Mystery 89 Εlefsina by Night

From 1 to 8 July 2023, 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture presents Mystery 89 Elefsina by Night, an artwork conceived by globally renowned and multiple award-winning lighting designer Eleftheria Deko, that draws inspiration from the myth of Persephone, renegotiating and subverting it.

Six lighting installations gradually revealed in various parts of the city, a journey that is completed on 7 and 8 July with the worldwide premiere of the site-specific performance Persephone Reconsiders Her Fate by Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig, artistic co-directors of the legendary PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER (PWDT), at the unique venue of VLYCHA − Ship Graveyard. A nocturnal promenade that takes pause to illuminate – sometimes thoughtfully, sometimes lightheartedly – the past, the present, the myth, the history of the city, the history of each of us.

The inspiration

In Greek mythology, Persephone is also called Kore [Daughter]. The daughter that Hades stole and hid in his arms for six months. Iris is the goddess of the colourful rainbow, the herald who carried the messages of the gods to the people. The ancient Greeks chose to give the names of these two deities to the eye, the sensory organ of vision. And not by chance… It is the pupil [kore] of the eye that absorbs light, while the round iris reflects it in colourful hues. As Hades hides Kore-Persephone in his arms, Iris loses her colours. And when Persephone escapes from his arms to rejoin Mother Earth, Iris illuminates her welcome with six colours, as many as the months of her sojourn in the upper world.

Six light rings over the city of Elefsina

Iris leaves behind six light rings on her path, to symbolise her marriage with life, the path to eternity, fulfilment, the union with our deepest self, the world, time itself. The day of rebirth is Saturday 1 July, and the starting point of this ceremony is the furnace of the IRIS Factory. It is there that the first ring will be illuminated, the red one, in the colour of living blood and fire, the colour of pulsating senses. Continuing her course, on 2 July, Iris paints Marie Curie square in orange, a colour similar to that of fire and flame. On the night of 3 July, she leaves her yellow ring at the abandoned industrial building of the Old Oil Mill Factory, praising the sun, the light, the spreading of knowledge and hope. On 4 July, she walks silently on Iroon Square, dressed in green, leaving her four rings to remind us of vegetation as well as the paleness of imminent death, the union of life and death. On 5 July, she will stand at the seaside, in front of the entrance to the Old Oil Mill Factory, in front of her blue ring, as if ready for a journey in the stormy seas under the starry dome. 6 July, a day of rest and preparation for a meeting with Kore. The terminal station of her course is VLYCHA − Ship Graveyard, where the violet ring will sink into the sea. Everything evokes the fertilised and wet earth she leaves behind. The six colours of Iris, which proudly accompanied Kore during the six months of her journey in the upper world, fall silent…

Dance performance Persephone Reconsiders Her Fate

Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig, artistic co-directors of the legendary PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER (PWDT), famous for their “provocatively subversive, engaging, ironic and deeply moving” work and their site-specific installations around the world, choreographed and directed exclusively for Mystery 89 Elefsina by Night the performance Persephone Reconsiders Her Fate, which will make its worldwide premiere at VLYCHA – Ship Graveyard on Friday 7 and Saturday 8 July. 

Throughout the dance performance that is accompanied by an impressive light show, Kore-Persephone reintroduces herself to reveal all her aspects before she is immersed into the kingdom of dead ships, before she travels to the amorphous seas of the unconscious and is reborn in Mother Earth, gifting us her wisdom, knowledge and harmony.

This project was made possible in part with funding from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International, a program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. Major financial support was provided by the University of Maryland’s School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies’ International Program for Creative Collaboration and Research, the Madden Professorship and the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance, as well as the Friends of PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER.