I. THE CELL

discerning
Danced within the dimensions of a monastic cell to sounds gathered at a female monastery overlooking Mount Olympus.
Nuns recite Kassia’s epigrams on monastic life and chant her most famous hymn “Lord, the woman fallen into many sins.”
We consider the different paths women have taken to the monastic life over the centuries. Listening and feeling for boundaries, but also for portals. Discerning what is restriction, what is freedom on either side of the cloister wall.
A mallet strikes the talanton, a long wooden block, calling the nuns to prayer. The slam and lock of the cloister gate bids visitors farewell. The rhythms of each woman’s holy routine continue.

II. THE WHEEL

learning
This hypnotic Byzantine vocal exercise, based on the medieval “Wheel of St. John Koukouzelis,” cycles through the musical modes of Byzantine chant.
Sand and black stones, indicating the different modes, recall Aegean island mosaics.
The chant’s syllables symbolize a prayer. The infinitely repeating pattern of the Wheel suggests the continuous life force of the tradition, passed from chanter to chanter.
Filmed in a Native American Garden, itself a living, sacred space of learning. It honors the land’s original inhabitants and features flora native to the region.

III. THE HATE

sharpening
We imagine Kassia’s experience living the monastic life in the midst of a heaving cosmopolis.
This film interprets Kassia’s epigrammatic verses that all begin with the word Μισώ (I Hate). Her muscular condemnation of hypocrisy is a list 27 lines long of the people and behaviors she most hates.
Lay chanters, monastics and artists recite her rebukes in medieval Greek, English, and also Turkish. Though Kassia’s monastery does not survive, that of her spiritual father still stands in ruins (pictured here) in Kassia’s historical home city of Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul.
The texts are bound by a rising and falling Kyrie Eleison.

IV. THE HYMN

protecting
Kassia’s Hymn to St. Pelagia honors the patron saint of performers who converted to the faith and pilgrimaged to Jerusalem. Devout Pelagia identified as the male hermit monk “Pelagios.”
How does it sound?
Kassia’s melody tumbles through scribal hands and chanting voices from the 800s to today.
The signs and formulas of Byzantine notation transmit Kassia’s music. The “ears of the congregation”—the development of the oral tradition—also preserve her work.
The identity of Kassia’s melody depends on the interpreter. We highlight two versions of her Hymn to St. Pelagia: one from a medieval manuscript and one from a 19th-century manuscript.

Noah Amir Arjomand Direction,
Photography

Noah Amir Arjomand is a filmmaker and author. His feature-length documentary Eat Your Catfish (2021) has won awards at international festivals and aired on TV in the US, Europe, and Asia. Noah has produced photo and video work for productions of Morningside Opera, Wet Ink Ensemble, SIREN Baroque, and Mercury Arts. Noah also wrote and directed a series of seven animated educational films for the National Endowment for Democracy and Indiana University. He holds degrees from Princeton and Columbia Universities and is currently studying toward an MFA in writing for the performing arts at the University of California Riverside.

Mariia Bakalo is a choreographer from Ukraine. She is focused on exploration of the role of art in the time of war. In her before-the-war reality, Mariia's artistic research integrated two of her biggest passions, which are literature and dance. Mariia has collaborated with various cultural institutions from Ukraine, Germany, Austria, Lithuania, and the UK. She is currently an MFA candidate at UC Riverside, a recipient of the Gluck Fellowship, as well as I-Portunos, the Danceweb Scholarship Program, and the Tanja Leidke Foundation stipend.

Photo by Oleksiy Papulov

Soprano Brett Umlauf spotlights women composers’ earliest and newest works with her "pealing, focused sound" and "luminous yet earthy” performances (The New York Times). 2023 saw her originate the role of Fleur in Kate Soper’s new opera The Hunt as well as complete a Greek-Turkish Fulbright fellowship, walking in 9th-c. abbess Kassia of Byzantium’s footsteps for her project Hazelnut Road: Vows of Stability, Acts of Mobility. Brett is co-founder of SUORE Project, a trio celebrating nun composers, and was a longtime principal artist at New York City’s Morningside Opera, Company XIV and SIREN Baroque. The Swedish Institute, American Scandinavian Society and Swedish Women's Educational Association have awarded her work.