UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE The Greek Body in Crisis: Contemporary Dance as a Site of Negotiating and Restructuring National Identity in the Era of Precarity A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Critical Dance Studies by Natalie Zervou June 2015 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Marta Elena Savigliano, Chairperson Dr. Linda J. Tomko Dr. Anthea Kraut Copyright Natalie Zervou 2015 The Dissertation of Natalie Zervou is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgments This dissertation is the result of four years of intensive research, even though I have been engaging with this topic and the questions discussed here long before that. Having been born in Greece, and having lived there till my early twenties, it is the place that holds all my childhood memories, my first encounters with dance, my friends, and my family. From a very early age I remember how I always used to say that I wanted to study dance and then move to the US to pursue my dream. Back then I was not sure what that dream was, other than leaving Greece, where I often felt like I did not belong. Being here now, in the US, I think I found it and I must admit that when I first begun my pursuit in graduate studies in dance, I was very hesitant to engage in research concerning Greece. It made me uncomfortable, because it was too personal. Looking back now, I am extremely grateful to all the people who in their way pushed me towards this direction and assisted me in unpacking all the complexities of this project and interrogating my initial personal resistance to it. This tension has been the most fruitful and productive site in this process. First of all I want to express my gratitude to my committee chair and mentor Marta Savigliano, who has been inspiring my work long before we even met. When I graduated from the department of Political Science from the University of Athens, I embarked on a journey as an inexperienced Master’s student to find ways to bridge dance with political science. Browsing through the library I came across her book and it opened a whole new world for me. Having had the opportunity to work with her directly has been an invaluable experience and has pushed my work to new and challenging directions. iv My gratitude is also extended to Linda Tomko and Anthea Kraut, whose scholarship, feedback, and support have been indispensable, not only in the process of working on this project, but in the course of my graduate studies as well. I would also like to thank several other professors that I have worked with in my time at UCR and who have profoundly influenced my work in this project: Susan Ossman, Jens Giersdorf, Jacqueline Shea Murphy and Priya Srinivasan. My doctoral studies would not have been possible without the gracious support that I received from the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation in Greece for four years, and the Graduate Division Fellowship from UCR. My fieldwork was supported by a Dissertation Year Program Fellowship from UCR and for that I am also extremely appreciative. In the close to ten months that I returned to Greece for fieldwork I reconnected with old friends and acquaintances and slowly immersed myself in a vibrant network of choreographers, performers, and dance scholars. I am indebted to each and every one of them for welcoming me in their projects, or their houses, for their honesty and feedback, their support, their genuine curiosity in this project, and their willingness to help me any way they could. I cherish all these encounters and look forward to cultivating these relationships further in my next visits. I would most of all like to thank the choreographers and artists whose works inspired and shaped the analytical framework of this research: Chrysiis Liatziviry, Maria Gorgia, Despina Stamos and Jill Woodward, Ermira Goro, Konstantinos Mihos and Panagiotis Andronikidis. I am also grateful to all the Greek dance scholars and professors v who have dedicated their time to creating an infrastructure for dance studies in Greece and who through their pleasant and meticulous narrations helped me shed light to the development of contemporary and folk dance in Greece: Steriani Tsintziloni, who also was my first dance history teacher, Irene Loutzaki, Katia Savrami, Vaso Barbousi, Maria Tsouvala, Anastasia Charmanda and Alkis Raftis. Thank you also to Katia Arfara, the programming director for Dance and Theatre at the Onassis Cultural Center, who in spite of her busy schedule managed to fit me in. Special thanks are extended to scholars, dance reviewers, dancers, and writers in the most popular dance blogs: Tasos Koukoutas and Natalia Koutsougera. Their insight into the Greek dance scene has been very informative and I left every meeting with them full of ideas and renewed enthusiasm to continue writing. The dance photographers, Elpida Tempou, Angeliki Svoronou, and Anna Psaroudakis, whom I have not met in person, but who have agreed to let me use their work; I am so thankful for their openness to my request. In its various stages of development, several excerpts of this project have been presented at various conferences and workshops and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the participants of those events for their engagement, interest, questions, and feedback. These discussions have helped flesh out the nuances of this project. I would like to especially thank the scholars and colleagues I met at the Mellon Summer Seminar for Dance Studies at Stanford in June of 2014, whose feedback has significantly assisted me in framing and clarifying the ideas discussed in the second chapter. Sherril Dodds, Tommy vi DeFrantz, Susan Manning, and Susan Foster in particular, who by posing a few simple questions helped me deepen my explorations and better my writing. In its early stages this research was primarily concerned with the discursive distinction between Hellenism and Greekness but through discussions and continuous reframing it came to be what you have in your hands now. A glimpse into this project’s early stages of development, which gave birth to some of the questions discussed in chapter one, has been published under the title “Appropriations of Hellenism: A Reconsideration of Early Twentieth Century American Physical Culture Practices” in Choros International Dance Journal, 3 (Spring 2014), pp. 50–68. An excerpt from the third chapter “Bodies of Silence and Resilience: Writing Marginality” will appear in the 2015 CORD conference proceedings. My fieldwork in Athens has been facilitated by the staff at the National Library, the Library of the Lyceum of Greek Women, and the Library of the National School of Dance. Although the sources on dance in Greece are limited, their suggestions and assistance has made the process of digging through these archives a lot easier and more pleasant. During my time in Athens, most of my close friends had been abroad for either work or graduate study and I only saw them sporadically, but they still supported me in this process and accompanied me to performances whenever they could. For this I would especially like to thank my friend Kostas who accompanied me to several performances, and assisted me by proof-reading translations from scholarly sources and interviews from Greek to English. Also, Alexandra, who I could always count on for double-checking inconsistencies and verifying historical sources. vii This process would have not been nearly as enjoyable without the support of my grad school ‘family’, namely my UCR cohort and colleagues. I would like to especially thank Meghan Quinlan and Jen Aubrecht for all the work-parties and writing groups that we shared, as well as the many drafts and edits that they have patiently engaged with. Also, Kendall Loyer, who in the early stages of this project significantly assisted in tearing down my resistance to engaging with the topic of Greekness. These acknowledgements would not have been complete without a special note to my family in Greece for their warm support and patience throughout all these years that I have chosen to be away from them. Especially my mother Aliki, who has always encouraged my thirst for knowledge and my love for dance. Her unwavering support and faith in my abilities have accompanied me throughout this journey, regardless of the thousand miles that have been separating us. Finally, my partner Paris, who in spite of coming from the entirely different academic discipline of Computer Science, has always read my drafts, patiently brainstormed with me, and given me insightful feedback. He has supported me in more ways that I can count and for that I am truly grateful. There are so many more people with whom I have crossed paths and who have in their way –a lot of times without even knowing it –inspired me in this process, or planted seeds of thought, either through their performances, or through their scholarship. In closing, I extend my gratitude to all of them and wish that one day this work will be seen as a source of inspiration for them, as theirs was for me. viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Greek Body in Crisis: Contemporary Dance as a Site of Negotiating and Restructuring National Identity in the Era of Precarity by Natalie Zervou Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Critical Dance Studies University of California, Riverside, June 2015 Dr. Marta Elena Savigliano, Chairperson This doctoral dissertation explores the development of Greek contemporary dance practices as a site for engaging with national identity construction during the recent (2009- 2015) sociopolitical and financial crisis. Following archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the financial crisis has become an opportunity to reassess and challenge rooted beliefs concerning the composition of national, cultural, and social identity in Greece through artistic practices.