Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T00:32:00.917Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Emerging Frameworks for Engaging Precarity and “Otherness” in Greek Contemporary Dance Performances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2019

Abstract

At the dawn of the European refugee crisis, and in the middle of the ongoing sociopolitical and financial crisis in Greece, Greek choreographers started creating dance works that engaged immigrants and refugees. In most such initiatives, improvisation became the tool for bridging the disparity between the professional dancers and the “untrained” participants, who were often the vulnerable populations of refugees and asylum seekers. In this essay, I question the ethics and aesthetics of these methodological approaches utilized for staging encounters between natives and migrants through dance. In particular, I consider the significance of improvisation as potentially perpetuating hierarchical inequalities in the framework of Western concert dance, while I also highlight the ways that such artistic endeavors end up presenting immigrants and refugees as “Others.”

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Dance Studies Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Andronikidis, Panagiotis. 2013. “PASStresPASS 2013—Performance.” Accessed May 10, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ5ErXuYkCk&t=564sGoogle Scholar
BBC News. 2016. “Migrant Crisis: Migration to Europe explained in seven charts.” BBC.com, March 4. Accessed December 12, 2016. www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Cabot, Heath. 2014. On the Doorstep of Europe: Asylum and Citizenship in Greece. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, Danielle. 2010. I Want to Be Ready: Improvised Dance as a Practice of Freedom. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Goro, Ermira. 2014. Interviewed by the author via Skype. August 27.Google Scholar
Gourgouris, Stathis. 2010. “We are an Image of the Future. The Greek Revolt of December 2008 (review).” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 28 (2): 366371.Google Scholar
Kitromilides, Paschalis. 2013. Enlightenment and Revolution: The Making of Modern Greece. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1985. Ethics and Infinity. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
Mihos, Konstantinos. 2014. Interviewed by the author at Wrong Movement Dance Studio, Athens. May 11.Google Scholar
Novack, Cynthia J. 1990. Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Panourgia, Neni. 2009. Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Paxton, Steve. 2003. “Drafting Interior Techniques.” In Taken by Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, edited by Albright, Ann Cooper, and Gere, David, 175184. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Pewny, Katharina. 2011. Das Drama des Prekären: Über die Wiederkehr der Ethik in Theater und Performance. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag.Google Scholar
Pewny, Katharina. 2012. “The Ethics of Encounter in Contemporary Theater Performances.” Journal of Literary Theory 6 (1): 271278.Google Scholar
Sennett, Richard. 1998. The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat. The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Wickstrom, Maurya. 2012. Performances in the Blockades of Neoliberalism: Thinking the Political Anew. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Zervou, Natalie. 2017Fragments of the European Refugee Crisis: Performing Displacement and the Re-Shaping of Greek Identity.” TDR/The Drama Review 61 (2): 3247.Google Scholar