Dancing Girl On The Porch

The temperature flirted with 100 degrees. I waited for a Handyman to come check out the insolent swamp cooler. It had already been a week and a half: 30 hours without power, a new keyboard that had to be exchanged because the space bar refused to work, and now the swamp cooler insisted on blowing only hot air. This was the week my fond feathered friend, Patti, from California arrived for a visit. “Around 3:30” the Handyman said. Two other friends, Patti, and I planned to leave for Boulder’s Dinner Theatre at 4:30. I only wanted him to be there in time to check out the cooler before departure.

The doorbell barked around 3:40 accompanied with a knock on the door. Relief melted. It had to be Mark, hoping he would magically find a simple solution to the swamp cooler. So sure I was it was indeed him I didn’t look through the front door peephole, but just opened the door.

No, it wasn’t Mark. Rather there stood a slight smiling blond woman, book and large envelope cradled in an arm. With a wave of my hand, I started to shut the door in disappointment, “No, I wasn’t interested.” Why else would a smiling woman with book be standing at my door? A religious nut, that’s who. Someone who wanted to save my soul from the fiery depths of hell, when all I wanted was a working swamp cooler to save me from the relentless flirtation of the sun with the thermometer.

Just before the door closed, I heard, “No, Holly. I’m Thordis Simonsen.” Swinging the door open we broke into laughter. I knew the name. I had even listed her four performances at Miners Alley Playhouse on the website. Producer Rick Bernstein encouraged me to see her show. He met her, watched a rehearsal, becoming awestruck with her and her story. The schedule, however, didn’t allow seeing her performance of Dancing Girl.

Here she was at my door. With my hair in rollers and dressed in cut off jeans, I Joined her on the porch fumbling an apology, but laughingly she quickly responded “I know exactly what you thought.” Within a few minutes the Handyman arrived, climbed on the roof returning with pump in hand. He would replace it either that night or the next morning. The conversation bounced back and forth like an over heated rubber ball between Mark and myself, Thordis and Mark, and Thordis and me.

She planned on mailing the envelope, but decided she also wanted me to read her book, Dancing Girl, themes and Improvisations In A Greek Village Setting, in connection with her staged production scheduled for ten performances at the Denver Victorian Playhouse August 12-September 18.

Because of our unusual introduction, I sensed doing a story would definitely be in order. On the porch we chatted briefly and hurriedly. Yes, I would read the book and the materials, and I would call her, but now I needed to get out of rollers and cut off jeans.

The next morning when Patti took Morgan and Majeska for an eagerly anticipated walk, I flipped through the book and papers Thordis left still chuckling over our unusual introduction.

Of course I would do a story. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make use of the title: Dancing Girl On the Porch.

Once I started her book, I found it difficult to put aside. I knew she lived part of the year in Denver and part of the year in Greece. I knew her show Dancing Girl came with the tantalizing explanation of “an American womanÕs Greek Village odyssey, a dramatic monologue.”

Several days later we sat in her spacious Denver apartment.

Her story blows me away. this energetic passionate woman blows me away. Not because she lives part of the time in Denver and part of the time in Greece, not because she traveled to Greece ingratiating herself in the small village of Elika without knowing the language, not even because she determined to rebuild a roofless stone house by herself stone by stone, that had been used for the previous 70 years to house sheep, although that definitely contributed to my startling awareness.

It is her passion for life; her passion for life as a woman, her passion for life that once faded into a quagmire of distant memories. Embodied by a skillion stories all neatly filed in tidy compartments nestled in her mind, she awoke one day to emptiness where she could have continued to exist, where so many people chose to stay. Wanting to regain the passion, the anything is possible motif; aware of her rich and rewarding life her big question was “what do I do with it?”

Director emeritus of the Women’s Studies program at Colorado State University, Karen Wedge responded with a simple but definite charge: “Take it to young girls and women, to mothers and daughters.” Having already discovered she had a gift for story telling, wanting to get her arms around the fact that she actually restored the neglected house on the side of a hill in Elika, that the women in the village initially were aghast over a woman performing a man’s job, that the house would have to be rebuilt stone by stone, the fact remains she did it.

Showing me photos of the before and after of the house on the hill, I had to ask, “In looking at the house for the first time, what did you think?” implying certainly she had to be overwhelmed by the mere enormity of the job. She didn’t think, her eyes danced. The first thing she saw in the dilapidated roofless house was a large pot of red geraniums growing in a nook of the house. “If you could have seen the view with the wide vista of hills, red tile roofs and church steeple, you’d understand. “She said, always with a smile. She didn’t think about the impossibility. She‘d just do it, with and however it would take. Her core message: anything is possible. “The intellect is not the only way of deciding things, she commented, intuition overriding her sense of reason. “There’s more to knowing than thinking.” Crediting her mother for giving her a great deal of permission, she is able to facilitate through her stories. Without grandiose business education, her mother learned how to run her own business. It would never occur to Thordis to allow the words ‘I can’t’ creep anywhere near her.

She discovered she loved working with her hands, loved finding the right stone to go into the right place. She loved discovering who she was in an unfamiliar setting against a language she learned word by word just as she built her house stone by stone. She came to grips with the observation “We all have feelings that need to be expressed and a spirit that wants to be free.” Her story transcends Denver and Greece, and an unknown village that eventually became hers; her story transcends an abandoned house, her story embodies empowerment.

With a stool, a bell, a staff, and a red scarf Thordis followed her journey from teaching biology and anthropology, to capturing outside stories with photography, to inside stories with her tape recorder, to writing her own stories, to taking them to the stage.

The red scarf brings Irini alive. The dancing girl, Irini, lived with her goats, herded her goats and danced among them. She danced for joy, for celebration. When life dished out disappointing hardship, Irini continued her dancing to transcend beyond what life superficially offered. “And when I die, don’t wear black, don’t cry, wear red and dance and have a party,” In Athens, Thordis bought the red scarf to wear at Irini’s funeral celebration. She wasn’t in Greece when Irini transcended beyond her physical life, but she has the red scarf bought specifically for the dancing girl keeping the spirited goat lady alive, warm and close to her on stage and off.

The ringing of the antique bell signifies in Dancing Girl the beginning of a new story. After her introduction of what drew her to Greece, she tells the Pomegranate story about Martha and Adonis: two people in love, two people forbidden to marry, two people living separate lives side by side, having found one thing binding them together. Thordis explores the world of communication without words with Thea her once upon a time landlady, Her rebuilding the roofless house in the midst of traditional Greek village folk.

As of 1995 Thordis, an independent travel agent, offered small group travel to Greece. On top of performing Dancing Girl and stretching her imagination in getting her message of the celebration that anything is possible, she sets up travel arrangements, books hotels, schedules tours, spending six to eight weeks a year in the fall and spring in Greece. Does she have much time in her house? Last year she said she got to stay there for ten days. After all of the work she put into it, I had to ask, “don’t you get hungry for it?” She’s been asked this question before. With her gifted smile, she answered, “It is the journey that is of value not the destination.”

Not only does Thordis embody skillions of stories, she is a story. She is a story of passion for life, for following a dream, an inclination, a thought, a hope knowing it will lead to another level, another dimension, that boxes people live in are built with the letters: “f-e-a-r, I-c-a-n-’-t-, t-r-a-d-I-t-I-o-n, that anything is possible when one can see the vista rather than the roofless abandoned house.

After her 10 performances at the Vic, Thordis will continue to search out other small theatres to fill their dark times with life and passion. She will. Do not doubt.

Following each performance she holds a talk back time for the audience to begin to grapple with where they are to where they could be.

There will be the tendencies to be overwhelmed with her incredible adventures and accomplishments. That’s not why she does what she does. She doesn’t want to be put on a pedestal. What she wants is for her audience to discover and rediscover their own passion, celebrate their own accomplishments, moving beyond what has been done to what could be.

When she decided to build the house, Thordis never saw the cliff. When it was suggested to her she take her storytelling to the theatres, she saw the cliff and it terrified her. Ah, perspective. If I had seen the house, it would have knocked me to my knees in impossible despair. Rekindled passion carries a huge dose of courage that crackles in her dancing eyes bringing Dancing Girl to my porch in the midst of a hot whirlwind day. Freedom is a privilege to say yes to so many things. She is determined to give back what has so richly been given to her. Although her Dancing Girl story, in all actuality, deserves to be seen by every man, woman, child, and beast, her opening performance and reception at the Vic August 12 will benefit Girls, Inc. of Denver. On August 1 she preformed Dancing Girl pro bono for two Girls, Inc. theatre classes. Their response thrilled her to the core.

In Norwegian, Thordis means metaphorical spirit moving beyond the Now to Possibility.

OK, I just made that up. It isn’t a Norwegian definition, but it is a Thordis definition. Truth isn’t always fact, translating into “there’s more to knowing than thinking,” translating into it is more than OK to color outside the lines, which, after all, is a very big concept to embrace.

The doors at the Vic open at 1:30 PM with curtain at 2:00 PM. For reservations, call (303) 321-5403 orwww.astragreece.com. Herein lies opportunity to glance into a Greek village in transition, and to absorb a storyteller’s passion for life.