<P> The avant - garde choreographer, director and dancer Dimitris Papaioannou was responsible for the critically successful opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games, with a conception that reflected the classical influences on modern and experimental Greek dance forms . </P> <P> There were several interconnected traditions of painting in ancient Greece . Due to their technical differences, they underwent somewhat differentiated developments . Not all painting techniques are equally well represented in the archaeological record . The most respected form of art, according to authors like Pliny or Pausanias, were individual, mobile paintings on wooden boards, technically described as panel paintings . Also, the tradition of wall painting in Greece goes back at least to the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age, with the lavish fresco decoration of sites like Knossos, Tiryns and Mycenae . </P> <P> Much of the figural or architectural sculpture of ancient Greece was painted colourfully . This aspect of Greek stonework is described as polychrome (from Greek πολυχρωμία, πολύ = many and χρώμα = colour). Due to intensive weathering, polychromy on sculpture and architecture has substantially or totally faded in most cases . </P> <P> Byzantine art is the term created for the Eastern Roman Empire from about the 5th century AD until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 . The most salient feature of this new aesthetic was its "abstract," or anti-naturalistic character . If classical art was marked by the attempt to create representations that mimicked reality as closely as possible, Byzantine art seems to have abandoned this attempt in favor of a more symbolic approach . The Byzantine painting concentrated mainly on icons and hagiographies . </P>

Which cultures contributed to the development of classic greece