At the Cultural Conference Centre of Heraklion (Experimental Stage) Wednesday 9/4/2025 at 21:00

A performance with selected songs that capture the perpetual alternation of light and darkness. Sometimes directly linked and sometimes inspired by the rituals of Spring ,and all that it symbolizes: From the wide range of musical reception for the passions, human and divine, which become one in the folk dirge of the Virgin Mary of the women in Holy Week, since the Virgin is sung all over Greece as one of the village women mourning her dead son. Songs about mourning but also about the joy of life, the longed-for Resurrection, which have always given meaning to the spring ceremonies. From the ritual folk dirge of the Virgin Mary before Easter, to the folk and urban rituals from Greece, the rituals of the Mediterranean, the Balkans for the celebrations of spring, with themes such as separation, loss, the mourning mother, the woman, the refugee, passion, love and respect, which goes hand in hand with spring and mobilizes the change of seasons, death and life, which in every cycle is resurrected and surprises us.

A performance about the rituals that are lost, from the funeral dirges to the improvised party, the rituals that are gestated, nourished and perpetuated through the basic cell of civilization, the company that is increasingly rare in the age of individualism and robotization. For the redefinition of the concept of rituals in today’s world with the ultimate goal of genuine psychic expression ,far from outdated frameworks of human vanity that encapsulate. Through smaller human communities-choirs etc. self-organized systems,with common aesthetics, coexistence and smooth cooperation, we present you a contemporary ritual with reference to Spring that despite all obstacles in the end will always arrive to share… lives!

Finally we dedicate this performance to the fair and hopeful for our society struggle of the parents of the victims of Tempe, so that the injustice and the absurdity that is baptized reasonable in our time, but also for all the Tempe of our life, the “rituals of Spring” come to speak in an allegorical way about our human passions and to symbolize the change that comes full speed ahead with the “Spring”!

The choirs ”Kotzam” and ”Lakkos” participate with love and self-denial.

The musiciansί: Asteris Varveris: afta, land lute, guitar

Sol Lickertwood:Cello

Panagiotis Kapizionis:buzuki

Maria Kotti: music editing, coordination of the performance, percussion, choir direction