BUDP Publications
by Eleni Sikelianos, Professor of Literary Arts
Rehearsal Is at Dawn, by Eleni Sikelianos, Professor of Literary Arts, is a multivalent, multimodal ancestral encounter that reaches into realms of Sapphic translation, activism, performance of antiquity, queer histories, and utopian politics. In 1901, my great grandmother, Eva Palmer, moved from New York to Paris with her lover, the writer, instigator, and socialite Natalie Barney. The two Americans became the center of a wild tangle of lesbian love affairs and backyard performances that reimagined Sappho’s work and life. They and their circle of friends saw in the ancient past the possibility for sexual and artistic emancipation, especially for lesbian women. Eva became obsessed with draping, first using her hair, then fabricating cloth that mimicked the dresses she saw on ancient pottery, performing the past on her own body. In her second act, she moved to Greece and, with the poet Angelos Sikelianos, staged two boundary-shattering festivals in 1927 and 1930, site-specific installations that revived the Delphic theater and changed the shape of Modern Greek culture. At the juncture between two world wars, the couple believed that the Delphic Idea would bring nations and people together, with artistic practices providing the tools to resist not only mechanized economies but, later, fascism. Their activities were sacred rehearsals for utopia. As a born-digital publication, Rehearsal Is at Dawn, with its dynamic weave of artefacts, archives, and artists, entangles past, present, and future.