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Abstract
This article proposes mapping as a tool for dance historiography, and presents a case study of ballet in interwar Greece to show mapping’s distinct attributes. Mapping supports critical dance historiography in five interconnected ways: fostering anti-hegemonic dance histories that counter hierarchical and exclusionary classifications; diversifying dance history beyond West-centric and nation-centric frameworks; undoing linear narratives primarily based on kinetic information; admitting dance history’s performativity and constructed-ness; and amplifying relational, transindividual perspectives within dance histories. Ultimately, the article presents a dual focus: bringing attention to the characteristics of interwar Greek ballet as a genre-crossing, transnational, interdisciplinary modern form blurring distinctions between art and entertainment, and showing how mapping illuminates these distinct aspects.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Maja Hriešik for inviting the first sharing of this research; the ‘Peripheralized dance modernities’ working group for our discussions of dance landscapes; Konstantina Stamatoyannaki for supporting the archival research; and Maria Prantl for offering solidarity and childcare.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
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2 Rachel Sweeney, “Tracking Entities: Choreography as a Cartographic Process,” Choreographic Practices 2 (2012): 73, 76.
3 Sarah Rubidge, “Nomadic Diagrams: Choreographic Topologies,” Choreographic Practices 1 (2010): 45.
4 Ana Vujanović, “Tiger’s Leap: A Method of Reloading the History of Local Scenes,” Vita Performactiva, 2008, https://www.anaVujanovic.net/2012/03/tigers-leap-a-method-of-reloading-the-history-of-local-scenes/.
5 Jeremy W. Crampton and John Krygier, “An Introduction to Critical Cartography,” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 4, no. 1 (2006): 12.
6 Crampton and Krygier, “An Introduction to Critical Cartography,” 15.
7 Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge, “Rethinking Maps,” Progress in Human Geography 31, no. 3 (2007): 333–4.
8 Kitchin and Dodge, “Rethinking Maps,” 334.
9 Kitchin and Dodge, “Rethinking Maps,” 335.
10 E.g. Pour une histoire décentrée de la danse. Towards a Decentered History of Dance [Colloquium program], Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Lyon, Maison de la danse – Usines Fagor, Biennale de la danse de Lyon, CN D, Lyon, 2022, https://www.cnd.fr/en/file/file/1846/attachment/CN%20D%20Colloque%20Pour%20histoire%20d%C3%A9centr%C3%A9e%20de%20la%20danse.pdf.
11 Ramsay Burt and Michael Huxley, Dance, Modernism, and Modernity (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2020), 4.
12 Eike Wittrock, “Julius Hans Spiegel: Das andere Erbe der Moderne” [Julius Hans Spiegel: The other heritage of modernity], in Global Groove: Art, Dance, Performance & Protest, ed. Museum Folkwang (Munich: Hirmer, 2021), 308–15; Sandra Chatterjee, Franz-Anton Cramer, and Nicole Haitzinger, “Remembering Nyota Inyoka: Queering Narratives of Dance, Archive, and Biography,” Dance Research Journal 54, no. 2 (2022): 11–33.
13 Christina Thurner, “Time Layers, Time Leaps, Time Loss: Methodologies of Dance Historiography,” in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment, ed. Mark Franko (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 525–32.
14 Sarah Gutsche-Miller, Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2015).
15 Arianna Beatrice Fabbricatore (ed.), La Danse théâtrale en Europe. Identités, Altérités, Frontières [Theatrical Dance in Europe. Identities, Alterities, Borders], (Paris: Hermann, 2019).
16 Emmanouil Seiragakis, “O Horos stin Operetta. I Anadisi ton Ellinon Horografon sti Dekaetia tou 1930” [Dance in Operetta. The Emergence of Greek Choreographers in the 1930s], Ariadni 13 (2007): 115–26.
17 Katia Savrami, Tracing the Landscape of Dance in Greece (Newcastle upon Thyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), 31–4.
18 Avra Xepapadakou, “Ta Prota Vimata. O Endehnos Horos sti Neoelliniki Skini” [The First Steps. Theatrical Dance on the Modern Greek Stage], Science of Dance 9 (2016): 70–86.
19 Emmanouil Seiragakis, To Elafro Mousiko Theatro sti Mesopolemiki Athina [Light Musical Theatre in Inter-war Athens], vol. B (Athens: Kastaniotis, 2009); “O Horos stin Operetta”.
20 Avra Xepapadakou, “Operetta in Greece,” in The Cambridge Companion to Operetta, eds. Anastasia Belina and Derek B. Scott (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 167–86.
21 Konstantza Georgakaki, I Efimeri Goitia tis Epitheorisis [The Ephemeral Beauty of Revue Theatre] (Athens: Polaris, 2013).
22 Kitchin and Dodge, “Rethinking Maps,” 335, emphases added.
23 Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (London: Verso, 2005), 1. Cf. Claire Bishop, “Against Digital Art History,” Humanities Futures. Franklin Humanities Institute, 2015, https://humanitiesfutures.org/papers/digital-art-history/.
24 Harmony Bench and Kate Elswit, “Dance History and Digital Humanities Meet at the Archives: An Interim Project Report on Dunham‘s Data,” Dance Research 38, no. 2 (2020): 289–95.
25 Ai dyo orfanai [The Two Orphans] [program], Giuseppe-Stylianopoulou, Variety theater, Corfu, Summer 1938, http://eliaserver.elia.org.gr:8080/lselia/rec.aspx?id=322440.
26 Exo Ola [All Out] [program], Iatridi-Hrisohoou-Sylva, Municipal theater, Pireus, 1930-1931, http://eliaserver.elia.org.gr:8080/lselia/rec.aspx?id=323108.
27 Kelley Tialiou, “Conceptual Art in Ruins? Maria Eichhorn Commemorates Urban Ruination in Athens,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 38 (2020): 279.
28 Bertrand Porot, “Acrobatie, danse et pantomime à l’Opéra-Comique” [Acrobatics, dance and pantomime at the Opéra-Comique], in: Fabbricatore, La Danse théâtrale en Europe, 153-71; Gutsche-Miller, Parisian Music-Hall Ballet.
29 Xepapadakou, “Operetta in Greece,” 176.
30 Seiragakis, “O Horos stin Operetta”; Savrami, Tracing the Landscape of Dance in Greece, 47–61.
31 I Pariziana [The Parisian Woman] [program], Ardatov Greek Epitheorisi, Ideal, Athens, Summer 1929, http://eliaserver.elia.org.gr:8080/lselia/rec.aspx?id=328882; Sapounofouskes [Soap-bubbles] [program], Laoutari-Kofinioti-Ardatov Greek Epitheorisi, Ideal, Athens, Summer 1929, http://eliaserver.elia.org.gr:8080/lselia/rec.aspx?id=330078.
32 Seiragakis, To Elafro Mousiko Theatro, 504.
33 For an example, see Michael Huxley and Ramsay Burt, “Modern movements: women’s contributions to the success of Rudolf Laban’s ideas and practice in England 1930–1941,” Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 11, no. 3 (2020): 327–42.
34 Susan Manning, “Dance History,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies, ed. Sherril Dodds (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 303.
35 Manning, “Dance History,” 303.
36 Susan Manning, Ecstasy and the Demon. The Dances of Mary Wigman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006); Laure Guilbert, Danser avec le IIIe Reich. Les Danseurs modernes sous le nazisme [Dancing with the Third Reich. Modern Dancers under Nazism] (Brussels: Complexe, 2000); Mark Franko, The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar. Interwar French Ballet and the German Occupation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
37 Steriani Tsintziloni, “Koula Pratsika and her Dance School. Embracing Gender, Class and the Nation in the Formative Years of Contemporary Dance Education in Greece,” Research in Dance Education 16, no. 3 (2015): 276–90; Anna Leon, “‘To take dance back and make it ours’. Europe and the nation in early modern dance in Greece,” in Post-Utopia and Europe in the Performing Arts, eds. Alexandra Kolb and Nicole Haitzinger (Munich: epodium, 2022), 59–71; Anna Leon, “Choreographing Proximity and Difference. Vassos Kanellos’ Performance of Greekness as an Embodied Negotiation with Western Dance Modernity,” Dance Research Journal 55, no. 1 (2023), 22–45.
38 Xepapadakou, “Operetta in Greece,” 179–80; Manolis Seiragakis and Ioannis Tselikas, “Greek Operetta between East and West: the Case of Chalima,” in Beyond the East-West Divide. Balkan Music and its Poles of Attraction, eds. Ivana Medić and Katarina Tomasević (Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2015), 94–102.
39 Harsha Ram, “The Scale of Global Modernisms: Imperial, National, Regional, Local,” PMLA 135, no. 5 (2016): 1372–85.
40 Seiragakis, To Elafro Mousiko Theatro, 506.
41 I Pariziana; Sapounofouskes.
42 Anna Leon, Expanded Choreographies – Choreographic Histories. Trans-historical Perspectives Beyond Dance and Human Bodies in Motion (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2022).
43 Susan Manning, “Modernist Dogma and Post-Modern Rhetoric: A Response to Sally Banes’ Terpsichore in Sneakers,” TDR – The Drama Review 32, no. 4 (1988): 32–9; Ramsay Burt, “Undoing Postmodern Dance History,” SARMA, 2004, http://sarma.be/docs/767.
44 Catherine Hindson, “Interruptions by Inevitable Petticoats: Skirt Dancing and the Historiographical Problem of Late Nineteenth-Century Dance,” Nineteenth Century Theatre & Film 35, no. 2 (2008): 53.
45 Ta dimiourgithenta simferonda [The Bonds of Interest] [program], Royal Theater, Athens, 1939, www.nt-archive.gr/viewFiles1.aspx?playID=472&programID=578.
46 Quoted in Nina Alcalay, Kratiki Sholi Horou. Parelthon, Paron ke Melon [State School of Dance. Past, Present and Future] (Athens: DIAN, 2002), 26.
47 Thurner, “Time Layers, Time Leaps, Time Loss,” 526.
48 Xepapadakou, “Ta Prota Vimata,” 74–5.
49 Kitchin and Dodge, “Rethinking Maps,” 337, 340.
50 Sapounofouskes.
51 Press clippings collection. Folder 1.1, Xeni Damaskou archive, The Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive of the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation (ELIA/MIET).
52 O horos tis tihis [Luck’s Dance] [program], Papaioannou Greek Operetta, Papaioannou, Athens, Summer 1923, http://62.103.29.196:8080/eliasim/rec.aspx?id=332186.
53 Susanne Foellmer and Jitka Pavlišová, “Tracing Dance: Expanding Archives, Contemporary Witnesses, and Other Modes of Re-Producing Embodied Knowledge,” Theatralia 25, no. 2 (2022): 123. (Foellmer is commenting on work by Janine Schultze).
54 Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (2008): 12.
55 Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees, 4.
56 Ana Vujanović, “Performance Practice: Between Self-Production and Transindividuality,” in Performance und Praxis: Praxeologische Erkundungen in Tanz, Theater, Sport und Alltag, eds. Gabriele Klein and Hanna Katharina Göbel (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2017), 304–5.
57 Vujanović, “Tiger’s Leap”.
58 Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 230–1.
59 Steriani Tsintziloni, Ypo ti skia tu Parthenona. Horos sto Festival Athinon stin periodo tu Psyhrou Polemou (1955-1966) [Under the Parthenon’s Shadow. Dance in the Athens Festival in the Cold War Period (1955-1966)] (Athens: Kapa, 2022).
60 Olivia Sabee, “The Rat de l’Opéra and the Social Imaginary of Labour: Dance in July Monarchy Popular Culture,” French Studies I.XXVI, no. 4 (2022): 554–75.
61 Anthea Kraut, “Race-ing Choreographic Copyright,” in Worlding Dance, ed. Susan Leigh Foster (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 76–97.
62 Hélène Marquié, “Enquête en cours sur Madame Stichel (1856-ap. 1933): Quelques pistes de réflexion” [In-progress investigation on Madame Stichel (1856-ca. 1933). Some paths for reflection], Recherches en Danse 3 (2015): 1–21.
*For example, ballet de cour was significantly different from what today is associated with ballet.
*This performance brought together as co-choreographers Angelos Grimanis and Giannis Flery; they both developed careers circulating between drama and light/musical theater. It premiered a few months before Greece entered the Second World War and some of its act titles (e.g. ‘If such a war happens…’) reflect related anxieties. I Athina tou ‘40 [1940s Athens] [program], Kyriakou-Kokkini-Filippidi, Athinaion, Athens, Summer 1940, http://eliaserver.elia.org.gr:8080/lselia/rec.aspx?id=323842.
*Nikolská studied classical dance in Odessa and performed in the city’s Opera. She became a principal dancer at the National Theater of Prague, and opened a school there. She also worked in Paris and Cairo. She fled the Soviet Army in 1945, possibly because of her allegiances during the war. Cf. Mojmir Weimann, “RusRuská tanečnice, která proslavila český balet” [Russian dancer who made Czech ballet famous], Opera+, 2015, https://operaplus.cz/ruska-tanecnice-ktera-proslavila-cesky-balet/.
† I thank Elizabeth Ward for our discussion on this idea.
*From a generation later onwards, Wigman’s influence would be wider, as she taught modern dancers including Agapi Evagelidi, Maria Hors, and later, Zouzou Nikoloudi.
*It can be argued that institutionalization from the late 1930s onwards created a classically-construed ballet concept that contributes to seeing earlier iterations of the term as misuses.
*If I include a few more years to my corpus, I see that during Greece’s occupation by Axis forces, Morianov’s school performed under the auspices of and even for the Wehrmacht, a fact that should never be neglected when referring to his work.
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Anna Leon
ANNA LEON is theory curator at Tanzquartier Wien and a postdoctoral fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her first book, Expanded Choreographies—Choreographic Histories: Trans-Historical Perspectives Beyond Dance and Human Bodies in Motion was published in 2022. She co-curates the ongoing projects Radio (non-)conference with Netta Weiser and Choreography+ with Johanna Hilari. She has taught at the Universities of Vienna, Salzburg, and Bern, as well as SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance) and the Institut Français. She occasionally collaborates as a dramaturg or historiographic adviser with choreographers including Julia Schwarzbach, Florentina Holzinger, and Berit Einemo Frøysland.