Delighted to spend another theatre season collaborating with the Kaleidoscope production team to bring another live art and live music production to the stage. This time we are working on SELENE: the Moon Goddess. Check out the video on the Kaleidoscope website.
A big, big thank you to all those who made it through the storm clouds to the theatre yesterday. Thank you for your four warm rounds of applause. Happy INTERNATIONAL THEATRE DAY everybody!
p.s. Here’s the part in Delphi’s journey where she becomes the vehicle of her own emotional process and I pay homage to the art of Belgian surrealism.
#continuouslineart
An incredible full feature article about my theatre play DELPHI in The Brussels Times today.
See you for our last performance this season on Sunday, 3pm at le Columban in Wavre!
‘Delphi’: A children’s play using art to help kids process grief
Friday, 24 March 2023
Tamar Levi creating a one-line illustration alongside flute player Kalliopi Bolovinou. Photo Credit: Iris Haidau
Delphi is a multidisciplinary theatre play which combines art, music and acting to help children and their parents through feelings such as grief which many children experience growing up.
While Brussels is a dynamic city rich in different cultures and languages, with a large expatriated population, children process the new and changing surroundings of the city very differently – and often need help processing these feelings.
It was this notion that inspired writer and illustrator Tamar Levi to create Delphi. Originally a graphic novel and adapted into a children’s play, the idea behind it was to fill in the gap, where she felt children and families were not sufficiently supported on what she refers to as children’s “big feelings”. She noted that while love was a safe and frequent topic, heavier topics such as grief tend to be taboo for discussions in families with children.
On that note, Levi wanted to create something to help parents and their children navigate grief together. As she is primarily a children’s book illustrator and artist, her own art form became the medium to tell that story.
Photo Credit: Andrea Minoia
Although she now lives in Brussels, Levi’s childhood was coloured with the mythology from her home in Alaska. In discussions with her Greek husband, Levi noticed the differences in the mythology and folklore they both had grown up with. With a deepened curiosity of folklore, she wanted to tell the story of Delphi through the lens of different cultural mythologies.
Loosely based on the five phases of grief defined by psychology, Delphi tells the story of a little girl who travels the world and processes her “big feelings” through the cultures and myths of the different nations she visits. Levi wants to clarify that the states of grief are not prescriptive and may be experienced differently by individual people.
Delphi’s journey is illustrated live by Levi, who will portray the protagonist’s journey through one-line drawings. Actors provide verbal context in French, while flute player, Kalliopi Bolovinou, will combine contemporary and classical music.
When asked by The Brussels Times why she feels children in Brussels might benefit from Delphi’s story, Levi explained the context of living in a city like Brussels. “The grief we experience is not necessarily about death,” she explained. “I would say that the grief we process on a daily basis is the fact that we live far away from our loved ones.”
Children in Brussels often grow up without their cousins or grandparents, and are constantly having to say goodbye to friends whose parents find jobs in another country, leaving them and Brussels behind.
Processing these feelings can be tough on children. Levi hopes that Delphi, finding a way to cope with big feelings by writing her own story, will inspire children to do the same. “I would love if children recognise that their diversity is special, and that their parents’ cultures are special, but ultimately that they within themselves, are also special.”
“My art is a buffet”
Levi included many mediums into her play, which she affectionately called a buffet. “I keep telling the actors that this [play] is a buffet. It has art, music, dance, jokes, travel, anger, shouting, quiet time, and sleepy time; and a child might find the thing they are attracted to, to be a helpful method as they process their own feelings.” Her hopes are that children will see the elements of the play and try them at home with their parents.
For Levi, the point of theatre is to help the audience reach a catharsis, which she explained is a term coined during a lecture by Aristotle which refers to expressing emotions and finding acceptance by doing so. Levi shares Aristotle’s belief that theatre is an important tool to reach catharsis and think about one’s own journey through grief and other big feelings.
The creator of Delphi hopes that children will leave the play and want to try out one of the different art forms in it. She explained that sometimes, by doing art, people also reach a point of catharsis and parents can use these calm meditative moments to open up conversations with their children.
Photo Credit: Andrea Minoia
Theatres who have seen the play have suggested an age group of eight to 12 years old. However, Levi’s daughter is six years old and her friends range from five to eight years old and they have all seen the play with their parents, who have provided positive feedback.
Levi’s daughter said: “It’s good to teach kids how to hold their big feelings. If no one teaches you how to brush your teeth you don’t know how to brush your teeth.”
The illustrator believes that it is only a parent who truly knows if their child is emotionally ready to deal with topics like grief. For example, whether they are ready to watch Disney films Bambi or the Lion King. If not, she thinks that the child might not yet be ready to watch the play.
However, it is not only children who can appreciate the play. Levi has more than once been approached by a teary-eyed adult who was touched by elements of the play and she, therefore, does not want to limit Delphi to any one group – although her primary goal of assisting children through their big feelings remains firmly in place.
While the play’s script is French, Levi explained that through the music and live drawings, the audience will be able to follow in any language, and may only miss a few jokes made in French. The play will be performed on 26 March. The ticket price is based on donations between €8 and €25.
A performance will be held on Sunday 26 March at 15:00 the Columban Theatre, Chemin de Vieusart 162, Wavre. Future planned productions will be held in different locations in Brussels.
A few different dates to see my continuous line art performed live in a children’s theatre show, accompanied by award-winning flute player extraordinaire Kalliopi Bolovinou.
If you book tickets for Tuesday the 7th or Weds the 8th of March, you’ll see the amazing Francophone actors Olivier Francart and Juliette Manneback fresh-faced and ready for their first performance of DELPHI right in the heart of Brussels’ European Quarter, Place Jourdan: Le Senghor https://www.senghor.be/event/delphi/
However, if you book tickets to come to Le Columban on Sunday March 26th in Wavre, you’ll get all of the above AND you can bring a toy to exchange with other toys available… https://www.columban.be/portfolio/delphi/
Whichever show you choose to see, I can’t wait to see you there, over-excitedly wave to you and your kids in the audience and share my art with them afterwards. I hope they’ll be inspired to try some continuous line art themselves, making their own: that’s even better!
Look at us being paid to do what we are the best at doing… our art!
Generously funded by «Un Futur Pour La Culture» at the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, my manuscript and continuous line illustrations for this children’s theatre play called DELPHI and our packed multidisciplinary application scaffolded by all of Kalliopi Bolovinou’s musical theatre experience, linguistic skill and wisdom
has been lauded by the panel of judges as “among the best ranked.”
Then the Kaleidoscope production team paired us up with such an incredible human, who also turns out to be a fantastic actor: Olivier Francart will be joining us in a theatre, art & music workshop on stage at Ecole No 8, Avenue du Bois de la Cambre, (Uccle) this Friday.
Then again on stage at Columban Theatre (Wavre) 20-24 June.
Hopefully with actress Cecile Delberghe too.
We already workshopped at the gorgeous Théâtre Mercelis (look at the frescos!) until covid knocked us out.
But then PointCulture swooped in, offered us offices and the SACD Author’s Rights granted access to their co-working spaces…
So here we are, developing what we do best, with theatres and office spaces and actors, and the rough date for the next residency in Brussels is…(drum roll please)… The Senghor theatre in November!
To all those asking me when the final show will be: Spring 2023 is the official answer, The Senghor will have the 2022-23 program finalised in May and only then we will know the exact dates, that’s the way it goes in theatre, apparently.
Let’s just celebrate for now; quality children’s theatre is back on track!
Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles/Officiel
#L’EspaceSenghor
Thank you for all the birthday wishes. What year is it? Look at my body and you can tell. “Count the rings as you would on a tree. (38!) Count the ridges on the cumulus of my skin.” What to do with all the lines on my body? Make continuous line art of course! The trailer is below. The full theatre performance of the whole journey is in production. Let’s hope we can invite you safely soon.
*quote from Jeanette Winterson’s poetic prose
I was invited to join the TEDx stage only 17 days before to our performance.
My previous musical collaborator was half a world away. To develop this global stage performance during a pandemic, I needed some closer award-winning talent. Enter Kalliopi Bolovinou. I text messaged Kalliopi, who at that time had only briefly begun teaching our young daughter eurythmics. She was curious to engage with my project. We learned how to work together at a rapid pace thanks to her incredible ability to communicate clearly in multiple languages (both human languages and musical languages). I, too, quickly learnt her ability to express wisdom, humour and empathy in speech and harmony is utterly unparalleled.
This is appropriate because in Greek mythology, her namesake Kalliope is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the harmony of her voice. So I might just take this precedent as an excuse to wax lyrical with some eye witness report of her epic skills.
It took barely any time to onboard her with regards to the scope of my DELPHI project and we began rehearsing together, building our live art and music performance, developing it at record speed and finessing it as we went.
Kalliopi understood the educational elements immediately, the complex meta levels of the theory, philosophies, bereavement therapies and feminism at core, and was able to adapt her music style (classical training rehearses elements of a score) to a more immediate method (rehearsing the entirety every time) to fit with the unique continuity of my continuous line art performance.
She was inspired by the people we interacted with and the content of the storyline and developed her own bespoke response to the art with a gradual crescendo from Debussy’s Syrinx to a modern segment of a composition called “Ascèses” for solo flute (1967). The composer is André Jolivet. The original publication has 5 parts. Kalliopi performed No3 and No4 during the 8 minutes she developed for our show.
This is how she describes the music she developed, in her own words:
“Music is one of the most powerful forms of international expression; it breaks down all barriers by overcoming languages and transcends national borders. [I’ve] chosen classical and contemporary music for solo flute, inspired at the same time by composers, traditional dances and songs from key countries on DELPHI’s route: the Celtic points of Brittany, the islands Greek, African plains, Russian winter… to create a living narration of traditional tales. The music chosen comes from eminent composers, but also segments meshed and recomposed […] on traditional themes accompany the emotional journey of the story, the flute blows air into the lungs of the illustrated story, giving it life.”
We worked hard to make sure our collaboration mapped the music onto the art and the art supported the flow of the music and that our entrance onstage would be in synch with the theatricality of a live storytelling performance.
Kalliopi even taught me how to illustrate a stage direction diagram with French subtitles!
We struggled to offer flexible solutions to the never ending changes that occurred during the preparation of this event. The global pandemic cause the audience numbers to decrease, tickets to be returned, a livestream video option to be brought in and the venue to be changed three times! We had to rearrange our lives and our family’s lives and our children’s schedules and our work schedules, all in the name of our art and music.
We were not welcomed to rehearse on stage until the day of the TEDx event and even then the producers didn’t give the time to do a full 8 minute run through. We had 3 minutes to check out microphones and our stage positions and check the audio and lighting etc was all in place to our professional standards.
Please note all the mask wearing and even the hand sanitiser on the table. The precautions necessary to make this event covid compliant were incredibly stressful. I’m so lucky I had such positive professionals on all sides.
I will share Kalliopi’s biographical history here while also sharing images of her incredible performance on the global stage we shared.
Kalliopi Bolovinou began her music studies early in Ioannina, Greece and Athens and then trained abroad. She holds the Superior Diploma in Flute and the Superior Diploma in Musical Writing from the Athens Conservatory with the highest distinction.
She obtained her Masters at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Mons in Belgium in the class of Marc Grauwels with great distinction.
Then her Superior Diplomas in flute and piccolo at the Ecole Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot in Paris in the class of Mihi Kim.
In addition to her flute studies she also studied Musicology at the University of Athens.
She is also interested in the practice and expression of contemporary music.
She is studying Contemporary Music at the Conservatory of Gent with the Belgian contemporary music ensembles “Ictus” and “Spectra”.
As a teacher, Kalliopi trained at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and at the Dalcroze Institute of Rhythmics in Brussels. She teaches flute at the International School of Brussels (ISB).
She won 1st Prize at the Lions Club National Flute Competition in Belgium and she represented Belgium at the Lions Club International Flute Competition in England.
During her studies, she had scholarships from the Greek state, the Ecole Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot in Paris, the Palais des Beaux Arts in Thessaloniki (Megaro Mousikis in Thessaloniki, Greece) and the Onassis Foundation.
She has worked as an orchestral musician in Greece and Belgium in different orchestras and has performed as a soloist with the National Orchestra of Greece, the Symphony Orchestra of the University of Athens, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Athens and the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia. In the contemporary scene, she has collaborated with several ensembles, notably the French ensemble “Multilatérale”, with which she recorded at IRCAM in Paris works by the French composer Jacques Lenot (disc Chiaroscuro).
She participated in the creation of works by composers such as Yan Maresz, Matteo Franceschini, Mark Applebaum, Jacques Lenot, Yiannis Kyriakides and she participated in several festivals and workshops in Belgium, UK, France, Greece, Italy.
His interest in chamber music led him to collaborate with Belgian and foreign artists in flute and guitar duo, flute and piano, flute quartet. Within the Kaleidoscope association of which she is a founding member, she works in the multidisciplinary show “Balkan Project” which combines the arts of music, storytelling and illustration around the culture of the Balkan countries together with the storyteller Belgian Bernadette Heinrich, Spanish illustrator Teresa Arroyo and Greek guitarist Yiannis Efstathopoulos.
My favourite moment was in the dressing room after our event when Kalliopi said to me, “Thank you for letting me develop something creative with my altoflute.” In case anyone was wondering, all this has clearly been on big excuse to let us hear her altoflute’s voice ring out!
We thought it would be pretty rockstar to use the opportunity of this TEDx stage to practice our stage performance while developing a collaborative show together and in the short time of our rehearsals for this performance we ALSO built an English language AND French language application and dossier of the project to share an educational performance for schools here in Belgium.
You can see the development of that project on Kaleidoscope, Kalliopi’s musical theatre production company webpage here.
TEDx: My Art on a Global Stage
23 October with Anna Abramowski, Sofia Sereti and 47 others at TEDx ULB (I tagged the people who were either directly involved or offering emotional and friendship support! Thank you)
Accessibility for all, art for everyone, and bringing extra humanity to the stage at a time where all these are limited.
Images by Iris Haidau
THANK YOU to all friends and family watching our live art & music TEDx performance from all over the world AT THE SAME TIME this evening. I FELT you with us in the theatre, watching, unblinking, gasping, feeling. I’m so grateful for your love and support.
(Thanks to Iris Haidău for the 10 second from-home video clip!)
EEEEEEEeeeeeek! We’re live.
Apparently this is my getting-my-microphone-checked face just before we went live.
Here’s the live link:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1228575440847129&ref=watch_permalink
I’m told the link to watch the livestream of our TEDx show will come up on this page and you’ll be able to watch it all happening live from 18.30 Brussels time tonight!
https://www.tedxulb.org/practical-tedxulb-mistfit2020
Here’s some shots of me setting up my live art performance stage, (photography courtesy of Iris Haidău).
They go from not-aware-of-the-camera-grinning to oh-a-camera-coy.
Nicolas Henry wrote:
“I’m on stage tonight!”
What a rollercoaster year this has been but we’re ready !
The #TEDxULB will be livestreamed TODAY at 18:30 !
Join us to hear Stéphanie Feln, Luc de Branbandere, John Rizzo, Marc Vossen, Marc Vossen, Cécile Djunga, Tamar Levi , kjetil & Kaliopi!
It’s going to be amazeballs!
https://www.tedxulb.org/practical-tedxulb-mistfit2020
Before digging into the show, I already wanted to say that I’m proud of the team, they are the real MISFIT of this adventure: Dilhan Camlica, Dimitra Pappa, Giulia Zampedri, Avril Forrest and of course Daphné Vlerick
A big up to all the volunteers and people that help behind the stage!
A big thank you to our mentor and support since the 1st year : Philip Weiss & Nicolas Janssen
And of course, we cannot mention him!
Our biggest misfit : Fabian Delahaut !
Thank you for all our time!
I hope you will not miss the LIVE of tonight!
On that note, let’s get back to the final preparations for tonight!
Ps: I will be on stage tonight, soooo don’t miss it!
FRIDAY NIGHT, FIVER NIGHT on TEDxULB 18:30!!!
Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management
ZN,
Daphné Vlerick wrote:
“I’m on stage tonight!”
After one year of hard work, after months of changing plans A-B-C-D-E, after weeks of stress, it’s finally happening!
The TEDxULB will be livestreamed TODAY at 18:30 !
We know that our speakers are ready: Stéphanie Feln, Luc de Brabandère, Marc Vossen, Cécile Djunga, Tamar Levi, John Rizzo & Kjetil!
You will rock it!
Before digging into the show, I already wanted to say that I’m proud of the team, they are the real MISFIT of this adventure: Dilhan, Dimitra, Giulia, Sissi, Avril & of course, Nicolas!!!
A big up to all the volunteers and people that help behind the stage!
A big thank you to our mentor and support since the 1st year: Philip Weiss & Nicolas Janssen.
And of course, we cannot mention him! Our biggest misfit : Fabian Delahaut ! Thank you for all our time!
I hope you will not miss the LIVE of tonight!
On that note, let’s get back to the final preparations for tonight!
Ps: i will be on stage tonight, soooo don’t miss it!
FRIDAY NIGHT, FIVER NIGHT on TEDxULB 18:30!!!
https://www.facebook.com/events/2366180697026860#tedx#tedxulb#conference#online#free
This is what i call HAPPINESS Thank you all for this amazing experience Thank you best team of the world Dilhan CamlicaNicolas HenryDaphné VlerickGiulia ZampedriAvril ForrestSissy Nguyen HoangThank to all of our volunteers but a special thank you to my beloved speakers team Andres DupontEwa Belibassakis THANK YOU for supporting and believing in us until the end to all of our Speakers Stéphanie FelnCécile Djunga Marc Vossen John Rizzo Kjetil Luc de BrabandereTamar LeviKalliopi BolovinouIt is definitely one of the most powerful and unique experiences of my life