The Dance of Zalongo: Words have their own history

Item

Title

Creator

Lykeion ton Hellenidon (Lyceum Club of Greek Women)

Spatial Coverage

Online

Subject - keywords

Souliot women

Date

5 February 2021

Date Issued

2021

Abstract

Marilena Aligizaki’s documentary sets out to discover the word-history of the “Dance of Zalongo”, the term that has come to describe the deliberate leap of the women of Souli into the River Acheron. So, choosing the peaks of Zalongo as a point of departure, the visual artist, as a modern-day flâneur, takes to a sensory in situ wandering, with the intention of reaching a close-up “reading” of the elements that compose the history of the “Dance of Zalongo”. At the same time, she invites the spectator to travel the field in a spirit of research. The drone is chosen on purpose, not to offer a tour of the geomorphology of the natural landscape of Zalongo, but as a modern “vision” machine that watches from “a distance” and attempts “to land” in time and space, while daring at the same time to reflectively approach the historical past. An “invented” human figure is added to the visual experience, wandering around the scene as a creature of the imagination. It even borrows the costume often used to represent Souli on stage, in order to create a “living” replica of what we imagine or at least of what has prevailed as a familiar local “identity”. The frequent reflections flicker between the mirror image and its shadow, thus highlighting the importance of “images” as a reflection of “reality”. And using the dissolve effect where scenes of a “chorus” of women slowly dissolve and/or infiltrate other shots, metaphorically creates a chain of meanings around the “myth” of the dance and the act of dancing. And, as the artist slides into the realm of the fantastic, she gives her work the qualities of a documentary through a spoken intervention by Anthropology of Dance Professor Rena Loutzaki, who researches the dance element of the Dance of Zalongo, but also through showing representations of the event in different media. Just like the “Dance of Zalongo”, which moves between history and myth.

(Edited and translated description from organiser’s website)