Greek theatre is an important component in the work of great figures of modern dance from Isadora Duncan to Martha Graham. From the mid-1920s to 1940, the lesser known American choreographer, composer, and director Eva Palmer Sikelianos experimented in Greece and in the U.S. with ways to animate ancient drama. Drawing on unpublished photographs, correspondence, and notes, this talk unearths a little-known episode in the story of modernism's encounter with the Greek legacy involving Palmer Sikelianos and the "father" of modern dance Ted Shawn, and shows Palmer Sikelianos to be a missing link in modern dance's Greek story. Through this episode, it explores how performance artists pursued a popular, non-material archaeology using observation, intuition, and practice to retrace elements of the past that decay immediately.

Artemis Leontis is Associate Professor of Modern Greek in the Department of Classical Studies.