Storyboard: Openings through the lens of reverberations, computer-generated

In the openings storyboard, we see figures with outstretched arms; along with the use of the butterfly stroke and the wording ‘How does a butterfly transform?’, I get a sense of both male figures, Alexandros and Costas, emerging from the process of becoming – the transformation from native Greek to Greek/Australian, Greek first, Australian second – as powerful. I see a strong desire for connection as represented through modes of transportation or travel, links to history such as the genocide of Greeks in the Pontus region in 1922 and the survival and endurance of this cultural group, and the participants’ current physical location of Melbourne, connecting to Greece whether in memory, virtually, or physically one day in the future. In terms of echoes, there are means of transportation such as planes and tension via the images of Greek locales placed amidst characteristic Melbourne elements such as trams. Finally, we see the freedom of dance juxtaposed against the dark genocide in which the human rights of Pontians were suppressed on religious and ethnic grounds by the Ottoman Turks. Movement is visible through dance, swimming, and flying.