Cassia’s “Woman of Many Sins”: From the Two-Dimensional to the Three-Dimensional Interpretation of Byzantine Poetry

The idea to create a choreographed performance based on Cassia’s hymn “Woman of Many Sins” emerged from the inspiring discussions I had with Dr. Niki Tsironis within the context of organizing the international conference Performance in Late Antiquity and Byzantium and publishing a relevant collective volume on the topic of performance and performativity. The project was initiated at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, under Tsironis’s directorship, and was further developed as a result of an interdisciplinary dialogue between various scholars during the four-year research program “Orality and Performance in the Greek Tradition.” Being involved in this exciting research program and actively contributing to the discussion of performance from the point of view of art and dance, but also as a former dancer, choreographer, and currently dance scholar and academic, I was particularly stimulated to set up the project in question.

The project, a dance research experiment, integrated interdisciplinary theoretical sources and empirical knowledge with a view to composing and discussing the choreographed performance of Cassia’s troparion “Woman of Many Sins.” [1] As Nelson (2014:24) states, “Practice as Research begins in doing-thinking but it is a complex, poly-logical, weave between know-how, know-what and know-that which allows us fully to articulate and evidence a Research inquiry.” Thus, the choreography aimed to investigate how these different processes are interrelated and contribute to the construction of meaning in performance. In this context, reception is understood as the result of a complex set of processes, involving immediate artistic and culturally mediated aspects of experience.

The overall approach of an embodied practice is based on tools of dance performance analysis, since “setting the necessary framing involves making the tacit explicit” (Nelson 2014:21). The work thus allows for articulating a view from within the experience of the participants—a very significant procedure for a choreographed performance—and simultaneously invites to an understanding of the processes underlying its reception. However, the problem that can be stated at this point is that all critical judgments, because they are made by individual persons, allow variability in critical opinions, which raises the issue of objectivity/subjectivity in aesthetic appreciation. This is of special importance since one of the crucial aspects of the arts is dealing with feelings, individuality, and imagination as they are “manifestations of creativity and […] they depend on the individuality of persons both as creators and as responders” (McFee 1992:22). Best’s (1980) argument concerning the objectivity of appreciation compares scientific with artistic judgment. Science is accepted as incorporating objective judgment because “its methods of substantiation are generally objective” in comparison with artistic judgments “that are not open to scientific verification […] and they cannot be objective” (Best 1980:115). Yet, he further promotes the idea that it will be a misconception to consider artistic judgments as subjective because they are not measurable by scientific criteria. As McFee (1992:21) suggests, in the arts objective judgments are “made not on the basis of some measurements like in science (as they never really can be), but on the basis of observations by some informed people.”

The statement above suggests that these “informed people” need to interpret what they see. This refers to the arrangement of the various traits embodied in a work of art. In addition, Codd (1982:26) writes that:

Therefore, critical reflection on and documentation of the performance (both in video-recorded and written form) by the choreographer and author of this paper are becoming overt and shareable processes that support a detailed evidencing of the research experimentation and examination; and, as McFee (1992) proposes, objectivity in arts is the capacity for someone to make public their reasons when interpreting.

Cassia (also known as Kassia, St. Kassiane, Ikasia, or Eikasia) was a Byzantine abbess, poetess, composer, and hymnographer. She was born into an aristocratic family in Constantinople between 805 and 810 and died sometime between 867 and 890. To this day, Cassia remains an enigmatic historical figure, as biographical sources are rare, often controversial, and many of her writings have been lost. However, it has been established that, thanks to her aristocratic origins, Cassia received an excellent private education, which ranged from Classical Greek Studies to the Scriptures, sacred Byzantine music, poetry, and tonal meters. Besides, “the fact that her poems have survived over the centuries proves her education and rhetorical ability” (Tsironis 2002:32–33). [2]

Following Cassia’s famous verbal exchange with the Emperor Theophilos and his consequent rejection of her as his future wife (830), [3] the daring young woman pursued a monastic life. Hagiographic tradition confirms that Cassia founded a monastery in the western part of Constantinople in 843, becoming its first abbess. Cassia lived and composed her work during the imperial reign of her husband manqué, Theophilos, which coincided with the second period of Iconoclasm. Today, Cassia is widely honored as the most prominent female hymnodist in all Byzantine history.

Within the plethora of Cassia’s sacred and secular works, the most celebrated is the penitential troparion “Woman of Many Sins”—officially and widely known by its opening line: “Lord, a woman who fell into many sins,” sung on the orthros of Wednesday in Holy Week. The “Woman of Many Sins,” which sprang from the Gospel narratives, gave rise to her identification with Mary Magdalene, but the case has been disproved.

Cassia was inspired from the episode in the life of Jesus, which took place at the house of Simon the Pharisee, and which is described with great lyricism by St Luke. [4] Cassia gives voice to a nameless woman mentioned in the Gospels, who pleads the Lord to forgive her sins in an act of genuine metanoia (repentance). In the renowned troparion two different voices are heard. First, the poetess speaks and correlates the woman to Eve (Tsironis 2003:142), the archetypal “sinful woman.” Then, we hear the woman herself talking to the Lord, who “with clouds spread[s] out the water of the sea,” in a way not dissimilar to the “springs of [her] tears.” [5] She describes the desires of the flesh as a “gloomy and moonless” night that distracts her from spiritual life. The poem ends with a powerful juxtaposition between the woman’s sins and God’s boundless compassion. [6] Despite the woman’s sinful past, God’s love, compassion, and forgiveness give hope for the salvation of both soul and body.

Cassia’s troparion is characterized by simplicity, immediacy, and intense drama, expressed through wonderful images changing from the visible and physical to the invisible and spiritual. It has been universally acknowledged as a masterpiece of religious poetry, evoking very powerful spiritual reflections. [7] Besides, the story of Cassia’s rejection by Theophilos has given rise to various, often conflicting, interpretations of woman’s role in sin and salvation. Thus, overall, Cassia’s troparion encapsulates her ideas about sinful humanity, and it is for this reason that she is widely regarded as an early feminist theologian who altered the perception of the role of women in society but also in the context of the Church. [8]

The theological theme of Cassia’s “Woman of Many Sins” offers a rich source of inspiration to create different kinds of transformations and abstractions. The aim of the research experiment conducted was to transfer Cassia’s written poem, a Byzantine two-dimensional text, into contemporary three-dimensional performative language, in which dramatic meaning—inherent in the poem—is communicated through the living body and its senses.

Historical evidence supports the relationship between dance and the sacred. In particular, the use of gestures and bodily movements in Christian rituals played a key role. As Hanna (2004:1) suggests, “the power of dance in religious practice lies in its multisensory, emotional, and symbolic capacity to create moods and a sense of situation in attention-riveting patterns by framing, prolonging, or discontinuing communication.” Ceremonies often drew their meaning from the relationship of the worshipper to the holy place, depicting symbolic patterns such as linear, circular, and vertical movements that represented the spatial connection to the worship as a means to express and relate to the sacred. As Durkheim (cited in Schechner 2002:57) argues, “although rituals may communicate or express religious ideas, [they] were not ideas or abstractions, but performances enacting known patterns of behavior and texts.” What ritual has in common with theatrical performances, dramatic spectacles, and public events is “the performative dimension per se—that is, the deliberate, self-conscious ‘doing’ of highly symbolic actions in public—[which] is key to what makes ritual, theater, and spectacle what they are” (Bell 1997:159–160), when situated in a specific context.

Dance, and choreography in particular, refers to intentional ideas as embodied forms and human movements which are staged and in which performers, through their organization of physical actions and/or voices, or other mediums, convey artistic expressions before an audience. Furthermore, the development of audio/video recording has allowed us to capture choreography and its inherent ephemerality, though, admittedly, it offers a less direct way of experiencing dance in comparison with the immediate response characterizing the viewing of live performances. However, the recorded presentation of choreography can transmit its texture effectively, also calling for an intimate experience and aesthetic appreciation of human movement and form.

Regarding the piece under discussion, the inherent performative acts in the poem’s language [9] are embodied by the actress and dancer Marina Kalogirou under the choreographic and dramaturgical guidance of the author. The dramatic act of repentance, with its universal connotations, takes place in a natural space, the sea, which significantly affects the meaning of the choreographed performance. The piece articulates the reenactment of the poem and the salvation of the human soul by means of the female performer’s corporeality and movement. [10] The bodily transformation of human sin and repentance is expressed through posture, gesture, and voice, which arouse sensations and feelings. In particular, the liquid element of the sea, where the performance is staged, bears a rich symbolism and associates the performer with the process of contrition and the infinite mercy of the Lord. The overall objective of the research experiment was to delve into the ways in which the two-dimensional aspects of the Medieval Byzantine poetry can be transformed into a performance that gives life to the dramatic verses by employing the power of “the presence of the body” (Lepecki 2004:1–9) in a site-specific composition.

Bearing in mind that few creators have been engaged in presenting Cassia’s poem in other performing art forms, [11] I was motivated to choreograph a site-specific performance by replacing the stage floor with the sea water: an artistic choice that highlights the liquid aspect inherent in the text and proposes various symbolisms, such as the humidity of the body, with its connotations of corporeal desire, the tears of worship and repentance, as well as the emotional and ritual charge of the purifying waters in the Byzantine tradition. Performing in the sea water also turned out to be particularly inspirational for the actress/dancer herself, who expanded her expressivity within a floating environment and related her body weight, by resisting gravity within water, to the grounded speech. This counterbalanced tension decoded her artistic intention and enhanced performativity. Furthermore, to capture the ephemeral nature of the choreography and allow sharing, the work was filmed and edited, thus adding an extra layer of analysis based on the use of the camera. [12]

Currently, artistic performances that fuse different art forms, such as literature, poetry, dance, music, theater, sculpture, painting, video, or cinema, employ notions of intersemiotic processes and/or translation to define relations between the various systems and offer fruitful methods of performance analysis. [13] Yet, to investigate physical discourse and performativity, one needs to reflect on the diverse social, cultural, and political realities that human beings experience as global citizens, as well as on the many worlds that performing bodies inhabit (Schechner 2002:110). Furthermore, the literary genre drama, which means “action” in Greek and stems from Aristotle’s Poetics (335 BCE), refers to an actor’s stage performance of the writer’s text and to its live communication to an audience. Nevertheless, to understand and appreciate the significance of drama in performance, the notion of performativity should be related to its specific context.

To revisit and reexperience Cassia’s hymn by means of an embodied performance, different systems of interpretation were employed, which allowed the author to place and study the text in its historical context and appreciate its corporeal manifestations and performativity as a “culturally sustained temporal duration” (Butler 1990b:xv). Besides, the synthesis and interpretation of the piece invite the notion of intertextuality, [14] whereby the piece divulges the poem’s innate qualities and textures, establishing an overt link to the original text. Transmuting the text into a contemporary embodied performance also brought forward the key idea of Genette’s work Palimpsests; [15] that is to say, the audience can remember the old text and watch it emerging in a three-dimensional form and incorporating other layers of interpretation, as has been the case with this choreography. Taking this idea further, the performative acts of the poem, which move the soul of the faithful in church, take volume, flesh, and blood, as well as visual existence in another mode: that of choreographed performance. Therefore, the reception of the poetics of textual transcendence of Cassia’s hymn invites the audience—through the coding system of contemporary performance, which embodies the text and physical actions—to reinterpret and reflect on the hymn.

As stated, the composition intended to transform Cassia’s four-strophe troparion into a non-music-led performance. Diverse, yet interrelated expressive mediums, speech, movement, and space (the sea), realize the theme and stimulate the senses to create images that both preserve and invigorate the hymn. In addition, other conditions, nonexisting on a conventional stage, such as buoyancy, skin temperature, and continuous effort not to be drowned—literally and metaphorically—interfere with the performer’s interpretation and allow for a symbolic mind-body perception and reception. As Noë (2006) argues, perception and perceptual consciousness depend on capacities for action and thought; thus, perception is a kind of thoughtful activity in real time and space circumstances and requirements.

The objective of this piece was to trigger the perception of the viewer through oral and visual stimuli in order to evoke emotions and achieve aesthetic appreciation by utilizing different acts of seeing and modes of transformation. Thus, the words of the hymn reverberate with somatic memory; indeed, when one is engaged with religious and gendered symbolic systems, “one feels [words’] meaning as rhythm, texture, shape, and vitality as well as symbol” (Sklar 2007:44). The physical presence of the moving body invites cognition and experience to be in a dynamic dialogue and elicits an empathic response from the viewer. While watching a performance, the brain mechanism of mirror neurons creates empathy in the viewer, and it is as though the viewer is acting or feeling what another body is feeling (Foster 2011:11). Empathy is a social phenomenon of affective sharing. Motor, somatosensory, and cognitive processes as key mechanisms are supported by distinct neural pathways. According to Foster, kinesthetic empathy enables individuals to understand the meaning of actions done by others, their intentions, physical sensations, and emotions. Through the activation of internal representations coding motorically, the observed kinesthetic and visual forms reverberate with aesthetic experience and create a psychological affective immersion both in dancers and the audience (Martin 1939:49). Performing in dance is a lived experience relying on enactive cognition, which requires collective memory processes in both the phase of creation and that of reception. [16]

Composition, analysis and reception of the work employ the symbol-making body mediating its way through the world by means of language, and simultaneously depict an existentially resonant body which performs kinesthetically and thinks in terms of movement. Kinesthesia is the ground for dance where movement interacts with perception, emotions, cognition, and the environment.

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has provided abundant evidence that:

Embodied cognition is the mechanism that stimulates dancers’ visual, tactile, and somatosensory system to activate their bodies in order to create physical forms and images. What is crucial here is that “thinking in movement is different ‘not in degree’ but in kind from thinking in words” (Sheets-Johnstone 2009:47). Thus, philosopher Sheets-Johnstone argues for experiencing the world “as it exists for me here and now in this ongoing, ever-expanding present,” and suggests that experiencing the world presupposes “actively exploring its possibilities, and what I perceive in the course of that exploration is enfolded in the very process of my moving” (Sheets-Johnstone, p. 31).

In this work, choreographed performance has its own and distinct manner of creation, expression and communication, which grounds its phenomenological approach in kinesthesia, qualitative dynamics, and embodied knowledge, and offers a valuable source for movement analysis and description. Dance as medium is different in kind than language. On the one hand, choreography is regarded as “dance writing,” while writing about dance is employed to analyze and document the piece. On the other hand, dance as a distinct physical language—with its semantic analysis in terms of relating syntactic structures resulting from the levels of rhythmic movement phrases and motifs—offers a different, nonverbal, coding system of understanding and appreciating. [17]

Moreover, the embodiment of the text is apparent in the form of the piece, where the interrelation of performer, speech, movement, costume, space—the liquid element of the sea—and the use of the camera create the choreographic style through a gestalt of integrated elements. Thus, the “strands of the dance medium” [18] offer a tool for analyzing the components of the dance performance and its nexus. The corporeality of the performer’s lived body and the performative text are interrelated and integrated with the choreographic style of the work (Preston-Dunlop 1995:531). Performativity that is not limited to verbal operations is equally supportive of physical actions, as well as meaning-making through movement, thus revealing the significance of kinesthetic experience. The idea of “being in the now,” in time and space, is related to Heidegger’s Being and Time. Heidegger’s work contributed to the theory of hermeneutics, phenomenology, and existentialism by introducing and discussing the Dasein (Heidegger 1962), where the notion of time, as future, past, and present, forms a unity. As Fraleigh (2018:27–37) argues, a prereflexive grasp of phenomena requires consciousness, which allows for descriptive accounts of lived experience in dance and performance.

The research experiment under discussion attempted to reveal the capacity of language to provoke movement and vice versa. The actress/dancer, through her speech and kinesthetic idioms, interprets and performs the verses of Cassia’s hymn, being in experiential dialogue with the site-specific performing space and her costume, as well as the camera. Thus, the web created between the gender performativity of the actress/dancer and the choreographic style of the performance forms the singularity of the work.

In the one-and-a-half-minute piece produced, text, speech, movement, costume, performing space, and use of the camera constitute the unity of the choreography. The piece was developed collaboratively, in an engaged and experimental mode, by the choreographer, the performer, and the filmmaker.

The three participants experience multisensorial modes of the everyday life in artistic practice. Enacted embodiments of personal insights, knowledge, and experiences were interwoven during the composition through artistry and skills. Particularly the physical habits and preferences or dislikes previously developed by the actress/dancer, who embodied the performance, were reflected in her improvised movement processing in rehearsal. Her formerly lived experiences and feelings (awareness of emotions) were in an open channel both with the living in the “now” of structured improvisation performance and with the imagining “actions,” the projective qualitative movements, in the future. [19]

Empirical science suggests that cognition is not only embodied but is situated and limited by action in its context, the real time and space circumstances and requirements. [20] Thus, kinesthetic intelligence is crucial since the actress/dancer is “completely conversant with kinesthetic sensation and abstract movement generated by perception of spatial relationship and open timing as they are currently with image and storytelling strategies and sources” (Bales and Nettl-Fiol 2008:131). The performance was composed through experimentation and reflection on the poem, as well as kinesthetic and voice exploration of ideas and camera actions, thus providing rich form and content for analysis.

In the opening scene, the camera captures the performer’s silent image in curved and bound posture, head bent downwards, and face covered by her long hair curls. The camera, in a panning close-up, moving from right to left three times, captures the performer’s image along with the movement of the sea in the background. This image highlights fluidity, literally and metaphorically, and articulates, from the very beginning, the notion of “metakinesis,” namely constant moving between different physical and psychological states. The initial juxtaposed body images and fragmented actions of the camera sustained throughout the piece introduce the idea of becoming (LaMothe 2015:4), a crucial factor in dance and choreography, and arouse durational perception.

In this scene, the actress/dancer performs shadow movements, [21] from waist up, while her legs are invisible, hidden underneath the water: a choreographic device that places her on the threshold between appearance and disappearance, and denotes her introverted attitude. [22] When speech begins, her performative actions decode her direct communication with the Lord and indicate that He is present from the outset of her journey. The performer’s introverted attitude is conveyed through sensation and feeling and is reflected on the dynamic qualities of movement, namely the effort motion factors of Space, Time, Weight, and Flow, creating the cluster of expression that exposes her faith and guiltiness during the process of her transformation and repentance.

The costume—a simple, semi-transparent and supple white cloth—allows the viewer to see the wet parts of the performer’s body. It covers her body from the top of her head and, tied around her wrists, drops down into the sea water. The costume uncovers the female body, which is bound to her corporeality and desire to reenact the “Woman of Many Sins.” As the work unfolds, the embodied perception of the actress/dancer engages with the feeling of the costume but also with her visuality in movement and performing space. Sensory information about the performer’s experience is accentuated through the camera lens and its use, urging the viewer’s perception to focus on emotions and feelings arising from the body.

The narrative advances in accordance with the poem’s plot, i.e. with a beginning, a middle, and an end, as well as a conflict and a final resolution; these modes, together with the character/performer, create the climax of the work. The choreographed performance is structured in a cohesive collage form of movement motifs, constantly creating symbolic images from the text and relevant iconography. [23] The succession of images, together with the dynamics of speech, movement, and camera, invite the perception of the viewer to dig deeper into the core of emotions and sensations, and focus on the spiritual content of the poem. Within each verse of the poem, which is cognitively cued by the words spoken and also influences the manner it is performed, the expressive movement motif, intensely emotional, is built up, thus revealing the character/performer’s distinctive features. The shadings of the voice and intonations, including slight variations of low pitch, tone, and frequency of the actress/dancer’s voice, create the rhythm of the text, which suggests the way in which the body engages with the words and moves within the voiced text. Voice tools convey intentions and emotions and resonate in physical reactions and movement dynamics. The performer’s body is moving and moves, communicating something beyond the intended semantic and syntactical meaning of the poem, through an enactive approach which causes inner metakinesis and affects the viewer.

Movement motifs are formed in “theme and variations” structure, thus directly corresponding to the poem’s formula. The movement leitmotif is apparent through the curved body design of the torso, with bent arms and wrists turned inwards, while the performer has no eye contact with the camera. Curves of the posture are created through torso contraction and bound flow, and echoed in bent elbows, away from the body, with cupped palms and fingers apart. Posture-Gesture Merging (Lamb 1965) is sustained mostly as shape but varies in terms of dynamics, within nuances of efforts, mutating from weight and flow to time and space, and uncovers the character’s guiltiness and pain, as well as her determined intent to realize repentance. The performer changes dynamics in a refined way, including bound, sustained, and suspended qualities of movement in a continuous flow, and expresses feelings, intuitions, and sensations of humility and faith. As such, corporeality and the overall rhythmic structure of movement are integrated with the rhythmic phrasing of the text and the floating space, creating a grid of motions making into the pronounced words that are explicitly related to the referential function. [24]

Moreover, “variations on a theme” reappear in the work, supported by the camera, which moves with different durations and creates longer or shorter shots. Close-ups on the face of the performer allow the viewer to observe the water dripping from her lips and palms and associate these images with the humidity of the body and its connotations of corporeal desire. The drops of water create the image of the streams of her tears, the tears of worship, the myrrh, as well the tears of repentance, “in view of the sins she has committed” (Tsironis 2003:144). Close-ups on the curls of her dark hair escaping from her semicovered head, and on slightly different arm and palm movements, such as coming together or apart, crossing or twisting inwards, depict the theological figure. Downward, tilting movements of the camera focus on the body sunk in the sea, where the costume floats and exposes the pubic symphysis and the naked thighs of the performer: her female nature. Zoom-out captures the whole picture of the performer’s body, which is standing and resisting the water’s fluidity, by moving on the vertical axis within personal space, thus revealing her readiness and determination to change. Zoom-in and tracking capture parts of the body, chest, hands, head, and neck, as well as parts of the face of the performer, from slightly different angles. Thus, through a succession of fragmentary images, the emotional intensity of the moment is accentuated and personalized. The process of metanoia, “the change of mind, does not take place in the abstract but in the specific temporal and spatial reality that envelops the entire person, as [s/]he is perceived in Byzantine theology” (Tsironis 2003:143).

The final scene reaches a crescendo, as the performer raises both arms high in the air with open palms, a relief gesture towards the sky, in free-flow quality, which shifts her weight off balance, backwards, towards the horizontal sea plane: a moment that marks the beginning of her transformation. Then, she curves her body inwards, and outwards again, in repetitive, continuous flow, this time emphasizing a pleading gesture, sustained by the camera lens. The overall tension resolves with a suppliant gesture, in which her palms come together close to her chest and head, and her body is continuously curved inwards. Subsequently, her arms reach high up in the air again and are captured by the camera twice, as a last image of freedom from human pain and suffering. The relieved body descends and vanishes into the sea water to heal. This action is associated with the soul-saving Lord and represents her catharsis, as His mercy is boundless. The last verse of the poem is only voiced by the performer while the camera pans left to capture the white cloth that is released from her wrists and body and floats into the sea. This final image signifies the purifying and consecrating properties of the water, which liberates the body from the flesh and connects it to its inner spiritual world, thus suggesting that the woman’s sins have been forgiven. [25]

The work discussed is a practice-based research piece [26] aiming to create a poetic visual and sensory atmosphere where the active perceptions of the choreographer, the performer, and the viewer revisit Cassia’s hymn through a choreographed performance. Using a creative and poetic approach, the choreography attempted to arouse the viewer’s imagination and memory through the performer’s speech and kinesthetic language in order to witness the journey of her soul, the “now” of her repentance, which is the fundamental component of both the hymn and the performance. Although the experience of the moving body is not easily describable in verbal terms, located as it is in our tacit or embodied knowledge, the entanglement between text and body, the echoes of the words, provided syntax to body language in the context of a choreographed performance. In addition, since the choreographer of the performance and the author of this paper are the same person, the way of composing, looking into, and interpreting the work is a combination of objective and subjective attitudes towards “the aesthetic object,” namely, the choreography.

The research experiment supported the articulation of kinesthetic language in terms of choreographed performance analysis and uncovered the various facets and magnitude of repentance by focusing on the transitional process of becoming. Nevertheless, the intense and dynamic portrayal of the performer’s inner world is achieved symbolically, when the whole human being releases itself from corporeal desires and soul suffering by means of repentance. The departure towards the real fulfillment in life is apparent in the piece, in the very last prolonged image captured by the camera: a metaphor, a threshold, where belief and faith in the values of the mind and heart are not created by subjective physical feelings and sense impressions but by reaching out and moving beyond the self, to meet the spiritual dimension of human life.

Overall, the work lays emphasis on how subjectivity, meaning, and unconscious and conscious awareness emerge in action, reaction, and interaction, in a choreographed performance. This approach places movement and perception in a primary conceptual and analytical focus, [27] where the dramaturgical body manifests the inner dimensions of experience and builds up reflections to interpret the core meaning of the poem. The analytical approach was developed on the basis of combined theoretical and empirical knowledge, exploring the relation between cognition and embodied performance. The composed, performed, and written work was oriented towards a genuine pluralism that attempted to open rather than polarize theoretical studies, as well as to link theory and praxis; as such, the work created a bridge from past-text to present-performance by revealing multiple traces of processes and experiences. Deeply inspiring and multifaceted, the whole journey proved transformative for all participants.

I would like to thank my colleagues Maria Tsouvala, Niki Tsironis, and George T. Calofonos for their reflective comments on this study.