In the summer of 1985, Athens is in the throes of Europe’s first cultural capital. On one of these evenings, out of dozens of events in every corner of the city, the archaeological site of the Roman Agora was filled with an eager audience, gathered to listen to Fleury Dantonakis and Dimitra Galani. However, the muse of “Big Erotica”, frightened by what he saw the crowd, left the stage. She saw and forced Dimitra Galani to convince her to return.

In a few days Eleni Kokkidu will remind us of the night that was to be Dantonaki’s last concert, as well as the young years of this woman who enchanted with her voice, the years in America, where she went to study at the age of 19, her stops, her wounds, her shocked inner world.

“The Song of Fleris” is a new monologue that the actress will perform from March 8 at the “Station” theater, a text by prose writer Dimitris Oikonomou directed by Manos Karatsoyannis.

“I didn’t know anything about Fleury except her voice and her songs, says “K” actress. When Hajidaki’s Magalos Erotikos came out, I was 12 years old.” In her house, the record was constantly playing on the player. Her mother, Areti Papoulia, loved theater and music, she even starred in the first post-war film with Ellie Lampeti in 1946, knew Nikos Gatso, Odyssey Elitis, Manos Hadjidaki, Mario Ploritis and instilled in her a deep love of art.

“I played the piano and sang songs from the album. Having a good sense of music, I understood the importance of these songs and the peculiarity of Dantonaki’s voice. For me, he was the holy figure of Greek music. I only knew that he had gone to America, where he met Hadjidaki.”

“In searching of love”

“Fleury said that ‘the audience is nothing but the parents and us, the little defenseless child in front of them.’ She felt that he was her father and he condemned her.”

For the show, he read her interview and, of course, watched the video of Antonis Boskoitis. Eleni Kokkidu says she understands a lot of what Dantonaki went through. Even her stage fright? “Fleury said that ‘the audience is nothing but the parents and us, the little defenseless child in front of them.’ She felt like her father was judging her. He was assertive, strict and at the same time indifferent. I think she was looking for love in her life. It is no coincidence that she did not have a love relationship with any man, she was afraid of them.

The cracks in the soul of this woman began because of a traumatic relationship with her father? Tonis Papadantonakis, director and producer, was busy, his mind was on scripts and films, and when he was sick, he would come home and leave mother and daughter to rot on the wood. They were expected to separate. But one night in Crete, when Fleury was four years old, remained indelible. The little girl was kept by her father for several days, but was consumed by a new scenario, when the four-year-old girl wet her panties, he set fire to her, wanting to teach her what restraint and discipline are. “I felt heat on my skin, I screamed in pain and horror, I begged him to let me go…” – the author describes this scene in his work.

Violence was the beginning of everything for this woman, the actress says, emphasizing that she understood “what Dantonaki was saying about her father and discipline. I didn’t face such situations, but I also had a strict and demanding father who lived a planned life in his mind, and this is what he asked of me and his son: goals and organization for high performance, intellectual and financial. I felt like I was failing and I was always secretly living a second life, I was afraid of it. But I’m lucky he apologized. Two years before his death, he told me: “Now I understand what kind of child you were.” Fleury could not stand the apology and never recovered. Then she ended up in America, took drugs, got into trouble, but they always wanted freedom.

Fleury lived above the people, Eleni Kokkidu had a difficult life “until the age of 40, when I was close to death. Then I said to myself: “And it is enough to see the sunrise.” She says she has a poetic attitude to life, and when everyday life suffocates her, she takes refuge in the mountains and at her grandmother’s house outside of Tripoli. And the heroine playing on the stage loved nature. “Only that Dantonaki couldn’t handle a lot of things. She obviously had a shaky background and ended up in and out of psychiatric hospitals and living in isolation.”

In search of their commonality, she found her own darkness and joy to approach the role. “If I didn’t have an aesthetic affinity, I wouldn’t play Fleury on stage.” Of course he sings on the show. “Singing for her was redemption, for me it was a support. Fleury is a meeting with my youth, with who I am.

Until Easter, because after that Eleni Kokkidu will enter the world of Euripides’ Hekaba, which she will perform in “Summer in Epidaurus” directed by Ios Voulgarakis. As for Murmur television, it ends in June. “Too much time has passed and it could become a routine. I had to move on,” he says confidently.