Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 2007 ISSN: 1016-3476The Vol.Politics 17, No. of 1: Dance ?Ð?? 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: 142Ð145, 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: 15Ð17, 1993: 327Ð 330). It has also been documented that upon their arrival refugees were met with hostility by the local population who tended to dismiss them as ‘Turks’ or ‘Turkseeds’ (Salamone 1987: 101; Hirschon 1989: 30–31; Karakasidou 1997: 157, 159, 160Ð161, Voutira 1997: 120; Kirtsoglou and Sistani 2003: 203Ð204). The refugees themselves on the other hand promoted a discourse of superiority in relation to mainland Greeks (Salamone and Stanton 1986: 101; Hirschon 1989: 30Ð33; Voutira 1997: 120; Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos 2001: 406Ð408). If refugees are to be seen as ‘interest groups’ (Hirschon 2000: 164; Karakasidou 1997: 149), then the discursive and practical cultivation of difference rather than sameness and their extensive and recurrent allusions to what they lost can be seen as “conscious attempts to claim compensation” (Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos 2001: 398) from the host country. The Politics of Dance 5

The politics of identity and identification are then not a simple matter. Through selective memory and forgetting (cf. Paradelis 1999: 40; Papadakis 1993: 139; Carsten 1995: 330) my Pontian informants, like other refugee groups, engaged in an active process of shaping the self as a simultaneously privileged and disadvantaged member of Greek society. Both these subjective positions, as well as those of difference and sameness were crucial to refugee survival and development. Equally crucial in this process was the often idealised memory of patridha (homeland) as a symbolic context of identity- making. Much in the same fashion to other refugee groups, the Pontians of Agioneri frequently made references to their former homes outside Greece, referring to them as their patridha (homeland) (cf. Loizos 1981; Hirschon 1989, 1993; Fann 1991; Karakasidou 1997: 150Ð151). For Pontians in particular, the land of Pontus on the Black Sea, associated with the medieval empire of Trebizond, lies at the core of their Pontian identity (Fann 1991: 341). The latter supposes that Pontian refugees who arrived in Greece during the inter-war period originated in the same fatherland and thus share a common identity, history and culture1 (Fann 1991: 341). Pontic dress, dialect, songs and dances accompanied by the traditional Pontiac violin or lyre (kemendja or kemendjes) are tangible expressions of such a shared culture. The constitution of civic associations linked with dance associations are, as Voutira notes, ‘critical in cultivating the group’s sense of distinctiveness and in reinforcing its identity vis-a-vis the host society’ (1997: 120). Combining political with ‘cultural’ activities, those associations were responsible for the daily practical problems of Pontiac refugees, and for expanding their members’ awareness and strengthening their sense of common identity that was conceived as being part of Hellenism but distinct from that of non- Pontian Greeks (cf. Voutira 1997: 121). Founded by active intellectual Pontians Ðteachers, members of the parliament and religious leaders- these associations had a twofold purpose. One the one hand they acted as ‘loci of social memory’ actively conveying ‘forms of collective refugee identity to the younger generations’ (Voutira 1997: 130) while on the other, they purposively blurred territorial and symbolic borders (Barth 1969, Donnan and Wilson 1998, Cohen 1986, Horsman and Marshall 1995) between Pontians and local Greeks in search of soothing cultural differences between the two groups (Samouilidis 1986, Manos 2004). Engaged in an often ambivalent politics of identity and oscillating between being Hellenes and being Pontians, my informants Ðlike other Pontic-Greeks- sought to unify their internal diversities in the interest of promoting a common Pontic identity that was distinct from a non-Pontic one, while simultaneously highlighting their rightful belonging to a Hellenic heritage. 6 Magda Zografou

Thus, the associations created and promoted a common Pontic repertoire in terms of music and dance, incorporating dances from all the Pontic territories in Asia Minor (Koutsogiannopoulos 1967).2 The internal variations of the Pontic dancing repertoire were reflected in official and unofficial interpretations of the identity of different dances. Pontian dances can hence be differentiated as Omal (syrto), Karsilidiko (from the area of Kars), Omal of Kerasunda or Omal of Trapezounda (Trebizond or Trabzond) and so forth, where the origin of each dance is also meant to reveal the origin of different Pontian populations who conventionally performed it. Even though these oppositions are latent, they did not constitute an open confrontation among the Pontians of different localities who sacrificed their sense of locality in favour of the ideal of ‘common belonging’ (Nitsiakos 1991: 61). Different dances from different areas of Pontus were thus made to fit into the single generalized category of ‘Pontian dances’ that was meant to reflect the sense of common ‘Pontian identity’ that all refugees from the Black Sea shared. The Pontian identity, however, was not only instituted on the basis of the similarity between Pontians, but also in relation to their difference from non-Pontic Greeks. The distinctiveness of the Pontic-Greeks was, until recently, evident in the fact that Pontian dancing was not incorporated into the curriculum of the Greek educational system. In the same line with the state, well-established dancing associations in Greece, such as the ‘Lyceum of the Greeks’, excluded Pontian dances from its repertoire while the earlier Ðpost Second World War—‘Dora Stratou’ incorporated in its curricula such dances, and this was always accomplished with the co-operation of by then well-established Pontian dancing groups. This general exclusion of the Pontian dance from the wider dancing education in Greece resulted in the cultivation of the assumption that it is only the Pontians who can properly dance Pontian dances. This view of Pontian dance—now commonplace among Pontians as well—represents and enforces wider Greek perceptions of the ‘uniqueness’ of the Pontic dancing repertoire. The obliteration of differences between Pontians in favour of one common Pontian identity that was distinct from that of non-Pontic Greeks, is only one of the axes along which the sense of self is being enacted among the refugees from the Black Sea. The association of Pontians with Hellenism is an equally important dimension and a two way process promoted equally by the state and by Pontians themselves (cf. Hamilakis and Yalouri 1999: 15). In the first stages of my research an elderly Pontian man told me: ‘Did you know that we, Pontians, descend from the ancient Spartans?’ The national hegemonic version of history which strategically connects modern Greeks with the classical past in a discourse of unbreakable continuity (Herzfeld 1982: 119, The Politics of Dance 7

1987; Karakasidou 1997; Sutton 1998; Hirschon 2000; Hamilakis & Yalouri 1999), is adopted by Pontic Greeks and reflected in their perceptions of dancing patterns. In fact, the case of Pontian dances is I believe a clear ethnographic documentation of how a ‘literate national high culture’ (Gellner 1983) influences the construction of ‘imagined’ historical, cultural and political communities (Anderson 1983). Pontians in Greece are adamant that their Serra dance is the ancient Greek dance of Pyrrhic. This belief probably originates in the state’s decision to revive the ancient Delphic celebrations in 1927, with the encouragement of the prominent Greek poet Aggelos Sikelianos. During this revival the best Pontian dancers were invited to re-enact the ancient Pyrrhic in their performances of the Serra dance. The ‘moving bodies’ of the dancers represented then at once the continuity of the classical cosmos and its connection to the present (Zografou 1989). The martial character of the Serra dance, and its popularity in the geo-cultural environment of the Black Sea, made it the perfect candidate for the articulation of an ideological and practical claim to continuity (ibid.: 114). The role of the dance as a practical context for the articulation of nationalist ideologies cannot be really apprehended separately from the role of folklore in the making of modern Greece (Herzfeld 1982). As Herzfeld pointedly argues, the development of folklore as a discipline in modern Greece was not merely an ‘abstruse academic concern’ but the result of the ‘interplay between local and foreign interests in the legitimation of the new state’ (1982: 7). In various stages of modern Greek history and through the study of songs, dress, dance and customs, folklorists substantiated the ‘the doctrine of Greek irredentism whereby all the lands of Classical and Byzantine Hellenism should be reclaimed for the newborn nation’ (Herzfeld 1982: 119), or—I should add—were at some point rightfully claimed by the nation. Vernier’s analysis (Vernier 2001) of baptismal names is also pertinent to my argument here. According to Vernier, baptismal names ‘are decoded in the subconscious and interpreted essentially as information related to whom or what bears the name’ (319). By renaming the Serra dance as the Pyrrhic, the perception of a bond, however minor, is being established in Greek cultural rhetoric. By being connected to the ancient Greek past, the Pontians are successfully incorporated historically and politically into the nation, shaking off allegations of being Turk-seeds, of Turkish origin, and thus foreign to Hellenism (Zografou 1989).3 For their part, Pontian efforts to incorporate their dancing culture into the wider Greek dancing repertoire lasted, as I have already mentioned, for decades. In their attempt to negate the negative stereotypical assumptions about their origins, Pontic-Greeks concealed and deliberately excluded from their ‘official’ 8 Magda Zografou dancing curricula those dances that could render evidence of their Ottoman past. Thus, dances such as Male-Male, (horos me ta mantilia, lit. scarf-dance), performed by the Metetzidiotes living on the frontier of Cappadocia, or dances shared with Armenians, were excluded from the Pontic dancing repertoire while Pontian efforts to incorporate a different past into a present, common with the rest of the Greek community, resulted in a kind of homogenization of the dancing style. Regarding the structure of the dancing product, Pontic dancing identity has been fabricated in regulated forms that underemphasized the depth of their variation, while highlighting their commonalities. In the Pontic dances the dancers are positioned so that they are almost attached to one another, assuming for the most part a stiff body posture. The fierce character of the dance and the rigidity of the dancers’ bodies are thought to reflect the unanimity, self-esteem and defensive capacity of the team. The irregular beat, the fast and some times very fast tempo and the short musical themes combined with short kinetic motifs, synthesize at once a monotonous but dynamic, ‘fearsome’, audiovisual, kinesthetic image. The long-repeated dancing patterns which result from the conflicting syntheses of leading forward and backward steps or vertical interceptive steps are interrupted by abrupt staccatos [(breaks between the movements (Hutchinson 1977:52)] and strokes on the floor that emphasize the vertical positioning of the body. The dynamism which seems to saturate the dancing body and the extraordinarily vibrant Pontic music seemed very exotic to the eyes and ears of the local Greek population. The unique musical temperament of the Pontian violin—the lyre—that was played with the fingertips rather than the nails producing a truly remarkable sound further mystified Pontian music-dance events. As a result of the rhetoric surrounding Pontian dances and the manner in which they were performed most Pontic and non-Pontic Greeks view them as being ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ remnants of a Hellenic past, lost in the depths of time but magically preserved in the bodies and dispositions of the Pontians. This kind of ‘inventing culture’ and ‘staging authenticity’ (Boissevain 1996: 11–12) closely relates to the ‘invention of the past and the present’ (Clifford 1988: 222), and to elaborate processes of historical, cultural and ultimately political constructivism (cf. Faubion 1993).

A ‘traditional Pontian marriage’ The eighties was the decade that brought Greece face-to-face with European ‘modernization’. Having survived the Second World-War, a civil war, the resonance of the cold war on Greek politics and a military junta (cf. Clogg 1992; Veremis 1997), the nation was entering a period of political and cultural The Politics of Dance 9 extroversion. The advent of the Socialist Party on government marked for Greece a new era of political and cultural awareness as well as of ‘identity- making’ in relation to its European counterparts. In this context local communities engaged in an even more dynamic manner in cultural and political activity employing their historical resources to meet a sophisticated Europe (Cowan 1990: 63, 74). Under socialist leadership ‘the ideology of returning to our roots’ (Cowan 1997: 164) as the safest place from which Greece could stand up to Europe was becoming ever stronger. This climate advertently resulted in the creation of new dancing associations next to the already existing and institutionalized ‘national’ ones, whose aim was to display and promote local dancing identities through a re-enactment of the ‘traditional’ culture. In this socio-historic framework, the celebration and silencing of differences within and between communities co-existed in a paradoxical manner. Especially in Macedonia, but also elsewhere in Greece, linguistic and performative expressions that alluded to an Ottoman, or ‘non-Greek’ past were ‘at once critical in the collective definition and perpetuation of a community identity’ and ‘suppressed in all official presentations of the self’ (Cowan 1997: 163– 164). Accordingly, various performative instances in the village of Agioneri served to simultaneously differentiate the Pontian Self from, and to affirm its symbiosis with modern Greeks in a highly contextual manner (cf. Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos 2001: 409). In order to demonstrate the consciously mixed and ambivalent character of the performative narrative of my informants, I chose to look closely at Pontian wedding celebrations as these were performed in Agioneri in the mid-eighties. Despite the fact that a number of specifically Pontian customs had already faded by the mid-eighties, a traditional Pontian wedding celebration was extremely important and highly desired among the Pontic-Greeks of Agioneri. Commenting upon the recent legalization of civic marriage in Greece a relatively young Pontian woman told me that she did not care whether her daughter would marry in the church or in the town hall so long as she followed the traditional Pontian ritual of marriage. More specifically she stated to me that: ‘I do not care if my daughter goes towards the town hall instead of towards the church. What I want is a marriage according to all the old customs and I want her to dance the thymisman or thymiama,4 because a marriage without the thymiama cannot be considered complete’. A ‘traditional Pontian marriage’—or simply a ‘Pontian marriage’ as my informants preferred to call it—can be analysed in terms of three major stages that fit Van-Gennep’s standard model of a rite of passage (Van Gennep 1960; Leach 1976; Skouteri-Didaskalou 1991). The rites that surround the first stage that precedes the official ritual can be seen as symbolic of 10 Magda Zografou separation, the practices that surround the official ritual can be viewed as comprising the liminal period, while the customs that follow the ritual have an incorporative character. What is of major interest here, however, is that rites, practices and habitual episodes in all three states of the Pontian marriage highlight the desire of the Pontic-Greeks of Agioneri to both distinguish themselves from and to conform to conventional Greek perceptions of a wedding celebration. I will then try to account for several of those seemingly paradoxical instances of bricollage in order to show that mixing practices is a conscious attempt on behalf of my informants to simultaneously preserve their distinct cultural identification as Pontioi, and ritualistically perform not just their Hellenism but also their Greekness. Before the ritual and usually on a Saturday night, since marriages were customarily performed on a Sunday, a procession of the friends and kin of the groom accompanied by musicians headed towards the best man’s house in order to formally ‘invite’ him to the marriage. On their way to the best man the celebrants drank and danced the Tas, a kind of Pontian dance that can be performed by two people or by a single person. This kind of procession bears many resemblances to Cowan’s description of the patinadha (1990: 98Ð133) that takes place in the Greek Macedonian community of Sohos. In the case of the Sohoian patinadha a similar party of drinking and dancing celebrants led by musicians head to the bride’s house always passing through the centre of the town. The Sohoian patinadha is being accompanied by daulia and zurnadhes (drums and double-reed shawms respectively), the instruments that according to my Pontian informants were used back in their ‘homeland’ on the Black Sea, during the invitation procession. In Agioneri, however, the celebrants were not led by drums, or shawms, or by the traditional Pontian violin, the lyre, or kemendje. The procession was accompanied by standard Greek clarinets and accordions. The official explanation given to me at first by my informants was that the accordion and the clarinet were preferred due to being ‘louder’ instruments. After discussing in detail with them however, I realized that they introduced this and several other ‘innovations’ in the wedding celebration to conform to what ‘people do here in Greece’. Another specifically ‘Greek’ element that one finds in an otherwise Pontian wedding celebration is the dances that people perform in the groom’s house on the eve of the actual wedding ritual. First, it is important to note that despite the Pontians of Agioneri Agioneri being from a specific villages on the Black Sea (Ivanpolor and Moula Moustafa, as I have already mentioned) they performed at the ‘groom’s party’ Pontian dances from the entire region in their attempt to promote a unified Pontian identity. Thus their usual repertoire consisted of the Tas, sari(k)z, seranitsa, kotsari, tromahton, tik, The Politics of Dance 11 omal-kars and moskof. The range of dances was also, and perhaps most interestingly, enriched with ‘European’ dances such as the fox-trot and mambo, as well as belly-dancing (tsifteteli). The band that played at the groom’s party consisted of a pontian lyre, Greek clarinets (clarino), snare drums and synthesizer, the latter being the standard instruments that comprise popular bands throughout Greece (cf. Cowan 1990: 139–140). The bride’s party—an identical celebration on the eve of the wedding that takes place in the bride’s house- was very similarly structured in terms of the dances performed and the structure of the band. An important ritual that precedes the wedding is the nyfeparman, literally the ‘taking of the bride’, the equivalent this time to the Sohoian patinadha mentioned earlier (Cowan 1990: 98Ð133). The nyfeparman begins in the house of the groom, with his relatives, and ends in the house of the bride, after they have ‘taken the bride’. Once out on the courtyard of the house, the celebrants ‘dance [with] the bride’ (cf. Cowan 1990: 119) before finally heading to the church. During this dance the bride was often choosing to perform not Omal (the type of dance, customarily performed during the nifeparman) but the standard, common Greek dance of kalamatiano. It is important to say at this point that my informants were the ones who eagerly directed me to record the differences between how certain practices were performed back in Pontus and the new form they acquired in Greece. In special relation to the kalamatiano, I was in fact specifically told that the ‘bride ought to dance the kalamatiano because this is what the Greeks dance’. By introducing what they perceive as ‘standard Greek’ practices into different stages of the wedding celebration, the Pontians of Agioneri effect a mixed performance that is both a context for the enactment and transition of social memory and Pontian identity, and an occasion to demonstrate their successful incorporation into modern Greek culture. Dance events can thus be seen as contexts within which identity, difference and the ‘performative nature of history’ are being adequately expressed (Martin 1997; cf. Cowan 1990). Based on this claim, in the section that follows I intend to discuss some of the most prominent ideas regarding the importance of dance for the construction, expression and negotiation of identity arguing that the self is an active, creative agent capable of reflecting upon the historical, social and political specificities of life.

Construction, Negotiation and Performance The contradictions inherent in the performative narrative of my informants are analogous to those characterizing the assumptions of various researches 12 Magda Zografou into the discipline of dance, concerned with the so-called ‘second existence’ of the dance. Reflecting on the issue, Nahachewsky (2001) argues, that traditional dancing representations are not really traditional. Instead, they are choreographies inspired by ‘second hand’ material (Shay 1999). The fact that the people who participate in these ‘traditional’ representations are the same people who belong to a community (Giuschesku 1994) reflects, according to Shay, the dialectic relationship between parallel dancing traditions (ibid.). Some researchers insist that ‘to learn’ traditional techniques and practices secures cultural continuation (Bakka 1990). According to Bakka, the authenticity displayed in a dancing performance, as part of a contemporaneous discourse, is not only desirable, but also justified even in the case when the representation of a past discourse is incomplete (1999). The debate on the ‘authenticity’ of dance performances is, I believe, closely related to two separate but interconnected issues: folklore and the relationship between dancer and dance. As I have argued earlier, folklore in Greece is intimately related to the production of ideology and the fashioning of a modern Greek identity (Herzfeld 1982). This is not, however, merely a Greek phenomenon. As Desmond argues—commenting on Ramsey’s (1997) material from Haiti- ‘the staging of folklore represents a critical focus for scholarly research and analysis as it relates to the production of national identity’ (1997: 18). If one accepts that national identity and a historical sense of self are being both discursively and practically constituted, then it would be safe to argue that dance practices relate to Ðat least- the practical establishment of national and ethnic identity. In turn, if the latter is true, the importance of preserving the authenticity of the dance is as great as that of revealing it. Folklorists in Greece have shouldered the task of discovering and defending the ‘ancient’, ‘classical’, ‘truly Hellenic’ routes of songs, customs and dance practices (Herzfeld 1982). In other words, they were mostly concerned with the discursive side of ascertaining continuity between classical and modern Greece. Dance associations on the other hand, were mainly focusing on the practical side of this matter; namely, to preserve the authentic pattern of dances through safeguarding the curriculum of physical movements. As a result, the authenticity of dances is revealed not only to be a ‘staged’ one (Boissevain 1996), but also an idea and a practice closely related to the construction of ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1983) categories of identity and national selves. If folklore is one dimension along which authenticity can be discussed, then the relation between the dance and the dancer and the assumptions that predicate it is the other. For, to argue in favour of ‘authentic performances’ relates to ‘reducing human action to gross physical movement’ (Williams The Politics of Dance 13

2004: 151), thus overlooking the fluidity and flexibility of embodied practice. In order to secure an ‘authentic dance performance’ one has to admit that the dancer is prior to the dance. However, as performance theorists have demonstrated, dance performances have a ‘self-making power’ (Kirtsoglou 2004: 15; cf. Sax 2002). Based on this idea, I would claim that the dancer constitutes the dance as much as s/he is constituted by it, thus agreeing with Cowan’s argument that dance is a reflexive context for the ‘articulation of social identities and relationships’ (1990: 89). For there is a definite relationship between agency, history, identity and the dance (Martin 1997) and, if my argument is correct, then the performance of a ‘Pontian dance’ is a moment where the identity of the dance and that of the subject are established in a simultaneous fashion. To put it simply, there is nothing inherently ‘Pontian’ in a series of dance movements apart from the knowledge that it is Pontians who perform them (or have performed them in the past), while to be a Pontian partly depends on one’s ability and willingness to perform Pontian dances. Dance events are then embodied discourses ‘on the moral relations between the individual and some larger collectivity’ (Cowan 1990: 131) and contexts where one’s identity as part of a collectivity is being constructed and performatively reaffirmed. To say that a dance event is a moment of double construction does not preclude the idea that subjects are reflexively aware of the dance. Undoubtedly, the dancing self is to a great extent the effect of socio-historical construction. The dancing practice however involves conscious and unconscious subjective deliberations and is being approached and comprehended by the dancing agents in a reflexive manner (Kaeppler 1972; Hughes-Freeland 1990; Cowan 1990). Furthermore, subjects can be said to employ dance situations in order to articulate identity statements. Dancing a Greek kalamatiano as part of the Pontian practice of nyfeparman is a reflexive statement on one’s identity, and relationship with a wider collectivity. Thus it would be safe to argue that the ideological connotations of a dance are not only known to individuals but also strategically exploited by them. During my fieldwork in Macedonia, an elderly Pontian told me the following: ‘When the state did not accept our requests about the distribution of land, do you know what we did? We gathered in front of the town hall at midnight and we danced the Pyrrhic thus protesting against the local authority’. The aforementioned statement can be analyzed at a number of levels. First, it is clear that my informant was plainly aware of the power of both dancing a ‘Pyrrhic’ (Serra dance) and calling the Serra dance ‘Pyrrhic’. The practical and discursive dimensions of the hegemonic narrative on Hellenism are hence not escaping my informant’s attention and they are fully exploited in 14 Magda Zografou his confrontation with the state. At the same time, precisely because hegemony relates to the manner in which people accept a dominant projection as natural (cf. Bennett 1981; Forgacs and Nowell-Smith 1985), my informant’s understanding and by consequence performance of a Pontian dance can never be totally ‘unmediated’ and ideologically free (Cowan 1990: 131). Therefore, the construction and conceptualization of Pontian dances as ‘authentic’ and ‘unique’ is the very process that permits the Pontians of Agioneri to establish both their ‘Sameness’ and their ‘Otherness’ in relation to the rest of the Greek population. ‘Purified’ by the ‘Ottoman past’, the Pontian dancing discourse was concentrated on the emergence of what was Pontian and what was not, on what can or must be preserved and what can be discarded. Simultaneously, with the establishment of an ethnic Greek identity, a Pontian identity was constructed and enforced through mechanisms of selection, reconstruction and stabilization. In this context the internal variety of Pontian dance performances was partially abandoned in favor of a homogenous dancing repertoire. Dances such as the Seranitsa and Trigona gradually transformed into a form of Serra to fit the ‘Pontian stereotype’ of a properly Hellenic ‘Pyrrhic dance’. On the whole, the Pontian dancing discourse became more and more normalised and geared towards ‘correcting’ and ‘preserving’ in order to support the concept of a Hellenic/Pontian cultural heritage. The manner in which Pontian dances developed in modern Greek society is parallel to the way the Pontian identity itself came to be constructed and expressed. Both were caught in an ideological matrix that sought to display and simultaneously conceal, balance and regulate Sameness and Difference. The following ethnographic instance is I believe supportive of my argument here. In the annual celebration of the Madonna of Soumela (Panayia Soumela), the Pontians—in general and not only the inhabitants of Agioneri—organize an open air festivity (paniyri). In 1988, the then minister of Northern Greece, Mr. Papathemelis, attended the Soumela festivities and was appropriately welcomed by the organizers while a group was performing the Pyrrhic (Serra) dance. The arrival of the minister as well as the exceptional performance of the group ended with prolonged applause from the spectators. Obviously pleased by this response the mc addressed the minister and commented: ‘Did you see what fine men we Pontians have Mr Papathemelis? Among them, you may easily find suitable grooms for your daughters’. Then, he addressed the audience and continued: ‘Now, you are going to watch the Omal dance from the Pontian area of Kerassunda. Here in Greece, the dance is known as Laxana after the lyrics of the song. It resembles the Greek dance Syrto but we dance it differently’. The Politics of Dance 15

In front of the representative of the state and through their dancing practices the Pontians of Agioneri were obviously eager to articulate a number of statements about themselves, their community, their distinctiveness and their Pontian/Hellenic/Greek identity. The interplay between being a Pontian and being Greek is obviously a discursive and a performative matter. As a result the intersubjective relationship between what is Self and what is Other is unavoidably permeated by a kind of self-consciousness brought about by the fact that it is a relationship performed and thus a relationship witnessed, albeit sometimes not by a physical but by a symbolic audience

In lieu of conclusion: A twofold Otherness, or else the “Show must go on”.

The aim of this paper has been to explore the relationship between performance, ideology, reflexivity and hegemony in the context of the Pontian dance practices and celebrations in the village of Agioneri in Northern Greece. Through an ethnographic exploration of ‘Pontian dances’, I have argued in favour of the complex role of dance in the practical construction of identity. The Pontians of Agioneri, much like other refugees who have settled in Greece in the inter-war period engaged in a painstaking and elaborate process of historical, cultural and political constructivism (cf. Faubion 1993), having to reinvent their culture, identity and the subtle politics of belonging. The manner in which dance practices were presented, learnt, commented upon and of course performed reflects in the case of the Pontians this difficult course of negotiating identity. I started this paper by showing that the Pontic-Greeks underemphasized their internal differences in favour of a common Pontian identity that was perceived to be distinct from that of non-Pontic Greeks, albeit unquestionably Hellenist. The manner in which different dances are performed since the arrival of Pontic refugees in Greece eloquently expresses the reinvention of Pontian identity. Despite the fact that different dances are associated with different localities (the Omal of Kerassunda, the Omal of Trapezunda, the Karsilidhiko), their internal variety was de-emphasized in favour of a common Pontian dancing ethos. The relative normalization of the Pontian dances can be explained as part of the Pontian struggle to maintain their distinctiveness and difference vis-a-vis the modern-Greek hegemonic ethos of cultural homogenization. Dance practices were thus performative sites for the cultivation and transmission of social memory and refugee identity (cf. Voutira 1997; Hirschon 1989; Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos 2001). The role of the dance was equally crucial in the association of Pontians with Hellenism (cf. Manos 2004), which—as I have argued—must be seen 16 Magda Zografou as a two-way process (Hamilakis and Yalouri 1999). The hegemonic national narrative of continuity that connects modern Greeks to the classical past (Herzfeld 1982: 119, 1987; Karakasidou 1997; Sutton 1998; Hirschon 2000; Hamilakis & Yalouri 1999) was promoted by the educated elites of the nation (cf. Gellner 1983) and embraced by the Pontians themselves in their attempt to be successfully incorporated into their new country. The perception that Pontic-Greeks are as indispensable part of the Hellenic past and present is reflected in the association of Pontian dances with ancient Greek practices that was greatly aided by the discipline of folklore (cf. Herzfeld 1982) and later on by dance associations. As a result the Kotsari dance was said to have Dionysian influences, the Trygona was equated with the ancient Greek Parthenia, and of course, the Serra dance was renamed the Pyrrhic. The Hellenization of different dance practices had a twofold effect. First, different dances were partialy homogenised in terms of style and choreography, and second, dance-practices that were ambivalent because of their relation to the Pontian-Ottoman past were deliberately excluded from the Pontic-Greek repertoire. The role of the dance in the negotiation of Pontian identity is not limited however to what happened to ‘traditional’ Pontian dancing practices. As I have demonstrated in my ethnographic depiction of the Pontian marriage, Pontic-Greeks often engaged in mixed performances in order to show that they were part of modern Greek society. They introduced into their celebrations what they saw as ‘standard’ Greek musical instruments like the Greek clarinet, and dances like the ‘typical’ Greek kalamatiano. The conscious decision of the Pontians of Agioneri to create mixed performances—or at other times to highlight their Pontianness- demonstrates that the ideological connotations of the dance were well-known to my informants and strategically exploited. Nevertheless, as Cowan argues, the active agent engages in performance in a reflexive albeit not an ideologically- free manner (1990: 131). Thus the perception of my informants’ Self was never totally unmediated and this was clear in their statements about their connection to ancient Spartans and the classical world that are clearly influenced by national, hegemonic perceptions of history. Dance is seen by many as an ‘authentic’ experience. I have argued in this paper that the authenticity of dance contexts is always staged (cf. Boissevain 1996) and that the act of dancing entails a double construction. The identity of the dance is shaped by that of the dancer and vice versa. Such a performative approach to dance allows, I believe, for a fluid and flexible conceptualization of identity. In fact, if dance is indeed involved in the construction of historical, cultural, political and ethnic consciousness, The Politics of Dance 17 then my approach coincides with the claim that “ethnicity is fluid, variably silent rather than essential, fixed and already given” (Cowan and Brown 2000: 3). Insofar as categorical membership relates to performative contexts it cannot but itself be an unfinished project. The Pontian/Hellenic/Greek identity is being—in Agioneri and elsewhere in Greece- negotiated, mediated, constructed, partly negated, partly affirmed and definitely danced. In this paper I tried to touch upon certain aspects of the relationship between agency, history and dance (cf. Martin 1997), treating dance productions as contexts saturated with meaning and historicity (cf. Williams 2004). The discussion on the role of the dance in the construction and negotiation of identity does not end here. I therefore leave the last word of this paper to a non-Pontian informant of mine who proudly commented upon the inclusion of a Pontian dance in the closing ceremony of the 2004 Olympic games:

“I would give everything just to be in the group of these Pontian dancers. I shivered when I saw them, in their black suits, fearless and proud, dashing like the ancient Myrmidons into the Olympic stadium”.

Notes

1. The belief in one common Pontic heritage that brought a sense of commonality to Pontians in Greece (Karakasidou 1997: 149), did not obliterate all differences as Voutira pointedly asserts (1997: 122–123). The ‘repatriation’ of Soviet-Pontians – or Russian-Pontians as they are called- and their integration into Greek society in the nineties brought to light further differences between Pontic populations (ibid.: 123) that are however outside the scope of this paper. 2. Endogamy, practiced even after the Second World War, was of course another important factor which resulted in the construction of a unified Pontic identity (cf. Karakasidou 1997: 150Ð151). 3. In this sense I agree with Karakasidou’s point (1997: 148) discussed earlier. Still, I insist that refugee identification with Hellenism, cannot be conceptualized separately from a common refugee identity that is conceived as distinct from (and perhaps superior to) that of non-refugees. 4. For an extended discussion of the term thymiama and its meaning see Zografou (1999: 179). 5. For a complete discussion of the difference between being a ‘girl’ and being ‘a woman’ as well as of the specific act of ‘taking the bride out’ see Cowan (1990: 50– 52, 119). 18 Magda Zografou

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