Dancing Girl: An American Woman’s Greek Village Odyssey
a dramatic monologue by Thordis Simonsen

Saturday & Sunday matinees
August 12-13, 19-20, 26-27 & September 2-3, 9-10
door opens 1:30 p.m., curtain 2:00 p.m.
tickets $15, group discounts available

THE DENVER VICTORIAN PLAYHOUSE
4201 Hooker Street at 42nd Avenue, Denver
(3 blocks west of Federal on north-west corner)

reservations at 303.321.5403 or info@astragreece.com
visit "monologues & symposium" for program description

Benefit for Girls Inc. Denver
Saturday, August 12, 2:00 p.m.
reception immediately following
tickets $30

Genuine Encounters: An Odyssey of Your Own
a symposium at Chautauqua

What: a symposium on defining and acting on your unfilled dreams
When: 7:00 pm November 4, 2005 –noon November 6, 2005
Location: Missions House Lodge, Chautauqua, Boulder, Colorado
Cost: $485 includes tuition, 2 night’s lodging (price based on double occupancy), 4 meals

Like the hero of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, each of us is a traveler. Although Odysseus was determined to sail home to his beautiful wife, like all of us, he sometimes lost sight of his dream. Genuine Encounters: An Odyssey of Your Own, a symposium* guided by Thordis Simonsen, offers you an opportunity to define or re-define your dreams and to map a course of action.

Like the great poet Homer, each of us is a storyteller. Using Thordis’ stories and your own as springboards, and employing dialogues, writing, and creative visualization, we will explore three major themes:

• significance of encounters with people, place, and self
• role of fear and its counterpart, trust
• power of intuition as a way of knowing and how to cultivate it

Your program guide, Thordis, is both a traveler and a storyteller. Her Greek village odyssey began in earnest in 1982 when the Cabot Trust awarded her a grant for documentary work in a Greek village, and she continues to live in the once roofless and abandoned village house that she single-handedly restored. Thordis tells villagers’ stories and her own in her book Dancing Girl: Themes and Improvisations in a Greek Village Setting (Fundamental Note, 1991), and she has become a storyteller in the traditional sense with her dramatic monologue performances of Dancing Girl: An American Woman’s Greek Village Odyssey.

The symposium will be held at the historic Missions House Lodge at Chautauqua in Boulder, Colorado. Chautauqua first opened on the 4th of July 1898 as a summer retreat for members of the Texas Teachers’ Association. For more than a century, Chautauqua has provided cultural and educational programs in its 26-acre park at the foot of the soaring Flatirons.

Please refer to Monologues & Symposium in this web site for more information. Call 303.321.5403 or send an e-mail to info@astragreece.com for questions and reservations.

*A symposium is a collection of information and opinions shared by a group of individuals on a given subject. In ancient Greek, a symposium was a party, usually following a dinner, for drinking and conversation. Greek=drinking [po] together [sym].

The sailing ship motif comes from a Greek tama, a small votive offering made in fulfillment of a vow.

February

Excursions & Sojourns in Greece

Excursions in Macedonia & Thrace
I have been carrying a new itinerary around “in my back pocket” since the spring of 2002 when I made my first trip to Thessaloniki and the surrounding area. Here are the highlights of the trip: in Thessaloniki, the impressive new Museum of Byzantine Culture, the Archeological Museum’s overwhelming collection of gold from the Macedonian tombs, and the Jewish Museum’s silent testimony to the city’s former Jewish presence; in Soifli, Thrace, the highly informative and fascinating Silk Museum and the Dadia Forest, one of Europe’s few remaining refuges for raptors; a ferryboat ride along the coast of Mount Athos—the Holy Mountain—a monastic republic dedicated solely to prayer by a charter written in A.D. 883; Pella, home of Greece’s finest pebble mosaics; Vergina, site of the awesome Royal Tombs of Macedonia; the Boutari winery in Naoussa; a walk on Mount Olympos, home of Zeus; Meteora, location of the “monasteries of the air;” and Pilio, 13th century retreat from the Ottomans and forested home of the mythological centaurs. Accommodations include exceptionally fine modernized traditional guesthouses.

Museums

With great delight, I bring you news of two superb new museums in Greece. In August, 2003, the Archeological Museum at Mycenae opened. In addition to a few copies of the most renowned pieces from Mycenae on display at the National Archeological Museum of Athens, including Schlieman’s disputed gold “Mask of Agamemnon,” the museum houses an remarkable array of pieces from the site. The collection is beautifully displayed in an outstanding new facility.
Equally attractive is the Museum of the Olive and Greek Olive Oil that opened early in 2003 in the renovated premises of the Municipality of Sparta’s old Electric Company. This is the third museum of the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation, which operates the fascinating Silk Museum in Soufli, Thrace (included in my Excursion in Macedonia and Thrace) and the Open-Air Water-Power Museum in Dimitsana, Arkadia. The role of olives and olive oil in the Greek diet, economy, hygiene, and worship are beautifully presented in text and visuals from historic wall paintings and pottery.
One of my favorite museums in Greece continues to be the Komboloi Museum in Nafplio. The only existing museum of  “worry beads,” Aris Evangelinos’ lovely small museum houses rare old komboloia of the Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Catholics, and Greeks. Many of the beads came from Evangelinos’ grandfather, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt.

Thordis’ House

Last fall I returned to chinking and tuck-pointing the exterior walls of my house. I will probably never complete the job, at least not by myself, because I am no longer able to submit myself to the treachery of working high on a ladder perched precariously on steeply sloped, rocky ground. But I enjoyed mixing my mortar and improving the condition of the wall where I worked.

Literature

Recommended Reading: The First Fossil Hunters
While I am not a paleontologist and I have only a layman’s knowledge of mythology, I am wildly excited about The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times by Adrienne Mayor (Princeton University Press, 2000). The author theorizes that creatures once thought to be products of the imagination of the ancients actually are based in solid paleontological fact. For example, the picture of the griffin, a lion-size predator with a strong curved beak and wings, was developed nearly 3000 years ago by Scythian nomads prospecting for gold in the Gobi desert where exposed fossil remains continue to occur in abundance. When Greeks first made contact with the nomads from this area sometime in the 7th century B.C., they acquired stories about the gold-guarding griffin along with gold and other exotic goods. Mayor’s account of how a ferocious, exotic creature had been brought to life from bones by the Scythian nomads is fascinating. Not to mention the Cyclops and other giants and monsters of whom she writes. The book reads like an adventure mystery. It’s a masterpiece!