Having completed HUMAN THIRST (1999), and having been involved in an intense and life-changing love affair, I suddenly realised that I was becoming a very conservative artist, repeating over and over again a style that was successful and, in the process, trapping myself within my own work. I thirsted for a non-narrative creation, and a return to the daring and provocative imagery of my comic books and early works. A year BEFORE HUMAN THIRST I began working on a project that I had planned to call SERIAL KILLER. I led a workshop with a group of people, encouraging improvisation, but after three months I realised that I was unable to produce anything out of this material. I cancelled the show.

A year after HUMAN THIRST, more determined and liberated, I started working again, revisiting some of the images that had emerged from the workshop for SERIAL KILLER, and playing with new material. I encouraged more chaos, and out of this appeared FOR EVER. I was very happy to see that I had a show and characters that made sense without a story. I could have gone yet further, but this was something that I only dared do with 2 (2006), after my Olympic experience. FOR EVER was a real joy for me, both to rehearse and to perform. I felt as though my teenage self was with me once more. During the preparation of FOR EVER, cracks appeared in my long-standing collaboration with Angeliki Stellatou, and we parted ways. She performed the two nights at the Kalamata Dance Festival, but was replaced by Angela Brouskou (the woman who inspired the Sappho segment of MOONS (1992), but never performed the piece) for the long Athens season.

FOR EVER was performed without make-up, like my pre-1990 works. It featured some text, and a diverse, free association soundtrack containing everything from the music of Bach to the songs of Cole Porter. It was my first piece to break the fourth wall, to knowingly play to the audience. I had already been appointed concept designer and director of the Olympic Ceremonies (2004) by this point. It was great fun to perform the dead Marilyn Monroe solo on high heels in front of the Athens 2004 Organising Committee President, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki. FOR EVER played upon the conflict between a cardinal truth - that time will pass and we will die - and the human notion of things, such as love, property, fame and health, lasting for ever. It featured a leitmotif of people being blown away along with bags of rubbish, the wind here representing time, which sweeps away everything in its path. I realised that an emotional journey is possible if one approaches a subject in a multi-faceted way, as if trying to visualise the heart of a diamond by looking through its various cut sides. I say again, this work was without a narrative - while this is simply common sense for other artists, for me it was a revelation. This was the final EDAFOS DANCE THEATRE production.