User:Grad wits/Koula Pratsika

Koula Pratsika (el:Κούλα Πράτσικα) was a Greek choreographer.

She is considered to be the founder of modern dance in Greece.

She was brought up in Athens, where she was educated at an institution of the Arsakeio.

Her first performance was in 1927 in Sicilian's "Delphic Feasts", where she narrated her own dance practice and philosophy by referring to her involvement in the chorus of Promitheas Desmotis Prometheus Bound.

From 1927 to 1930 she studied gymnastics and rhythm in a school of Rhythmics founded by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze in 1911 accommodated in the Festspielhaus Hellerau.

In 1930 she opened her own gymnastics and rhythmic gymnastics school, and in 1937 she added a part of professional training of dancing instructors until 1973, which she donated to the Greek state, the school still works as Κρατική Σχολή Ορχηστικής Τέχνης (State School of Orchestral Art).

On 1936-07-20 she lit the Olympic flame for the Olympic Games in Berlin.

On the 18 th and the 23 th of June 1938 Pratsika’s School presented its first professional dance performance titled »Ορχηστική Επίδειξις του Επαγγελματικού τμήματος της Σχολής της Κούλας Πράτσικα« (Presentation of Orchesis by the Professional Dance School of Koula Pratsika). It was presented at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus as part of a festival organised by Kostis Bastias. The totalitarian regime made it possible that Bastias’ philosophy that ancient dramas exclusively in ancient theaters where presented.[Steriani Tsintziloni p. 46]

She was honored with the Medal of 1940-41, the Greek Red Cross, the Archdiocese of Athens, the "Taxiarhis Epiperias" with a diploma and medal "Vermeil" of the city of Paris, and with the Academy Award Of Athens. comprehensive summary: National Heterotopia, Nature and Dance: outdoor dance performances in interwar Greece. At the beginning of the 20th century, outdoor dancing performances, lessons and their photographic representations were phenomena extremely widespread in Europe and the USA. Such practices are closely related to modern dance artists, such as Isadora Duncan and Rudolf Laban among others, but also with the photographic arrests of Elli Souyoultzoglou-Seraidari. In Greece, the Delphic Feasts created a powerful example of the dance of ancient drama presented in Greek nature, and at the same time they indicated the ideological shift of the Greek continuity demand from the text of the performance to the live dancing body (Glyzouris, 2011). Moreover, in the interwar period, the connection of "nature" with Greekity in art defined a wide range of searches inherent in a "aesthetics of nationality" (Tziovas, 1989). Starting from the view that in modern Greek culture, the open theaters act as national heterotopias and that the theatrical performances of ancient dramas exacerbate this function (Ioannidou, 2010/2011), this article extends the study to dance performances in open spaces. By analyzing the performances of the Koulas School in the 1930s, this study identifies the gradual changes from the combination of natural environment and dance to the definition of competence and psychosocial integrity in mythical, metaphysical arrests on the other hand, the interplay of this shift in a process of dematerialization and idealism of both the notion of dance and nature. Steriani Tsintziloni, National Heterotopia, Nature and Dance: performing outdoor in interwar Greece, διδακτορικες διατριβες 1 - Τμήμα Θεατρικών Σπουδών (Doctoral Theses 1 - Department of Theater Studies), published in ''Parabasis, Journal of the Department of Theatre Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. 2015 Volume 13/1 pp.39-52