Contextualizing Precarity in the Greek Context

What has come to be known as the Greek financial crisis is dated as starting in 2009; yet some political theory and anthropology scholars (Gourgouris Reference Gourgouris2010; Kitromilides Reference Kitromilides2013; Panourgia Reference Panourgia2009) trace the roots of the crisis back to a year earlier, when a series of protests against police brutalityFootnote ¹ made the social indignation of the Greek populace visible. The brewing social crisis was thus further deepened by the arrival of the first round of economic austerity measures in 2010. Two more rounds followed in the form of stability support program agreements (in 2012 and 2015, respectively), which Greece signed with its creditors, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union (EU), and the European Central Bank (ECB). These three memoranda imposed severe austerity measures, such as pension cuts, wage reductions, and changes in health care. Along these lines, funding for the arts, and in particular funding for the performing arts (theater and dance), was severely affected as well.

In 2011, the Greek Ministry of Culture stopped providing subsidies for dance and theater productions as a result of extended budget cuts. Dance was always one of the most underfunded arts in Greece, and the complete lack of funding created additional challenges for choreographers and performers, who not only had to come up with alternative ways to continue creating their works but also had to learn how to navigate the constantly fluctuating landscape of austerity measures and policy changes. For instance, several forums emerged where performances were hosted and audiences were invited to contribute either nonmonetarily (such as by sharing food) or on a “pay what you want/what you can” basis. Another trend that emerged at the time was the reclaiming of abandoned spaces such as old theater buildings or market places, which were occupied and turned into communal performance spaces. This trend related to the money crunch of the time, as abandoned buildings had no rental costs and were fertile sites for hosting communal activism initiatives.

Beyond the financial challenges, however, artists were also faced with the challenge of engaging with and navigating changes in the social sphere. One of the most significant changes was the rising influx of immigrant and refugee populations from parts of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Even though the European refugee crisis is officially dated as occurring in 2015, Greece has been confronted with a “crisis of asylum” (Cabot Reference Cabot2014) that has its roots as far back as 2004, since the Greek borders in the North (by Evros, which borders Turkey) are among the most trafficked in the European Union. The migrant influx into Greece steadily increased in numbers from 2004 to 2007 (Cabot Reference Cabot2014). There was a minor drop in the years between 2008 and 2010, after which the numbers increased again, reaching unprecedented heights in 2015 (BBC News 2016). Given the challenges already imposed on Greece due to the financial crisis, the country lacked the infrastructure to deal with these mass population movements.

Many of the immigrants and refugee participants who find themselves in Greece as part of their journey experience what anthropologist Heath Cabot (Reference Cabot2014) has termed “legal limbo.” In her book On the Doorstep of Europe: Asylum and Citizenship in Greece, Cabot notes that the recognition as a refugee conveys the right to protection in the host country, yet the category “asylum seeker” is highly transitory. She notes that “[a]sylum seekers … occupy a neither fully legal, nor illegal position of non-belonging, suspended in limbo between multiple bureaucratic stages conveying possible acceptance, rejection, or appeal” (Cabot Reference Cabot2014, 56). Populations in this state of limbo often arrive in Greece, yet they do not hold the required documentation to have their asylum claim processed. As such, they find themselves “stuck” and cannot work while in Greece, nor can they move on in their journey until they acquire the required legal documents. The legal constraints limiting their mobility render them in a particularly vulnerable position. Adding to these challenges was the rise of ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and populist anti-immigrant rhetoric observed in Greece since the early years of the crisis. Indicatively, the extremist, ultranationalist far-right party, Golden Dawn, received 7 percent of the votes in the 2012 governmental elections and has been consistently in the parliament until the moment of writing in 2018. Golden Dawn party members have been repeatedly accused of exercising violence against immigrants, and some have even been on trial for murder.

As the heightening of the European refugee crisis coincided with the Greek financial crisis, a group of artists/activists engaged with immigrant and refugee communities and created safe spaces for their narratives and stories to be told, in an effort to educate audiences about the refugee crisis. The bodily vulnerability of immigrant and refugee populations along with the challenge of language (most immigrants and refugees do not speak the Greek language, or if they do, they are still in the process of learning it) rendered dance a fertile site for engagement with these communities, as their bodies and bodily archives were the primary tools mined in the creative process. Contrasting this state of limbo with the hypermobility that professional dancers may enjoy, especially within and across the “open borders” of the EU, I want to highlight these instances of immobility that migrant subjects may encounter and the momentary freedom of movement they enjoy through their participation in dance events. In the sections that follow, I delve into three specific examples of performances that have either involved immigrant and refugee participants or addressed the topic of migration in order to examine the choreographic tools employed. By paying attention to the methodological frameworks utilized, I delve into the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of representation of populations in precarious positions and question whether and how dance productions work to dismantle the hierarchical binary between Self and Other, thus showcasing awareness of the stakes dance holds in both local and global citizenship.

Prior to delving into the performance examples, however, it is essential to briefly contextualize the ways that precarity is understood in the local context (the Greek dance scene and the impact of the austerity measures on the Greek population) and in the broader, global sense of insecurity and vulnerability observed in the aftermath of the imposition of neoliberal policies of austerity on an international level. Locally, the austerity measures described, paired with the lack of infrastructure to deal with Greece's share of the global refugee crisis, paint a picture of the precarity experienced by individuals residing in Greece at the time of the crisis. Precarity in this context is understood both in affective terms—as heightened vulnerability, following Judith Butler's understanding (Reference Butler2004)—and in terms of socioeconomic insecurity—akin to the model of the “precariat” proposed by Guy Standing (Reference Standing2011).

In Judith Butler's work (Reference Butler2004), precarity is theorized in a post 9/11 US context, in which there was an observed rise of nationalism as a result of the popularization of xenophobic rhetoric. Drawing on Levinas's (Reference Levinas1985) notion of the constitution of the subject through a responsibility for the Other, Butler engages with the exclusionary processes that produce subjects who are dehumanized and whose political and legal status is suspended. While in Butler's work this is a reference to prisoners, here I utilize this framework of the encounter with the precarious life of the Other to engage with the vulnerability of refugee subjects.

Building on ideas similar to Butler's theorization, Guy Standing's understanding of precarity is centered on socioeconomic insecurity, debt, and the loss of cultural, civil, social, political, and economic rights. He perceives the collectivity of people experiencing the aforementioned loss as a new rising class: “the precariat.” I employ this framework to contextualize the new lived experience in Greece following the imposition of austerity measures. The breadth of Standing's theorization, as the precariat is a class that reaches beyond national borders, allows me to utilize this concept as an additional lens through which to conceptualize the vulnerability suggested by Butler. As such, I pursue both of these frameworks as distinct layers in the process conceptualizing precarity in the local context and in fleshing out the material implications that these theories have on the bodies of individuals who find themselves internationally in precarious positions. As noted earlier, I consider the Greek dance scene as laying at the intersection of both of these frameworks, since it is innately centered on mobility, and is thus fertile ground for exploring questions of immobility, such as the limbo experienced by refugees.

Staging Encounters

In the abandoned furniture factories of Pireaus 260, Ermira Goro's A Quiet Voice premiered in 2014, under the auspices of the prestigious Athens & Epidaurus Festival.Footnote ² The stage had concrete floors and dirty, old factory windows in the back, evoking a derelict space. As the audience waited for the performance to start, the figure of a black male person appeared behind one of the back windows. He was anxiously knocking on the window, trying to become heard, yet on the inside, no sound transferred through. More figures appeared behind the windows, some of them knocking soundlessly, others placing their open palms on the glass, trying to push through. Suddenly, the figures disappeared and entered the concrete stage in a long line, holding hands.

The fifty-seven performers who participated in the piece came from various cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Some of them were Greek natives who were professional dancers, while others were refugees and immigrants residing in Greece, who had never set foot on a stage before. During the performance, the difference in training sometimes became obvious, as one could see glimpses of hesitation and trepidation surfacing in the performance of the untrained bodies, which starkly contrasted with the confidence and stage presence of the professional dancers nearby.

Here, the term “untrained” is a deliberate choice to capture the divide that occurs between the dancers who have pursued professional dance training in Greece—which exclusively comprises Western concert dance practices such as ballet, American modern dance techniques, and seminars in various embodied practice approaches (Gaga, Contact Improvisation, or Release techniques, to name a few)—and the participants in dance performances who have not had this type of training. In using this term, I am fully aware of the hierarchies inherent in the word choice, such as the fact that it prioritizes Western concert dance training over other forms of embodied practices. In fact, my goal is to render these hierarchies visible through the use of the term, in order to challenge the prevailing views about concert dance in Greece, which is historically characterized by an emphasis on virtuosity and technical excellence.Footnote ³ Additionally, in the examples I have chosen to explore, the use of the term “untrained” allows me to further lay bare hierarchies that may be taking shape between Greek subjects and potential Others.

To bridge the divide between the various levels of training, the choreography was structured around a series of group pieces, involving almost all of the participants at the same time. These were often based on pedestrian movements, thereby putting emphasis on the group dynamic as opposed to individual movement sequences. The group pieces were intersected with numerous solos, duets, or trios showcasing the strengths of each of the performers. For instance, there was a bone breaking and flexing male solo, a female Bharatanatyam duet, and a professional troupe of Georgian traditional dancers in full regalia that interrupted the flow of the performance several times.

The solos and the small group pieces that often intercepted the larger group pieces were the result of task-based improvisation that Goro used in order to identify the strengths of each individual untrained participant, which she then pieced together in a way that highlighted each participant's individuality. As she noted in our interview, she wanted “each of them to be expressive in a way that felt comfortable to them” (Goro Reference Goro2014; author's translation of interview). This not only made room for the participants’ cultural diversity to become visible, through the variety of cultural dance practices that were referenced, but it also highlighted a sense of individuality. The act of acknowledging each person's skills was a celebration of each individual's background and story, as opposed to a reduction of his or her identity to narratives of hardship and the refugee experience, which tends to overlook the lives that these individuals had prior to becoming refugees.

The transitions between the scenes were quick and the entire piece evoked a hectic sense of constant movement, reminiscent of the migrant journey and the need to be constantly on the move. While indicative of a sense of necessary mobility, the underlying sense of flux that permeates the piece was at odds with the reality of some asylum seekers and refugees, who are confined to one country and cannot move on due to the bureaucratic processes mentioned earlier. Acknowledging the reality of limbo as well, some of the most memorable moments were instances of stillness and absence, which were juxtaposed against the constant flow of the overall performance and therefore stood out. Toward the conclusion of the piece, there was a moment when all performers were lying down motionlessly on the floor, scattered over the stage. Two female dancers playfully chased each other and jumped over and around the sea of motionless bodies beneath them. They came to a halt in the center of the space and faced each other; their lips briefly touched. Gradually, they moved their heads back and it became obvious that the momentary kiss was a gesture to stabilize a balloon that one of the dancers was slowly inflating, while the other was holding it in place. The balloon grew bigger and bigger until it popped and the lights went out. From the back of the stage, a woman balancing three candles—one in each hand and one on her head—entered and made her way to the front. As she walked between the performers, they stood up and extended a paper handkerchief to the candle flames. Once it caught fire, they dropped it on the floor, let it turn to ash, and exited the stage.

The metaphor of the burning handkerchiefs signified either people they had to leave behind or things that were lost in the process. Thus, Goro seems to highlight the affective reality of the experience and renders it in terms that are relatable to wide audiences. As such, I suggest that A Quiet Voice oscillates between individuality and collective experience, meshing personal narratives with collective narratives and rendering both through movement.

A Quiet Voice and the approaches described are indicative of a new trend that was popularized in Greece after 2010, involving engagement through dance with refugees and immigrant populations. Some of these works are created in order to facilitate encounters between migrants and native Greeks, while others aim at creating a forum for migrants to express themselves and have their side of the story heard. In either case, these initiatives introduce untrained bodies to performance venues and thus contribute to the formation of new aesthetic approaches and performance methodologies in Greece (see also Zervou Reference Zervou2017). A similar approach, also layering personal and collective narratives and experiences, has been a series of ongoing projects called PassTRESpass, which are a collaboration between Despina Stamos, a New York-based choreographer and cofounder of The Modern Dance Awareness Society, and Panagiotis Andronikidis, a Greek choreographer, Contact Improvisation teacher, and founder of ELANADISTIKANOUME (Come See What We Do) dance company in Athens. ELANADISTIKANOUME, founded in 2009, is one of the first companies in Greece that includes immigrants and refugees as its regular members. In what follows, I will focus on one iteration of this project that took place in 2013, under the auspices of the Anti-Racist Festival.Footnote ⁴

Outside the Olympic Stadium in Irene, a group of immigrant and refugee nondancers descend a long flight of stairs, carefully putting one foot in front of the other on a piece of red and white tape that runs down the stairs. Their arms are stretched out to their sides at shoulder height to assist them in the act of balancing on the tape. Once everyone has made it down the stairs, they form a long line that begins to move from one side of the space to the other. During each crossing, one individual is left behind to engage in a short solo sequence, which mostly comprises pedestrian movements reminiscent of daily tasks, until the line sweeps past them and they join in again, leaving someone else behind. After numerous crossings, the line traverses one last time and each individual stops randomly, until they are all spread out over the open space designated for the performance. The boundaries of the performance here become blurred, as audience members and festival attendees cross through the performers, making their ways to other events. Amid the commotion, the performers begin to loudly introduce themselves in Greek:

In their hands, each of them holds a piece of the red and white tape they initially balanced on, which flickers in the light breeze. Gradually, the group rejoins to form a cluster in the middle of the open space designated for the performance and they crumble up the pieces of tape in their fists. They raise their fists to the air as a voice-over narrative is playing in the background. It is a male voice talking about a migrant's journey in broken English. The voice notes the challenge of missing one's family and loved ones, while the group has split up again. On one side, there is a tight-knit group in which all participants extend an arm out to invite one other individual, who was left behind, to join them. This individual offers a piece of paper to them and they all raise their index finger and shake it from side to side, signaling rejection. The individual lets the paper fall to the ground and that changes the group's gesture to palms facing up, waving their slightly bent fingers, signaling him to come closer. He takes another paper out of his pocket, which is once more met with rejection and the sequence oscillates between a welcoming demeanor and stark rejection until the participants turn to the next improvisatory task. Some of the tasks that follow include a playful sequence of some performers posing, and others either gently leaning on them, sharing weight, or moving around them, filling in negative space. Later on, they form a circle holding hands and, at times, break the circle by letting go and having a couple of the participants raise their joined hands forming momentary gates, allowing others to cross under them. The piece culminates with all performers sitting on one side of a long table, and the audience joining them on the other side. They are given a chance to introduce themselves, talk with one another, and share their stories.

Once more, from a choreographic point of view, the biggest challenge was how to bridge the chasm between the various levels of bodily awareness of the diverse participants. Based on information obtained from interviewing the project directors, their approach was to employ task-based improvisation in order to allow the participants to move “freely” (within the confines of the given task) and get a sense of their movement qualities. As is true for various iterations of the PassTRESpass project, the prompts that the participants were called to embody related to the experience of their migrant journeys. The participants are often asked to physicalize emotions or other pivotal themes that are perceived as being stereotypically associated with migrant subjectivities. For instance, they may be asked to engage with a rough terrain (literally a pebbled road as part of a site-specific project), which in the performance translates as a parallel to the rough conditions of their journey and their resilience. In the piece described, examples of this are the pedestrian sequences the participants perform when they are singled out from the sweeping line, as well as the sequence in which one individual presents the group with a series of papers and is repeatedly rejected. The group only seems to welcome him momentarily, when he holds nothing in his hands, rejecting him again upon presenting the next piece of paper. I consider this a clear allusion to the struggle of asylum seekers and the difficulty of navigating through the bureaucratic and legal processes in the host country.

The interplay between personal and collective narratives of hardship in this performance, which is also highlighted in the voice-over narrative discussing the challenges of migration, is rendered through a series of improvisatory tasks. There is a structure to the performance, created around a set of tasks that the performers need to complete, which is broken down to small objectives. For untrained participants, this helps to create a narrative that is easy to remember. In addition, if that narrative is related to their personal experiences, it makes it even easier to perform and memorize as the prompts that they follow derive from their personal stories. This type of task-based improvisation is easily relatable to daily life and may be perceived by untrained practitioners as a practice allowing for relative freedom of expression, in terms of not being required to follow a strict choreography.Footnote ⁵

Narrative Devices and Improvisation

Continuing to pursue the central role that personal narratives play in the process of incorporating untrained bodies, I would also like to propose an alternative theorization, which pays attention to the way that such approaches are informed by the social condition of precarity. As performance scholar Katharina Pewny (Reference Pewny2011) notes, the academic discourse on precarity has given rise to new approaches and performance aesthetics. One such approach is a methodology akin to sociologist Richard Sennett's process of “life narrative” (Reference Sennett1998, 117). “Life narrative” is the methodological approach Sennett adopted when interviewing unemployed workers, for whom it was a means to come to terms with their uncertain position. The performative act of narrating one's personal experience works as a structure that allows the narrators to come to terms with their precarious position. Indeed, some of the participants report finding the process of physicalizing aspects of their experience or narrating their story in an embodied manner to be therapeutic.

In the context of “precarious theater,” “life narrative” becomes a methodological tool for artistic creation. In the two performances described, the Self functions as a role (“Das Selbst als Rolle”) (Pewny Reference Pewny2011, 78). The “Self as a role” is a narrative device that structures performances around the actual lived experiences of people (actors, dancers, participants) rather than a linear fictional narrative with a clear beginning and end. As experiences and memories are often shared in a rather fragmented manner (for instance, in the context of a casual conversation), so too do performances employing the “Self as a role” framework lack a linear progression and cohesiveness, as demonstrated by the two examples discussed, which focused mostly on scenes rather than on a “story” with a clear beginning and end.

The emphasizing of personal narratives, which can be perceived as a practice of relative freedom and as a means for subjects to claim agency, can also be criticized as a practice of essentialization. Most performances involving refugees that I have observed during my fieldworkFootnote ⁶ in Greece tend to confine their narratives to topics related to the European refugee crisis or issues related to belonging and migration. As such, the participants, even though they seemingly have the freedom to express themselves however they choose to through improvisation, are still confined to narratives of hardship, migrant journeys, and insecurity. Thus, they are fixed to the subjectivity of being a refugee or an immigrant and are not recognized as individuals outside of a label that perpetuates their “Otherness” in the context of the new country in which they find themselves. While I noted earlier that I recognize the value of such choreographic endeavors in raising awareness among audiences, the limitations that such initiatives create for the participants should not be overlooked.

Additionally, while pairings between natives and migrants allow questions of dance as a site for political agency to arise, they simultaneously raise the issue of the hierarchical relation in which trained choreographers are the ones that make space for and “give voice” to untrained bodies. This becomes especially pertinent since in Greece technical excellence and virtuosity are historically valued more than improvisatory approaches focusing on movement exploration. This shift toward new modes of embodied organization that extend an invitation to the Other coincided with the height of the European refugee crisis. This troubles the motives of such initiatives, especially when posing questions of exploitation, or sensationalization. As the divide of professional/untrained performers and native Greeks/immigrants often overlaps, I question how discourses of Otherness inform this equation as well as the politics of the choice to incorporate these vulnerable groups into performances, thereby rendering them hypervisible.

Taking into account the xenophobic rhetoric that was circulating in Greece at the time when these performances premiered, these pieces could also be described as different approaches for staging encounters with the Other, who in this instance are subjects experiencing a very precarious mode of existence. What are the choreographic means employed to achieve such encounters, and what are some of the potential challenges inherent in the staging processes?

To explore these questions in more depth, I would now like to turn to a particular improvisatory practice that is oftentimes employed in works involving immigrants and refugees: Contact Improvisation. As a collaborative approach often credited to Steve Paxton in the United States during the early 1970s, it is interesting to consider why it would regain popularity in Greece in the present moment, and especially among initiatives involving refugees. There are quite a few parallels that can be drawn between the structure of the practice of Contact Improvisation and the choice to engage refugee populations through it. As noted by Paxton, one of the core ideas of the practice is an openness to adaptability and disorientation. In his essay Drafting Interior Techniques, Paxton observes how “Contact Improvisation constantly challenges one's orientation: visual, directional, balance, and where in the body consciousness is positioned” (Paxton Reference Paxton, Albright and Gere2003, 178). This sentiment does not only apply to embodied orientation but considers mental attitude as well. Along the same lines dance scholar Danielle Goldman posits the following:

It seems that the structure of the practice of Contact Improvisation recalls aspects of both the experience Greeks have trying to navigate the crisis landscape and the imposed austerity measures, as well as skills that migrant participants may have had to apply in their journeys on the way to Greece and Europe.

Another central concept of the practice is the idea of “sharing a dance,” coined by dance scholar Cynthia Novack (Reference Novack1990). According to Novack, the body in Contact Improvisation is not independent, because the practice is a constant negotiation between two bodies. Part of its appeal is also the fact that the practice was from very early on advertised as something that everyone (regardless of their level of training or prior experience) could participate in. In spite of Contact Improvisation's egalitarian values, however, the participants were, for the most part, white middle-class artists. The rhetoric of Contact Improvisation as being a practice “for everyone” still circulates in Greece, and Contact Jams are advertised as open spaces for both dancers and untrained bodies. Given the close ties between Contact Improvisation and American cultural values of the 1970s and 80s, which Novack examines in depth, I find it particularly interesting that the practice is at the epicenter of engagements with migrants. Returning to the notion of “sharing,” it was, according to Goldman (Reference Goldman2010), initially considered threatening in the US context of the 1970s, as it was tainted by racial, social, and class hierarchies.

In the context of Greece during the crisis, and considering the rise of ethnocentrism and xenophobia, the idea of “sharing a dance” with an Other was similarly fraught. Utilizing Contact Improvisation as a practice to mediate that fear is something that has been employed by both Panagiotis Andronikidis, the founder of ELANADISTIKANOUME, and Konstantinos Mihos, whose alternative approach to engaging with the topic of immigration will be described in the coming section. Beyond a training regimen, Contact Improvisation for them seems to be a way to take a political stance as they facilitate meetings between natives and migrants, fostering encounters between people that may otherwise not have crossed paths.

The 2013 iteration of PassTRESpass described earlier involved instances of weight bearing and sharing akin to Paxton's early experimentations with the form. Virtuosic or acrobatic sequences were absent from this piece, although they were present in other works by Andronikidis, as some ELANADISTIKANOUME members have developed interest in Contact Improvisation and have taken many classes that have allowed them to develop the skill set further. However, since the participants of PassTRESpass only come together over the span of a few weeks, the level of training that they acquire is limited to the weight sharing, points of contact, or initiation-through-touch aspects of Contact Improvisation, thus restricting the performance to a pedestrian aesthetic. Nevertheless, I consider the choice to employ Contact Improvisation and improvisation in a broader sense in such initiatives as an exercise in preparing audiences, performers, refugees, and immigrants alike for the practice of navigating the present moment and the fluctuating political and social landscape of the crisis. It is a training for learning to problem-solve in the moment.

However, it should not go unnoticed that the spaces where such performances and jams occur are still rather marginal, compared to the mainstream prestigious and highly advertised stages and institutions that tend to host internationally renowned companies. Arguably, the choice to foster such encounters at spaces like Embros—an abandoned theater that was reclaimed by an artistic collective as a performance space—or under the auspices of the annual Anti-Racism Festival—where PassTRESpass was presented—are strategic choices to ensure the safety of participants. Incidents of violence (either verbal or physical) against refugees and immigrants in performances have occurred, so facilitators strive to ensure the participants’ safety and well-being. Unfortunately, in spite of the well-intended motives behind the necessity of opting for marginalized venues, these choices mean that such valuable initiatives remain in the realm of lesser advertised works that become known through word of mouth, rather than through institutional support, with the exception of A Quiet Voice. Thus, the lack of prestigious institutional support further urges the question of who creates space and for whom.

The rather marginalized nature of most such staged encounters further provokes a question about ethics and aesthetics. Questioning the means of staging encounters between spectators and Others through applying Levinas's phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity, Katharina Pewny suggests that “theatrical performances are an encounter with the other if possibilities are opened up to the spectators to respond to the vulnerability of the other. How these possibilities take shape, are both the ethics and aesthetics of the performance” (Reference Pewny2012, 263; emphasis in original). Continuing to explore these questions about the ways the encounters take shape and the resulting aesthetics of the performances, I turn to the third example, which offers a different approach for staging an encounter between the Self and an Other in Levinasian terms.

With Them or For Them: Toward a Critique of Refugee Performances

The first thing to note in the exploration of the aesthetic results of staging encounters between trained and untrained bodies is that the Greek dance scene up until the 2010s was not characterized by diversity, as most productions involved predominantly white performers. There was ethnic diversity but not racial diversity, which only emerged in the 2010s in an effort to create works more representative of the increasingly diverse demographic composition of the country. However, as this is still a rather recent occurrence and primarily takes place through initiatives involving untrained bodies, it often ends up perpetuating inequalities and highlighting distinctions between the Self (the native Greeks/professionally trained dancers) and the Other (the often brown and black bodies of immigrants and refugees, who do not have professional dance training).

Situating this divide in the context of Greece's history and fear of being “orientalized” because of its Ottoman occupation in the past, or the desire to preserve its glorified position in the West (based on the history and accomplishments of ancient Greece), the crisis reignited anxieties about Greece's marginalization or potential othering from the EU. As such, I wonder to what extent this contrast between the highly trained, virtuosic, white native Greek bodies and the untrained newcomer counterparts, who primarily perform pedestrian inspired movements, is an (un)conscious attempt to preserve the country's position and reaffirm it in the Western canonical hierarchy.

Based on my fieldwork, I would confidently argue that this does not seem to be among the choreographers’ intentions, as most of them are genuinely interested in the well-being of their participants and consider their work to be a noble effort of educating audiences and providing a forum for refugees and immigrants to share their experiences. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that even the act of “providing a forum” is perpetuating an inequality and the inherent hierarchy of someone (in this case the native Greek choreographer) needing to create the space for the Other to share their experience.

One more consideration to add to all these layers is the potential exploitation and sensationalization that may take place in works in which immigrants and refugees become the protagonists. The two performances that I focused on thus far were driven by a collaboration with the refugees. An alternative approach to this paradigm would be a work created for them, such as Audition Bacchae (2010–2011), directed/choreographed by Konstantinos Mihos. In our interview, Mihos noted that there is a fine line between creating work with immigrants as opposed to creating a work for them. He considers the former rather problematic as it can potentially cross into exploitation, and in Audition Bacchae, he opted for the latter.

The premise of Audition Bacchae is that a group of performers attempt to choreograph Euripides's Bacchae and repeatedly fail. The process takes place as a peripatetic tour in the heart of Athens. Audiences met the performers at the Wrong Movement dance studio (of Mihos's homonymous dance company) and were taken on a tour down Euripides Street, which has the reputation of being a rather dangerous neighborhood where drug transactions frequently take place. During the performance, audience members sometimes witnessed illegal transactions taking place or caused panic among the street vendors, who hid their stash and ran upon the sight of a large group of audience members wandering the streets. The choice of the site was strategic and, in the words of Mihos, what the work sought to imply was that

In this alternative approach of creating work for the immigrants, the process of othering is still very much present, yet it is flipped, as the audiences momentarily become the Others in the setting they are navigating. Even though the audiences temporarily experience fear perhaps akin to the agony of a refugee, it is an experience they have chosen to subject themselves to, which they have paid for, and which only lasts for the duration of the performance. It is not their daily reality.

Through Audition Bacchae Mihos evokes momentary empathy on behalf of the audience attendees. Such an affect could be productive in terms of initiating discussions among audience members on issues of precarity and vulnerability after the performance is over, yet the distinction between the Self and an Other persists. The Other in this instance is not only in danger themselves, but is also perceived as dangerous and delinquent. Connotations of this type draw a fine line between the empathy that Mihos seeks to evoke, and a potential demonization of the Other.

Another interesting facet to consider here is who the untrained bodies are in this instance. They are the audience as well as the delinquent characters, who, by virtue of being in the street when the performance takes place, involuntarily become part of it. The concept of the choreography or a set score is also expanded in this instance as there is a score that the performers follow, yet there is also a lot of improvisation required in the moments when the audience encounters the street vendors and they both have to make decisions about how to best navigate that encounter.

It seems that in those fleeting moments when decision making is required (the vendors pack up their stash and run, and the audiences perhaps choose to look the other way or change their walking pace), a different sense of precarity manifests. Driven by the awkwardness of the unplanned encounters and the momentary experience of fear, upon witnessing a potentially illegal transaction, it is the audiences and the vendors in this instance who become the untrained bodies. This constitutes a rather unique reversal of the previously explored dynamics between lack of training and virtuosity and presents yet another approach for framing precarity in and through performance.

Nevertheless, it seems that with the exception perhaps of A Quiet Voice, which successfully shed light on the participants’ cultural backgrounds and heightened their individuality, the other works, be they for immigrants or with them, inadvertently end up perpetuating neocolonial hierarchies of Self as opposed to Other. Theater scholar Maurya Wickstrom (Reference Wickstrom2012), who has studied refugee theater performances in Palestine, notes that this distinction and organization of works as about/with/for refugees is rather common. Her critique centers on how such works are oftentimes considered humanitarian action and a means to “give voice to the voiceless” and therefore presuppose inequality. Instead, Wickstrom proposes that the organizing principle of such performances should follow “a fundamental axiom of Equality” (2012, 3).

Indeed, in the performances that have been discussed thus far, the hierarchical relationship between choreographer and participants is not only analogous to the relationship between trained and untrained bodies, but is also transferred as the idea of needing either a native Greek or another “authority” to provide a forum for the displaced voices to be heard. Here, it should be noted that Despina Stamos is Greek-American and migrated to the United States at a very young age with her parents, escaping the dictatorial regime in Greece at the time. Ermira Goro was born in Albania and came to Greece as a teenager once the communist regime collapsed. The choreographers’ own migration stories shed light on the potential motives behind their interest to take on such subjects in their works. The dichotomy between natives and migrants becomes further complicated in these instances and urges for an awareness of the creative frameworks used to engage with the refugee performers, which for the most part either follow Western concert dance etiquette or are centered on American postmodern dance approaches.

This predominantly Western framework obviously challenges the supposed “freedom” of improvisation and individual expression, as subjects are only allowed to express themselves in confined ways or through performing specific tasks. With this in mind, the pending question revolves around the efficacy that such initiatives have for both participants and audiences. The answer to this question is not always clear and is often rather subjective, as some of the participants report that their involvement in art projects has a therapeutic effect on them. In terms of monetary benefits, it often depends on the context. If the work appears under the auspices of a festival, then there may be monetary compensation for the participants. In instances when the works were not performed under the auspices of a festival, the participants were compensated in alternative ways for their time, for example by offering support in navigating public services in Greece or perhaps through potlucks and sharing food. As for audiences, I think the answer is still twofold. As demonstrated through the description of the works and the discourses they stir up, these performances certainly raise awareness on issues associated with immigration and the European refugee crisis. At the same time, however, the ways that these encounters are staged also highlight long established hierarchies of discrimination and delineate new boundaries either within the groups of performers or between performers and audiences.