Jon P. Mitchell

Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 2007 ISSN: 1016-3476The Vol.Politics 17, No. of 1: Dance ?–?? 1 THE POLITICS OF DANCE: THE INCORPORATION OF THE PONTIC REFUGEES IN MODERN GREEK CULTURE THROUGH THE MANIPULATION OF DANCING PRACTICES IN A NORTHERN GREEK VILLAGE MAGDA ZOGRAFOU University of Athens The present paper is concerned with the analysis and contextualisation of ‘Pontian’ dance performances in Northern Greece as highly politicised sites for the articulation of identities, histories and ideological narratives of belonging. Following the argument that dance is an embodied discourse intimately related to the construction of identity, the paper explores collective, hegemonic representations of inclusion and exclusion, Sameness and Otherness as these are negotiated in time and space. The protagonists of this ethnography, confronted with the grand narrative of Hellenism, reflexively engage in a struggle to remain a distinct and yet central part of modern Greek culture by carefully and reflexively meditating in the politics of the dance, tradition, Pontianness and Greekness in Aegean Macedonia. Introduction The aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of dance as a context for the articulation and negotiation of identity with reference to a group of Pontian refugees and their descendents who live in the village of Agioneri in Northern Greece. Due to the fact that dance closely relates to issues concerning identity, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social and political status, it provides a ‘corporeal’ impetus for dialogue among the social sciences (Buckland 2001:1) and it is thus a topic open to interdisciplinary analysis (Kurath 1960). In this paper I assume an ethnographic approach to dance, arguing from an anthropological point of view that dance practices are performative fields imbued with social meaning (Desmond 1997a), that both structure and are structured by human experience. The ethnographic basis for this paper is the result of fieldwork I undertook in (Palio) Agioneri during the mid-eighties concentrating on the dance practices of its inhabitants. My informants came from the south-eastern Black Sea region (Pontus) as a result of the forcible exchange of populations Copyright © 2007 Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta. 2 Magda Zografou between Greece and Turkey, mandated by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, and identified themselves as Pontians (cf. Zografou 1989; 1993; 1999). The impetus for revisiting the highly-politicised nature of the Pontian dances however, was provided by the closing ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Conversely to the festivities that surrounded the opening of the games—praised by the majority of the Greek public as being ‘truly cosmopolitan’—the closing ceremony was seen by many as ‘introverted’ and too ‘Greek-specific’ for such an international occasion. Both performances were in reality characterised by the effort to put ‘a culture in a bottle’ so to speak, and were certainly revealing to which aspects of the culture were perceived as worthy enough to be put in the bottle and which were not; and Pontian dance, (namely Sera or Pyrrhic dance) was included. It was performed as part of the closing ceremony by a highly-skilled group and its very existence in the curriculum of the festivities denoted the prestige, centrality and prominence of the ‘Pontian element’ (pontiako stoiheio) in the official version of modern Greek culture that the organisers wished to display to the world. The course of the different dances once performed by populations in the Black Sea, before they eventually almost merged into one choreographic style, the differences between Pontians and their continuous struggle to reconcile Sameness and Otherness, Pontianness and Greekness, refugeeness and integration is a story that could not of course fit the closing ceremony of the Olympic games. For it is any case an entirely different matter, one that I wish to touch upon in this paper. According to Thomas (2000: 128) bodies have their own history, yet this history is never completely theirs. Through taking a closer look at the experiences and strategies of the inhabitants of Agioneri, I wish to demonstrate the role of hegemonic ideologies in the structuring of performative experience as well as the ability of the social actor to reflexively rework the constraints of social life. Reflexivity and performance are of course two concepts that may be seen as not easily fitting together in a unified analysis. This perception mainly originates from the work of Bourdieu on the body and his classic concept of the habitus (1977; 1990) most probably inspired by Mauss’s classic essay Les techniques du corps (1934). Bourdieu maintains that embodiment is a never finished process (1990) and that every action is the product of interaction between a habit and a field that presupposes an expressive interest and a capacity for enactment (1992) and thus he allows space for the theorisation of an autonomous subject. Nevertheless, his conceptualisation of the habitus as a ‘structuring principle’ that is ‘inscribed in the body’, providing it with ‘a practical knowledge’ that ‘lies beyond the grasp of consciousness’ (1977: 94) poses certain difficulties in the analysis The Politics of Dance 3 of embodiment as a reflexive project. There is a question then, whether dance as a performance and as an embodied discourse is, or is not, beyond the grasp of consciousness. Undoubtedly, as a number of dance theorists suggest, a dancing style is both about personal (and collective) dispositions, the result of bodily technique acquired through years of practice, as well as selected and organised human movements that potentially characterise groups of people (cf. Birdwhistell 1980; Desmond 1997b; Kaeppler 2001). Stylistic modes also seem to be fabricated and derived from the construction of the dancing context and as Jacobson (1981) claims (in terms of ‘poetic grammar’, following the same analogy) the ‘moving patterns’ appear to comprise the corpus of meaning inscribed onto the dancing. It is however, perhaps, also true that in the analysis of dance we have overlooked ‘the capacity of actors to reflect upon the conditions of their existence’ (Cowan 1990: 130). As Cowan suggests in relation to her own informants, subjects ‘are reflexive about their performances even though the self-consciousness this entails is never unmediated and the understandings thus generated are always ideologically laden’ (1990: 131). In relation to my own informants Cowan’s aforementioned observations could not in fact be more accurate. For, during my fieldwork, actors were certainly engaging the dance in a reflexive, albeit never ideologically free manner. It is then the entanglement of performance, ideology, reflexivity and hegemony that I wish to explore in this paper. My central argument is that ‘Pontian customs’ and ‘Pontian dances’ as I understood them in Agioneri were contexts for the negotiation of identity, politics and the interplay between inclusion and exclusion (cf. Jenkins 2002: 124) maintaining their Pontian identity but simultaneously claiming Hellenic identity. In order to substantiate my argument I will first offer a review of the performative construction of Pontian identity against the specific historical, political and cultural background of Greek Macedonia politics. I intend to demonstrate that specific dancing performances were serving as means of negotiation, by the Pontians, of a place in their new country. I will then subsequently focus on an ethnographic analysis of the ‘traditional Pontian marriage’, as it was performed in Agioneri in the mid-eighties, proceeding to discuss certain ideas such as ‘authenticity’ in relation to dance and its identity- making properties and how these ideas contribute to the construction of an identity enough to be presented as Hellenic. I will conclude this paper by demonstrating that a discussion of the ‘Pontian dance’, was finally accepted by the Greek State as ‘worthy’ enough to be part of the national Hellenic history and thus part of the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, much like that dance itself, can never be treated as complete. 4 Magda Zografou Between Controversy and Consent The Pontians of Palio Agioneri originated mainly from the villages of Ivanpol and Moula Moustafa on the eastern-south coast of the Black Sea, and settled in Macedonia in the second decade of the twentieth century. The relocation of my informants, like that of other refugees from the Black Sea and Asia Minor, was the result of the forcible exchange of Christian and Muslim populations between Greece and Turkey mandated by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) that was meant to guarantee a relative degree of respective homogeneity in critical areas of the newly-consolidated nation-states (cf. Karakasidou 1997: 142–145, Voutira 1997, cf. Hirschon 1989). Similarly to other refugees from Anatolia, Eastern Thrace and Asia Minor, the Pontians settled in Macedonia critically affecting the “region’s ethnic tapestry” (Karakasidou 1997: 142). These displaced populations were of course by no means homogenous. Despite the fact that they had a common religious faith, they spoke different languages and dialects, had their own varied customs, rituals and distinct identifications. Yet, the national government readily identified them as Greeks, while the refugees themselves were also eager to embrace Hellenism (Karakasidou 1997: 148, Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos 2001: 407). Karakasidou (1997) attempts to explain the politics of refugee identity by putting forward an economic argument. She states that “[t]he only claim that refugee settlers had on the region was that they (too) regarded themselves as Greeks, and, as part of the imagined community of the Hellenes, were entitled to a portion of the hereditary estate of the national claim, so to speak” (ibid.: 148). While the author here may be right, the opposite argument is also apposite. Refugees from Pontus and Asia Minor alike shared and cultivated for decades after their relocation a rhetoric of paradise lost in respect to their places of origin, their lost properties and homelands (Pentzopoulos 1962: 205, Hirschon 1989: 15–17, 1993: 327– 330).

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