THE ESSENCE OF A FILIPINO ABOUT EASTER
WHAT I MEAN BY "ESSENCE": It was my first month in Greece, the carnival having just portaled into the forty days of lent, and I was teaching at the Athenian Dance Society along wit other international dance faculty; I was doing a course on Movement and sound sense. The faculty from different dance companies all over the world (Nederlaands, Australia, England, Philippines, France, USA) would give recitals joining their students, scheduled before Easter - the biggest holiday in Greece. For some reason I chose a piece of music I had heard, among a few "casettes" given me by a Greek-Algerian friend painter, who used to come to my house for pasta and Iching --- among the first friends I had because he spoke French, the only way I could communicate at that time to anyone still not being able to speak Ellenika at that time. I played it in my small place at the foot of the Akropolis and in the balcony, i rehearsed a scenario I created to this music, whose provenance, nor words, i had known at that time: i loved gauze as material but didnt have money to buy square yards, so i bought bandage gauze, unrolled it to its longest length, took some dried olive twigs i had picked up on the foot trails of the Akropolis, and my fan. I developed a dance where I would be the Virgin Mother, Christ, and the Cross. I created images where the gauze strip would transform into the Virgin's hair, the fan into the seven swords at the heart of the Mater Dolorosa, and the twigs the crown of thorn on the cross of a strip of bandage that became the rolled shroud and the hanging piece of cloth in the shape of a cross blowing softly in the wuiet memory of a sacrifice. It met with so much bewilderment and kudos from an audience, but it was I who became most bewildered when a Greek critic came to me and said how beautiful, touching, and powerful my interpretation was of the Holy Friday Song it was, when in the processions, the people follow the Holy Corpse of the Jesus...Imagine my mystical moment, how then and there my knees broke, learning that that was the music I had chosen, and I had just chosen it for its mystical beauty and moment of quiet and pained ecstasy...That is the only way I can explain the meaning of essence - when the sap becomes the blood, when art and ritual and sacrifice are one, in an expression where the ephemeral and the concrete meet and remain in a moment of history. How else can I mortally explain this mystery of Salvation?
ANTON JUAN
P.S: http://elgrecomadrid.blogspot.com.es/2013/03/anton-juan-el-greco-death-in-form-of.html
WHAT I MEAN BY "ESSENCE": It was my first month in Greece, the carnival having just portaled into the forty days of lent, and I was teaching at the Athenian Dance Society along wit other international dance faculty; I was doing a course on Movement and sound sense. The faculty from different dance companies all over the world (Nederlaands, Australia, England, Philippines, France, USA) would give recitals joining their students, scheduled before Easter - the biggest holiday in Greece. For some reason I chose a piece of music I had heard, among a few "casettes" given me by a Greek-Algerian friend painter, who used to come to my house for pasta and Iching --- among the first friends I had because he spoke French, the only way I could communicate at that time to anyone still not being able to speak Ellenika at that time. I played it in my small place at the foot of the Akropolis and in the balcony, i rehearsed a scenario I created to this music, whose provenance, nor words, i had known at that time: i loved gauze as material but didnt have money to buy square yards, so i bought bandage gauze, unrolled it to its longest length, took some dried olive twigs i had picked up on the foot trails of the Akropolis, and my fan. I developed a dance where I would be the Virgin Mother, Christ, and the Cross. I created images where the gauze strip would transform into the Virgin's hair, the fan into the seven swords at the heart of the Mater Dolorosa, and the twigs the crown of thorn on the cross of a strip of bandage that became the rolled shroud and the hanging piece of cloth in the shape of a cross blowing softly in the wuiet memory of a sacrifice. It met with so much bewilderment and kudos from an audience, but it was I who became most bewildered when a Greek critic came to me and said how beautiful, touching, and powerful my interpretation was of the Holy Friday Song it was, when in the processions, the people follow the Holy Corpse of the Jesus...Imagine my mystical moment, how then and there my knees broke, learning that that was the music I had chosen, and I had just chosen it for its mystical beauty and moment of quiet and pained ecstasy...That is the only way I can explain the meaning of essence - when the sap becomes the blood, when art and ritual and sacrifice are one, in an expression where the ephemeral and the concrete meet and remain in a moment of history. How else can I mortally explain this mystery of Salvation?
ANTON JUAN
P.S: http://elgrecomadrid.blogspot.com.es/2013/03/anton-juan-el-greco-death-in-form-of.html
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