THE INSTRUCTORS
Theodora Zafiropoulos	Despina Kaspiris	Anastasia Veloudos	Theodore Paraskevopoulos
Dora specializes in Thracian and Island dances as well as dances from Asia Minor. She is also an expert on researching the authenticity of dances and costumes.	Debbie is most passionate for dances that originate from the Macedonian and Pontian areas and is also interested in the research of music and song from these regions and more.	Staci brings the deep knowledge and style of Cretan dance to the group and also brings a great background in choreography as well as professional performance style and posture.	Ted's main areas of focus are dances from Macedonia, Thessaly, Epirus and Crete and specializes in theology and history, which greatly benefits the group.
INTERVIEW What got the four of you to the point of wanting to start a group like Paradosi? Basically, there has been such a decline in the quality of dance groups that we each (separately) thought that there had to be another way to expose the world to our beautiful culture. We each saw dance groups ruined by political and personal agendas. People stopped wanting what was traditional, but wanted what was ěcommercialî Greek dance. We feel that a dance group that is partly run by the dancers, under its own umbrella, would be the only way to preserve our dying culture. We were also tired of dance groups that called themselves ětraditionalî when clearly they were not. They falsified the traditions the four of us hold dear, and presented them to the world with a ěHollywoodî mentality. How did the four of you come together and actually start organizing the group? Did you make any personal sacrifices for it? Well, two of us (Dora and Debbie) were very close friends and taught many groups together and seperately. So our opinions were very much the same. Dora and Ted had also worked together on various Greek dance projects. One day the three of us got together which was about 3 ‡ years ago and started talking about the idea of ěPARADOSI (PHDC)î. Later, Anastasia (Staci), had come to a ěKlironomia Dance Conferenceî and expressed similar views on dance. We then met altogether, and ěPARADOSIî was born. From that moment on, we started researching and studying Greek dance in its authentic form more intensely. We then scouted and compiled a list of dancers that we thought would help get this wonderful idea off the ground. We defined what PHDC was, and its mission and philosophy (which was that of the instructors). The sacrifices we had to endure were time and money. We even stopped teaching our other dance groups, as we knew PHDC would take up a lot of our time and energy. So far, its been worth it. As of right now, is Paradosi fulfilling its mandate? Is it harder or easier than you expected to manage a group like this? As of now, PHDC is slowly fulfilling its mandate. It takes time to nurture this idea to maturity. We feel that we have picked the right people to share PHDC with and know its only going to get stronger and better as time goes by. It isnít as hard as we expected, but it is time consuming, and frustrating. Frustrating in a sense that we havenít figured everything out. Some things are best figured out along the way. We feel that a group like this needs all the input possible from the dancers to set the skeleton for the future of PHDC. This is definitely a work in progress. Where do you see Paradosi headed in the future? What are it's goals? PHDC definitely has a difficult purpose to fulfill. We want it to be the product of our ancestors, and the forefather to our future generations. We want PHDC to be as authentic and traditional as possible. We would like other dancers and groups to use the framework that we put in place and create a whole new dance world in Toronto and abroad. We donít only want PHDC to consist of a performing group. As it grows, we want there to be different divisions of learning. From children, intermediates up to a junior group where they would then graduate to the senior performing group. It would be a goal for dancers to set. That way dancers grow with PHDC. We would also like our students to ultimately become instructors themselves. It would be great to be a hub for various associations, to get cultural students to educate their members. We know that the Greek Community of Toronto exists in this city, but it lacks a quality cultural department. We want to replace it, and show people that young individuals have the capability and the passion to do great things like our ancestors before us. If you were to have one wish come true for the group today, what would it be? Just one wish? It would be to inherit ALL the different costumes from Greece. This would then limit the amount of fundraising we have to do. Costumes from Greece are expensive and very difficult to get. Inheriting them would ease a lot of pressure, where we would have the liberty to do many other things. If the question was what would you wish for in full, our answer would be to have all the costumes from Greece, all the music available on CD, musicians to play music from all the different regions, instruments from all the different regions, our very own building for offices and practices, and of course, a zillion dollars!
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