“No news from you since last summer.”
When the Dance becomes Summer. Bodies, Memory, Community in Epirus.
Epirote summer rises as a public ritual when panigiria, inextricably linked to religious celebrations, turn central squares into open spaces of remembrance, of experience, of embodied spirituality and sacred secularity. The villages are brought back to life, the locals reach out to strangers and welcome the returnees (¨xenitemenoi¨). The usually slow and mystical clarinet weaves cycles of spiritual union, bringing together Oneself to the Otheρ in a collective experience of the divine and the humane. At its zenith, clinking glasses becomes a symbolic conciliation of fellow villagers, of generations, of present people and absentees, of the past and the present time sealing with a festive sound the promise of being there in full presence: ¨ Let’s meet again to celebrate around the plane tree next year! ¨
“My poor and pitiful bird away from home, a foreign land basks in you but I sorrowfully feel your longing.”
Adulthood and return cycles
In Epirus the dance frames a certain number of passages to coming-of-age rituals. At Metsovo, during the girls’ dance (“corlu a fiatilor”), girls introduce themselves and find their place at the local social hierarchy, dancing arm in arm with older women in a closed dance circle. They sing in traditional dresses antiphonal songs of mainly love content. On other occasions such as at the enlistment feast, the clarinet and the violin dub musically the passage to the new identity. Also, when the mere need to work impels them to immigrate, Epirote people bewail with songs like ¨Mariola¨ narrating lamentation, love, loss and return.
“I ’m writing to spring, I ’m writing to winter: May snow never melt, may nightingales never sing.”
Epirote winter dances. Bonfires, costume masks in an ¨Inverted World¨.
Winter in Epirus is morphing into mystagogy as bonfires drive away the ¨Kalikantzari¨ (the gnomes), costume masks overthrow hierarchy, dances weave ties linking places, timelines, generations. From the burning kermes oak trees of Arta, the ¨mpolia¨ of Aghios Andreas, to the Momogeri and the ¨Bandidi¨ , the customs of the twelve days of Christmas, the Carnival season, all incarnate a world of renewal turned upside down. Nomadic herders wintering in the plains bring along musical
“Honey, milk, sugar in hand, throw rice for perennity, wheat for blooming.”
A wedding cycle is created.
Kouloures, trousseau, flambura, wedding wreaths, apotropaic practices, all constitute significant symbolic practices of the wedding Epirot ritual in direct interaction with the counterpart solemnitas. The returnees are coming back home so as to restore presentially the line of kindred and friendship. In squares, courtyards, clearings, the new couple attests solemnly through the dance the transition to the new family status before the whole community. In Metsovo, at the name day of Aghia Paraskevi, in a double circle, the newlyweds are honored to be the first dancers. In fact, all over Epirus, dance functions as a ceremonial bridge attesting this passage.
“Let everybody feast, drink, spree as no one ever comes back from the Other world.”
When a joyous sorrow becomes dance.
Funeral bells toll for ¨golden bodies¨ descending into Hades, moirologia (fate’s talks), wheat and a candlestick always burning to keep eternally the memory of the deceased. The Epirote world view is imbued with a sense of joyous sorrow; the pain and the joy coexist; they are never cancelled. Epirus’ social body undertakes the lament collectively expressing itself through the music and the dance. At Yiromeri of Thesprotia, a day after Easter Day, the extended family visits graves accompanied by musicians playing the favorite songs of the deceased; this way, irrevocable death is transformed into a remembrance celebration, into a dancing presence, into a Resurrection expectation. Circular time, clarinet and bodies overcome the modern shyness, rendering Charos a familiar life companion.
“Sleep, baby, sleep; may your mother dance at your wedding”
The rite of passage to the cycle.
In Epirus the dance lulls the new life even before taking its first steps. By means of blue beads and red threads the community weaves symbolically a protective web surrounding the newborn and the new mother; while ¨alevra¨(a traditional rustic pie made without phyllo pastry) and the ¨epta pirounia¨ (seven forks) bring closer grown-ups and children, welcoming this way the new family member. During christenings, panigyria, glendia (plural of glendi : joyous feast), the clarinet connects the sacred to the secular. At the end of the cycle, kids gather coins and recollections till they fall asleep exhausted on the chairs while grown-ups are celebrating. This unconscious initiation gives way to an active participation in customs and in teen dancing performances, indicating thus the passage to adulthood.
“May, springtime, is here; summer comes. Now the whole ground is adorned with full blossoms and flowers.”
When Earth is awakening: The Rebirth Dance in E(a)pirus.
Springtime in Epirus marks simultaneously a transition and a call via circular dances where pagan rites and Christian faith go hand in hand, in a single vivid dancing body. Seeing snow melting, the earth’s veins pulsing again ready to stream life, people respond with movement and singing at the central square, around the church. The joyous event of Christ’s Resurrection after the divine Passion, the joyous sadness, the vegetation’s pulse, the remembrance and the community are met together. The deceased are memorialized, the children are initiated, the emigrants come back to homeland so as to reenter the cycle. Thus, dance bridges seasons, generations and becomes an incessant rebirth of ¨we¨.
“During the vintager month, sow wheat and join the fair.”
The Immortal autumnal wine. Land of Epiros and joyous spree in an ever-flowing circle.
Autumn emerges as a mystery. Earth’s fruitage is transubstantiating ceremonially into essential feed for the body and the soul. Women, priestesses of everyday life, knead artoklasia bread, boil multigrains, bless grains and wine, taming this way the uncertainty of the world through their rituals. The grape harvest, the street markets, the fairs of Epirus transform toil into conviviality, need into celebration, goods exchange into memory’s exchange. Among grapes, cauldrons, souvlaki smokes, and loud clarinets, the cycle of life, of sowing, of harvest offers ¨immortal wine¨ promising perennity.
