A shifting landscape: Contemporary Greek dance and conditions of crisis

This article introduces a framework for discussing contemporary dance’s potential for critical intervention within the context of the current socio-economic crisis in Europe, focusing on examples from Greece. In particular, it explores how the use of history in recent works proposes new engagements and relationships between past and present, inviting a reconsideration of the past while making possible the envisaging and articulation of emergent narratives, identities and social formations. It also examines the use of collaborative practices for choreographing, which depart from hierarchical dance processes that have been dominant in Greece and thus challenge the prevailing perception of danse d’auteur while exploring different modes of production. The significance of these practices lies in their questioning of previously established modes of working but also in their potential function as models of broader social practices. The works in question are analysed not as artefacts alone but as artistic practices that operate, act and interact within the social, the political and the aesthetic. It is argued that under conditions of socio-political crisis, the established social order is renegotiated and that these works, through the practices with which they engage, are significant in the reconstitution of the social. Thus, they propose a way of reclaiming the social dimension and potential of the arts in a period when their role is disputed.