Our Classic Greek connection was immortalised by Homer when he shipwrecked Odysseus on Ramla il-Hamra in Gozo some 3,000 years ago. I kept a date with the wife of the latter at the MITP black-box theatre. I approached the scene with trepidation as contemporary dance is not my natural choice. The invite said this show was called, Penelope – Dust in our awakened dreams – by The Rubberbodies Collective in collaboration with the dancer/choreographer of international repute Athanasia Kanellopoulou.

What was it all about? I do not wish to say anything that will scare people from ever venturing to see something so amazingly unusual. Immediately someone tries to explain what Rubberbodies set out to do, then the bums-on-seats comptometer starts diminishing in numbers. This was a one-woman performance where not one word was uttered and an emotionally moving story was told in no uncertain manner.

This type of agile eloquence is called Tanztheatre or rather the combination of legitimate theatre and dance, as its originator Pina Bauche named it in the Seventies. But even that is not so reassuringly enticing. How does it work? It is a series of creative ideas and inventive movement that originates a minimalist, capable vernacular exchanged between performer and audience.

OK fine! But how does it really work? Let me remind you of when we were little kids of 7 or 8 and the girls seduced little boys to play a pretend game of mummies and daddies and the girls were always the mummies, who had the baby, and the boys were only the doctor who delivered it. The boys were the innocent ones but the girls were the inventive ones. Do you remember how we played in the fields and how dust was our base and how a twig, a ribbon and a piece of cloth were the elaborate costumes and props? We believed in the reality of the moment then. Our space had imaginary elaborate walls dressed with hospital equipment. We believed every instant we experienced. Tanztheatre works exactly in the same way, only with grown-ups performing.

In dire circumstances the human re-invents himself. The harder the times you go through the more your imagination is fired. Antonin Artaud in the 20’s and 30’s originated the Poor Theatre and Theatre of Cruelty. With a few props, a lot of mess and water on the floor and a few words he could evoke all the emotions needed in the daily saga of man. The body language gained in value and movement superseded speech. He used recognizable ritual and unorthodox and unnatural body movement. Forty years later Pina Bauch added music, painting, cinema to the performance space and replaced actors with dancers who had a better body movement vernacular. This became total theatre in spite of its simplicity. It became a sort of unsophisticated performance of a human dimension. It became a re-assuring communication from a human to another human.

Are you still with me? Have I lost you? In the Rubberbodies’ show, Penelope – Dust in our awakened dreams (A journey of unravelling memories, seeking hope). The dust of the title is the sediment, silt and sand washed down by the river of our life journey. Personal stories but also intra national struggles all influence who we are.

You have just contributed to Greece’s economic bail out. This performance cost much less. In return we were treated to an emotional archaeological dig in the Classical heritage, which gave us Homer’s fabulous Hollywood story Odysseus (Ulysses for the Romans). At the MITP we met his wife, the epitome of marital fidelity Penelope.

I know that is a deep emotional story of a many years’ long silent wait. How can Miss Kanellopoulou tell it without words? And there’s the rub. Ms.K has a lanky body that is a superhumanly trained and jellyfied. She can change herself into any shape. Do not get me wrong. This was not a virtuoso contortionist act in a circus. All the shapes meant something particular in the human emotional vocabulary.

Penelope came out in a half light and waved hysterically as her imaginary husband sailed off to the Trojan War. Immediately she fetches a green material and starts weaving and unweaving it. (That was Penelope’s trick to keep her suitors at bay while she prepared a burial shroud for her missing husband).

Immediately it turns out that the green cloth is indeed a tailor-made soft jacket, which she hugs and smells and pets like the last memory of her departed loved one. Ms. K slips on one of the sleeves and goes on to mime with it the movements of her husband’s arm still petting her and embracing her dearly. This is usually a mime artist’s vocabulary often used for technical effect only. In fact I felt Ms. K used it too early. I did not know this was going to be the lite-motif of her husband’s spiritual presence.

We soon got to equate the green material to indicate the imagined presence of Ulysses, which stood in perfect syntony with her burnt-orange colour dress.

And where is the dance, you may well ask? You know what happens with a jazz musician or an abstract painter when left to his own devices? There is no space that can contain them. Same with our Penelope, she marched into the audience and defied us with her gigantic eyes to doubt her sincerity. She unleashed a barrage of abstract and obtuse movements that engaged us immediately in a game of deciphering.

Penelope (Ms K) went on to live through the suffering of loneliness, abandonment, doubting, anger, vindictiveness, self-pity, erotic sensations and a whole range of delicate emotions. Soon we could not distinguish between the life experience of fictitious Penelope or the real life Athanasia.

She kicked up the sands of her intimate memories with such vehemence that she became immaterial like a mirage in the deserted space. These actions were expressed in such violent speed, sometimes vicious and sometimes soft and in slow tempo that they kept us mesmerized. If man were ever capable of building a non-stop motion machine she would be it. I purposely did not use the word rhythm lest I give the impression of orthodox measured music.

Penelope sent out invisible love messages from her bosom and received secret news of war by means of a few slips of paper thrown in from the wings at human height. Eventually she perceived a lot of gossip or signals from the air around her (or perhaps the gods above her) when a rain of printed sheets landed on the audience.

She tried to devour these snippets to quench her curiosity and anguish but she choked on them. At long last a slow shower of green leaves drenched her and bathed her in a green light and she knew her loved one was on his way back, safe and sound. She came out to us in the audience again and with a big smile waved at the approaching galleon bringing her loved one home with the new hope of springtime.

Matthew Pandolfino the visual artist designed the minimal scenery and versatile costume. Jimmy Grima designed the eloquent lighting plot and directed Ms Athanasia, thereby fulfilling his mission of making Rubberbodies relevant to the Malta theatre scene. Mario Sammut (Cygna) surpassed himself in composing music by mixing electronic and classical style passages so consonant with the dancer’s movements that you cannot image the performance without his soothing music. Rebecca Camilleri illustrated and wrote an elaborate programme that should be a keepsake for any student of theatre.

I understand the Anasthasia Kanellopoulou is teaching contemporary dance at the University of Malta. This opportunity and her collaboration with Rubberbodies should make her visit to Malta as significant to the performing arts scene as her ancestor was to Gozo tourism.