0%
Eleusis, a city rich in industrial and mythological heritage, becomes the focal point for a movement-based site-specific exploration. In February 2025, MENTOR in Culture collaborated with the U(R)TOPIAS Academy of Choreography to design and implement a site-specific seminar cycle in Eleusis; a city where myth, memory, and material heritage coexist in layered tension. The programme invited choreographers and dance trainees into a deep exploration of Eleusis not as a backdrop, but as an active and polyphonic environment: an urban palimpsest of sacred topographies, industrial history, and contemporary social dynamics.
This site-specific workshop series was implemented by Panos Gkiokas, founder and CEO of MENTOR, a seasoned cultural manager born in Eleusis — the very place that MENTOR also calls home. Drawing on his deep personal and professional connection to the city, he curated an embodied methodology that engaged choreographers and dancers in reactivating Eleusis’ layered cultural and industrial heritage.
At its core, the programme functioned as a laboratory for movement-based heritage research, combining thematic walks and bodystorming to explore Eleusis as a living organism. Participants navigated its archaeological, industrial, and working-class legacies not just intellectually, but through sensory, spatial, and somatic experience — transforming urban spaces into fields of creative inquiry, community reflection, and inclusive cultural learning.
Thematic Walks
Thematic walks are curated, guided explorations through urban or heritage environments, designed to reveal the layers of history, memory, and meaning embedded in place. They combine spatial movement with narrative interpretation, encouraging participants to engage critically and emotionally with the landscape. Often led by artists, researchers, or cultural practitioners, thematic walks use storytelling, historical context, and sensory prompts to foster reflection and dialogue — transforming walking into a method of learning, discovery, and embodied cultural interpretation.
Bodystorming
Bodystorming is a movement-based, improvisational research method that uses the body as a tool for generating insights, testing ideas, and responding to spatial and conceptual challenges. Originating at the intersection of performance, design, and embodied cognition, bodystorming replaces verbal brainstorming with physical exploration. In heritage contexts, it enables participants to interpret and activate space through gesture, posture, rhythm, and sensory attention — turning the body into both sensor and archive. It supports inclusive, affective, and practice-led approaches to learning and co-creation.
The programme adopted bodystorming as a core technique — an improvisational, movement-based practice that allows research questions to be approached through embodied problem-solving. Movement was used not only to interpret space, but also to surface questions around rupture, continuity, and transformation. This method was combined with oral history engagement, using local testimonies as dynamic archives that foregrounded lived experience and community knowledge.
Participants navigated between documentation and imagination, blending site-responsive choreography with literary and historical fragments. These narrative tools supported multisensory engagement, allowing for personal, political, and artistic interpretations of the urban landscape.
The seminar cycle was structured along four thematic axes: archaeological continuity, industrial memory, socio-spatial identity, and community heritage. MENTOR led the research, design, and implementation of the programme, integrating principles from urban anthropology, cultural heritage theory, and non-formal education. These axes shaped a learning pathway where movement became a tool of interpretation, and the body operated as both a sensor and an archive — capable of translating collective memory into space and choreography.
As part of the programme, participants visited the Folklore Association "Adrahti," the Eleusis Workers’ Centre, and the Association of Asia Minor Refugees of Eleusis, where they engaged in conversations with local residents and workers who shared personal narratives, memories, and stories from daily life and the industrial identity of the city — enriching participants’ embodied and experiential understanding of place.
A meeting with Ms. Nodara, coordinator of the initiative “Corner of Old Eleusis” — a Facebook-based community dedicated to gathering and documenting material from Eleusis and the wider Thriasio Plain — also took place at the premises of "Adrahti." The testimonies and archival materials shared during the discussion added new dimensions to the research, enhancing participants’ lived connection to the region’s cultural heritage.
Each thematic walk was designed to prompt reflection and dialogue: walking became an act of listening, mapping, and narrating. Participants were guided through key historical and symbolically charged sites, such as the Old Oil Mill, the Retsinadika district, and the abandoned IRIS factory. These environments became fields of performative inquiry, where the physicality of the dancers met the emotional and historical textures of the city. The bodystorming sessions — immersive, improvisational movement-based explorations — were held at the Old Oil Mill Factory, activating its layered industrial memory through embodied reflection and collective presence.
The proposed methodology aligns directly with the core principles of the New European Bauhaus (NEB): sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusion. By activating urban and industrial heritage sites through embodied practices, it fosters new forms of sensory learning and participatory interpretation that promote both ecological awareness and cultural innovation. The methodology embraces aesthetic experience as a tool for collective meaning-making, turning neglected or underused urban environments into sites of dialogue and re-imagination. Its pedagogical design encourages togetherness by engaging local communities, artists, and learners in co-creative processes, thereby cultivating social cohesion and reinforcing the role of culture in just and sustainable urban transitions. The Embodied Heritage Activation contributes to NEB’s vision of making Europe’s green transformation a culturally inclusive and emotionally resonant experience.
The programme supports the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through multiple SDGs. It advances SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) by revitalising urban heritage sites through inclusive cultural participation and reimagining public space as a site for community memory and creative activation. Through its emphasis on quality education and non-formal learning, it addresses SDG 4 (Quality Education) by promoting lifelong learning and participatory pedagogies rooted in artistic inquiry. The intergenerational and community-led nature of the project fosters SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) by amplifying local voices and involving socially and geographically marginalised groups. Additionally, its strong emphasis on environmental consciousness, especially in former industrial landscapes, contributes to SDG 13 (Climate Action) by highlighting the ecological narratives embedded in urban spaces and encouraging sustainable cultural practices.
|
“The site-specific seminar cycle was conceived as a dialogic process of bodily and conceptual attunement with place. Through historical research, oral testimonies, conversations with residents and factory workers, and in-situ visits, participants did not merely encounter the site, they listened to it, felt it, and reimagined it. Movement was not expression, but response; the body became a vessel of embodied memory and emotional transmission. The site itself emerged as an active interlocutor , a living heritage not to be reproduced, but to be reinterpreted through the encounter between art and community.”— Panos Gkiokas, Project Facilitator, Founder & CEO of MENTOR in Culture |
The outcomes of the programme extended beyond artistic creation. While participants generated original choreographic material, they also developed skills in critical site interpretation, collaborative creation, and contextualised performance. The process enabled a re-reading of neglected or invisible sites as spaces of dialogue and potential.
Importantly, the local community was not a passive audience but an active participant. Through storytelling and memory-sharing, residents became co-authors in the unfolding narratives. The methodology affirmed that cultural heritage is not static, but a living process shaped by movement, emotion, and community interaction.
This experience contributes to MENTOR’s wider strategy of alternative cultural pedagogy, combining contemporary artistic research with participatory education and community empowerment. The methodology developed in Eleusis is now being documented as a transferable educational model for other European contexts, particularly those marked by industrial transformation or contested memory.
By treating the city as an “open museum”, the programme positions Eleusis as a site not just of historical reflection but of experiential learning, symbolic regeneration, and collective imagination. This approach aligns with MENTOR’s long-standing commitment to bridging culture, education, and sustainability through interdisciplinary and community-rooted innovation.
|
This programme was implemented as part of the Moving Europe initiative by Eleusis 2023 – European Capital of Culture. The AERITES contemporary dance company launched the first Academy of Choreography in Greece, the U(R)TOPIAS Academy of Choreography. The programme is part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0” and is funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU. |
Photos: © Fani Maria Chatzi