Part One – Origin

Calm and soothing music (with dark overtones) – improv3-15.10.07.mp3

A solo piece.

She lives at the bottom of the abyss, where no natural light exists (the stage is dark). Strong use of projection to show jellyfish and phosphorescent creatures (Jean Painlevé). Use of spotlight

Possible use of projection to create illusion of looking up towards the surface of water.

Rape by Poseidon.

Part Two - Vanity

The ringing of bells or cymbals – a procession/mourning or announcement (for her beauty, innocence), preceding the fearsome medusa.

A body is dragged across the stage, a white sheet tied around the ankles, held over the shoulder, leaning forward and methodically , slowly walking to the centre of the stage..

An inanimate figure comes to life while watched by another.
2 dancers perform a slow perfectly mirrored, reflective movement, perhaps sometimes being physically joined, holding hands, leaning outwards, face to face, exploring (the medusa’s vanity and the mirror within the myth)

Part Three - Transformation

Sounds of screams juxtaposed with a calm masked attitude, or innocence/incomprehension at her own destructiveness.

A mixture of taichi and butoh movement (iron wrapped in velvet)

Use of unnatural head angles and covering the face, with hands or with one or several masks, or a veil. To allude to the severed head the mask is held up defiantly to the gods and again worn. In arrogance and vanity the head is held back as if possessed of the spirit of the snake (one version of the myth) about to strike..

The north African version of the medusa myth, influence for percussion. Spiky electronics, off-kilter rhythms for a passionate, menacing martial tribal dance.
Music to let the dancers release inner rage, tension, fear, frustration, hatred, malice, expression of power.

Imagery could include close-up of dancers movement, ‘pixel painting’ (corrupt mpeg footage I have of the classic horror film ‘I spit on your grave’ – used sparingly in an abstract way. Allusions to pornography?

.

For musician: diving mask, other masks.
Charvel: evil unison tuning
Drums / guide tracks
Mirrored scene – drums with delay, symmetry.

Notes

Cinematic set pieces
Iconographic, archetypal, resonant images created at the beginning of each scene by combining first still pose of dancers, projection/lighting, sound/music

..

Medusa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Greek mythology, Medusa (Greek: Μέδουσα, "guardian, protectress"[1]) was a monstrous chthonic female character; gazing upon her could turn onlookers to stone. She was beheaded by the human hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as a weapon[2] until giving it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In classical antiquity and today, the image of the head of Medusa finds expression in the apotrope known as the Gorgoneion. Some classical references refer to three Gorgons; Jane Ellen Harrison considered that the tripling of Medusa into a trio of sisters was a secondary feature in the myth:
"The triple form is not primitive, it is merely an instance of a general tendency... which makes of each woman goddess a trinity, which has given us the Horae, the Charites, the Semnai, and a host of other triple groups. It is immediately obvious that the Gorgons are not really three but one + two. The two unslain sisters are mere appendages due to custom; the real Gorgon is Medusa." (Harrison 1903:187)
The three gorgon sisters—Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale—were children of Phorcys and Ceto, or sometimes, Typhon and Echidna, in each case chthonic monsters from an archaic world. Their genealogy is shared with other sisters, the Graeae, as in Aeschylus's Prometheus Unbound, who places both trinities of sisters far off "on Kisthene's dreadful plain":
"Near them their sisters three, the Gorgons, winged
With snakes for hair— hated of mortal man—"
While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her sisters as beings born of monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the fifth century began to envisage her as a being beautiful as well as terrifying. In an ode written in 490 BCE Pindar already speaks of "fair-cheeked Medusa".[3] In a late version of the Medusa myth, related by the Roman poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.770), Medusa was originally a beautiful nymph, "the jealous aspiration of many suitors," but when she was raped by the "Lord of the Sea" Poseidon in Athena's temple, the goddess transformed her beautiful hair to serpents and she made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn a man to stone.
In all the versions, while Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon, she was beheaded in her sleep by the hero Perseus, who was sent to fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus. With help from Athena and Hermes, who supplied him with winged sandals, Hades's cap of invisibility, a sword, and a mirrored shield, he accomplished his quest. The hero slew Medusa by looking at her reflection in the mirror instead of directly at her to prevent being turned into stone. When the hero severed Medusa's head, from her neck two offspring sprang forth: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor who later became the hero wielding the golden sword.
Jane Ellen Harrison notes that "her potency only begins when her head is severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a body later appended... the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood." (Harrison 1922:187). In Odyssey xi, Homer does not specifically mention the Gorgon Medusa,
"lest for my daring Persephone the dread :From Hades should send up an awful monster's grizzly head"
Harrison's translation notes "the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the terror out of the Gorgon (Harrison 1922: 187, note 3).
According to Ovid, in North-West Africa Perseus flew past the Titan Atlas, who stood holding the sky aloft, and transformed him into stone. In a similar manner, the corals of the Red Sea were said to have been formed of Medusa's blood spilled onto seaweed when Perseus laid down the petrifying head beside the shore. Furthermore the poisonous vipers of the Sahara, in the Argonautica 4.1515, Ovid's Metamorphoses 4.770 and Lucan's Pharsalia 9.820, were said to have grown from spilt drops of her blood.
Perseus then flew to his mother's island where she was about to be forced into marriage with the king. He cried out "Mother, shield your eyes", and everyone but his mother was turned into stone by the gaze of Medusa's head.
Then he gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the Aegis. Some say the goddess gave Medusa's magical blood to the physician Asclepius, some of which was a deadly poison and the other had the power to raise the dead.

Modern interpretations

Psychoanalysis

In 1940, Sigmund Freud's Das Medusenhaupt (Medusa's Head) was published posthumously. This article lay the framework for his significant contribution to a body of criticism surrounding the monster. Medusa is presented as “the supreme talisman who provides the image of castration -- associated in the child's mind with the discovery of maternal sexuality -- and its denial. The snakes are multiple phalluses and petrifaction represents the comforting erection.”[4][5] Psychoanalysts continue archetypal literary criticism to the present day. In 2002's The Rape of Medusa in the Temple of Athena: Aspects of Triangulation in the Girl by Dr. Beth Seeley, analyzes Medusa's punishment for the ‘crime’ of having been raped in Athena's temple as an outcome of the goddess' unresolved conflicts with her father, Zeus.[6]

Feminism

In the 20th Century, feminists have reassessed Medusa's appearances in literature and in modern culture, including the use of Medusa as a logo by fashion company Versace.[7][8][9] The attack on Medusa is discussed as a potential example of violence against women or rape.
The name "Medusa" itself is often used in ways not directly connected to the mythological figure but to suggest the gorgon's abilities or connote malevolence; despite her origins as a beauty, the name in common usage "came to mean monster."[10] The book Female Rage: Unlocking Its Secrets, Claiming Its Power by Mary Valentis and Anne Devane notes that "When we asked women what female rage looks like to them, it was always Medusa, the snaky-haired monster of myth, who came to mind ... In one interview after another we were told that Medusa is 'the most horrific woman in the world' ... [though] none of the women we interviewed could remember the details of the myth."[11]

The GORGON MEDUSA

Her Name and Origin

Medusa means "sovereign female wisdom," in Sanskrit it'sMedha, Greek Metis, Egyptian Met or Maat.

Medusa was actually imported into Greece from Libya where she was worshipped by the Libyan Amazons as their Serpent-Goddess. Medusa (Metis) was the destroyer aspect of the Great Triple Goddess also called Neith, Anath, Athene or Ath-enna in North Africa and Athana in 1400 c. BC Minoan Crete.

Medusa was originally an aspect of the goddess Athene from Libya where she...

...was worshipped by the Libyan Amazons as their Serpent-Goddess. Medusa (Metis) was the destroyer aspect of the Great Triple Goddess also called Neith, Anath, Athene or Ath-enna in North Africa and Athana in 1400 c. BC Minoan Crete. ...

In her images, her hair sometimes resembles dread locks, showing her origins in Africa. There she had a hidden, dangerous face. It was inscribed that no one could possibly lift her veil, and that to look upon her face was to glimpse ones own death as she saw your future.

Medusa as an Archetype

Medusa has historically been seen as the archetype of the nasty mother, however she is far more complex. She symbolizes the following:

Sovereign female wisdom. The female mysteries. All the forces of the primordial Great Goddess: The Cycles of Time as past, present and future. The Cycles of Nature as life, death and rebirth. She is universal Creativity and Destruction in eternal Transformation. She is the Guardian of the Thresholds and the Mediatrix between the Realms of heaven, earth and the underworld. She is Mistress of the Beasts. Latent and Active energy.

Connection to the earth. The union of heaven and earth. She destroys in order to recreate balance. She purifies.

She is the ultimate truth of reality, the wholeness beyond duality. She rips away our mortal illusions. Forbidden yet liberating wisdom. The untamable forces of nature. As a young and beautiful woman she is fertility and life. As crone she consumes by devouring all on the earth plane. Through death we must return to the source, the abyss of transformation, the timeless realm. We must yield to her and her terms of mortality. She reflects a culture in harmony with nature.