different hats all at once and maintaining a sense of balance and connection with life beyond my craft. New York (particularly in this inflation era of collective burn out) will always make you feel like you are constantly missing something, not hitting all the marks and are simply not enough no matter how engaged you are and how fully you try to show up for your yourself and community. It is a constant process of learning how to let go, accepting that imperfection is the only permanence and always coming from a place of repair versus absolution. Especially as a space holder, facilitator and overall a creative thinker, mistakes will be inevitable and that is something I struggle coming to terms with quite a bit. Opportunities will be missed, expectations won’t be met and obstacles will show up left and right. Building failure tolerance and constantly returning back to our purpose (even when it is foggy and messy) is something that I am currently trying to strengthen and retrain my brain to do on the daily. Another phrase I heard recently that has been especially helpful is the term “speaking in draft” versus “speaking in final copy”. It is essentially the permission we as community members, facilitators and leaders can give to each other to make mistakes and accept correction so we can all collectively move forward, learn from each other and reimagine our futures in a way that amplifies all voices.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.estiacreativehome.com & www.lydiaperakis.com
• Instagram: @estiacreativehome & @lydiaperakis

Image Credits

Photography Credits: Ziru Wang & Brandon Calva