Giannis Skourletis – bijoux de kant

The Maidens
Τhe new poetics of Athens

The “bijoux de kant” company opens Athens’ hope chest and retrieves its proika, its poetic dowry, placing it on the marital bed, according to the Greek custom. The poets Lord Byron and Kostis Palamas will change out of their clothes, remove their traditional suits, capes, and hats, and get to know Lena Platonos’ songs and Nikos-Alexis Aslanoglou’s poems. Two young girls, Noula and Nana, play a game that will transform Athenian poems into the master key that will magically lead us to a new kind of freedom, a new, wandering kind of poetry: a rediscovery of the city that rightfully belongs to that particular vein of poetry. The bijoux de kant dramatizes the music, landscapes, and words of this ancient infant of a city. The heritage and heavy burden of the past are offset by the liberating freshness of the present; the past and the present deliver a joint promise of the future. A redeeming soundtrack in search of new conditions of freedom for Athens and its people.