Sophia Handaka

Performing tradition:

The case of the ‘Dora Stratou’ Theatre.

Handaka, Sophia: “Performing tradition:The case of the ‘Dora Stratou’ Theatre”, 12th International Congress on Dance Research, Athens, 1-5/7, 1998.

Abstract

The current paper draws on my master’s thesis in ethnology and museum ethnography in which the meaning that folk culture and material culture assume in the eyes of the modern Greek people is explored. In concentrating primarily on the costume collection of the Dora Stratou theatre and on performance as a representation of a particular cultural form of traditional life, this paper argues that while tradition is popular in its natural form, it is not at all in its constructed dimension. Undergoing a process of objectification, certain traditional practices acquire a very different role and status in society; they become symbolic structures embedded in a broader cultural system known as Greece’s cultural history. This system is used to legitimise claims of ‘traditionality’ and contrarily oppose them to phenomena of ‘modernity’. In this framework is reproduced the dilemma on ‘fidelity to historical truth, or novelty’ which presents the two ‘extremes’ as polar opposites. Nevertheless, as this paper will hopefully retrieve, ‘novelty’—defined as referring to ‘novel’ accession into ‘traditional’ archetypes—need not necessarily be renounced and excluded from continuous traditional perseverance.

Introduction: Communicating tradition

Traditional life undergoes change from one generation to the next, without ever losing its magnitude; it is an intrinsic quality of nature, which is being continuously ‘delivered’.[1] Nonetheless ‘once knowledge is not transmitted orally, against the backdrop of a traditional society, the past is not naturally embodied into the present and thus cannot with certainty determine the future’[1]. As soon as it gets into the realms of necessitated and conscious, mass-produced and mass-addressed, transmission in order to ensure continuity, it takes a different denotation; it becomes Tradition with a capital T.

All modern nations have undergone a period of ‘transformation’ of their histories, in which much effort has been placed on finding a way of using the past to legitimise the existing state of affairs and anticipate the future. In Greece, it sprung from the works of nineteenth-century intellectuals—historians, linguists and folklorists. At an early stage, Greek history was rewritten—or rather formally reorganised—in a way to present the inhabitants of the new nation-state and equally sceptical foreigners (Europeans) with a logical continuum of the Greek nation from antiquity, to the Byzantine times, to the present. The development of Greek folklore study—as the ‘culture’ of collecting, revering and promoting traditional culture—pinpoints the integration and gradual identification of ‘folk culture’ (laikos politismos) to ‘national culture’ (ethnikos politismos).[1]

Nowadays, the model of a 3,000-year-old Greek civilisation and culture—remitted largely through education—constitutes the basis of Greek national character. Those who blindly adhere to this model, Kiriakidou-Nestoros notes, confound tradition with history. As a result, Greece’s traditional culture has become part of its historical model of continuity. The effects of this conformation of history and folklore are manifest in present-day classifications of self and other, nationally as well as internationally.

In this analytical framework, we identify today similar patterns in the theoretical outlook as well as the practice of modern folklore. By examining past influences on contemporary attitude towards tradition we can get a better understanding of cultural activities connected to ‘the folk’, like those of the ‘Dora Stratou’ theatre.

On a first level, looking at the history of this organisation, we can reproduce its emergence within the social, political, and economic environment of the 1950s. At a higher level, we can observe the activities of the theatre today, knowing its ideological foundations and their roots, and experiencing the current state of affairs.

Theoretically, by focusing on ‘tradition as an ideological creation’ as Kiriakidou-Nestoros remarks—as a symbol and not reality—we can discuss the consequences of objectifying, conforming, and appropriating tradition and ‘the folk’ in modern representations.

Using the theatre as an example, we will point to the dispensability of overemphasising ‘authenticity’ and ‘the original’, and strictly separating ‘historical truth’ from ‘novelty’ or ‘innovation’, in a world where change is historically a continuous process. We will assume that insistence on strictly (re)presenting ‘the authentic’ disrupts and distracts cultural recontextualisation of ‘the folk’—which we will agree with Kiriakidou-Nestoros, that ‘does not exist any longer as a historical reality’.[1] Instead, we conclude, the contemporary ‘reality’ of folk culture—with it is internal vicissitudes and contradictions—is equally significant to study and present, and worth one’s ‘fidelity’.

Collecting tradition

Collecting tradition in its material form started in the beginning of the twentieth century, when the first private collection appeared. As Papadopoulos (1983) notes, it was mainly the work of a small, upper middle-class elite—collectors, writers and students of folklore—who were predominantly living and working in Athens.

The dominant spirit of collecting was oriented towards folk artistic objects, such as costumes, jewellery, textiles, handicrafts, house decorative objects, and any other material that looked beautiful. Collecting was often associated with philanthropic activities and was very much in fashion; many rich Athenians of the time were photographed in folk costumes.

Three groups of ‘folklorists’ engaged in collecting. First came academics trained in classical philology who were interested primarily in oral tradition considering it as supplementary material to classical studies. A second group included self-taught non-academics who exercised fieldwork out of their own interest. Well known in this group was Ms. Chatzimichali, who developed her own methods of documenting and classifying; she composed a substantial and important work on folk art, and is best known for her contribution in the field of traditional costume. Apart from few studies, the remaining bibliography of the time was para-folkloric, as Papadopoulos notes.[1] This was the work of a third group working on the field, the provincial ‘men of letters’ (loghioi), who, keen on copying the efforts of Chatzimichali and academic folklorists, and victims of stereotypes, of their own enthusiasm, and of the absence of any effective criticism, merely achieved what Papadopoulos describes as ‘false lyricism’.[1]

In all, a certain group of interested collectors invented (i.e. imagined for a particular use) the Greek ‘peasant’ and imposed this visualisation on the making of museum representations until the present day. The museological program was ahistorical. Exhibitions contained, in majority, fine costumes, jewellery, and embroidery. Representations of the ‘peasants’ were only found dressed in festival clothes—‘peasants only live on Sunday’[1]—simply accompanied by a brief indication of their place of origin. Anything spoilt, worn or imperfect was excluded. In short, folk culture was pictured to be composed only of beautiful objects, while others, such as tools, were nowhere to be found. ‘The objects, like the peasants, were beautiful and existed in vacuo’.[1] In this framework, there was no room for science, while technological, economic, sociological and ideological aspects were not thought of. As Papadopoulos observes, there was not one definition of the concept of rural life.

This attitude towards folk culture, nourished by a pro-classical formal policy, remained throughout the course of the century, up to the time when Dora Stratou started collecting. After two world-wars and a civil war, as well as other political events, significant social changes marked the Greece of the 1950s. Movement to the cities coincided with the rapid intrusion of Western goods and Western values. The life-style of agricultural communities was rapidly attenuated, while modernisation and materialism were ‘in demand’. The people did not only leave their past behind and move to the city; they often tried to efface any connection to it. Characterisations such as peasantry (vlachiko) or village-like (choriatiko) commonly discouraged new city-dwellers from practising anything that was known traditionally. Stratou describes the ‘psychological predicament’ of the Greeks during the 1950s when she decided to collect:

‘Whereas until recently people were dancing and singing our country’s dances and songs, in the post-war period, they started dancing all types of foreign dances, neglecting their own tradition, never realising that those dances were merely ill-imitations of different folk dances, namely, samba, rumba, rock’n’roll.

[…] On the other hand, your heart broke to see shops full of magnificent bags, or pillows gold embroidered, cut…out of aprons from Thessaly [Northern Greece] and elsewhere. Their embroidery was made out of golden thread, which does not grow rusty, since it is real gold. In truth one cannot find this quality any longer, nor the people who made it; who is going to embroider such clothes today, and for whom?’.[1]

The ‘Dora Stratou’ Theatre

The theatre presents an interesting case-study because of its method of holding and combining three very significant aspects of Greek folk culture: traditional forms of dress, dance, and music. The method of representation, a ‘live museum’ which combines other senses than just the visual, is rare to find and worth recording.

The portrayal of this organisation as a ‘theatre’ has probably come to prevail over others due to the emphasis given by its founder, Ms Stratou, on dance performances. In truth, while it does share certain characteristics with theatres that other collecting institutions might not, it nevertheless stands out in effecting a lot more activities that any theatre, museum, or theatre museum would normally aim at.

In its initial form as a non-profitmaking association, it was called ‘Greek Dances-Dora Stratou’ and was founded for the purpose of ‘locating, rescuing and promoting our national dances and popular songs, as well as our folk art in general’.[1]

Stratou decided to collect the original and authentic at the time when other groups were involved in the newly ‘trendy’ artistic, skilfully-made (endehno) song and dance. She accepted no choreography in her performances, and, as Mr Raftis remarked, Stratou was the only leader of a dance group in Greece who was not herself a dancer. This led her to respect what the people told her.

Stratou insisted on authenticity and thus only accepted local connoisseurs. For example, something the theatre takes pride of, is the fact that the dance from Gida (Alexandria) of Macedonia was shown to them by the same woman whose photograph at a young age appeared in one of Chatzimichali’s initial books on traditional dress, called Roumlouki.[1] The ‘Dora Stratou’ theatre has been distinct in that it presents traditional dances in their pure form, performed by people from rural areas. In addition, the theatre has served an important role in that it has been consciously directed to foreigners who did not necessarily have to visit Greece since the group travelled abroad.

In the introduction to her book Greek Traditional Dances (1978), Dora Stratou mentions two major events that led her to embark on the project of collecting traditional dance and dress:

‘The first was the appearance of a Yugoslavian dance group, with a hundred performers, which came to Athens in 1952. It was the first time we were experiencing a folk dance group performing like in a theatre. In addition, it was the first time we saw a folk dance group touring and promoting its country to the world, in international festivals, with all its national authority.

The second instigator was an article written by the then director of the Folklore Archive of the Academy of Athens, and prominent scholar, Mr. Megas, published in the Kathimerini newspaper, which started with the following words: “How important would it be for the locality, and how more important for Greece—with its rich culture—to make a similar effort!” And the article ended with these words: “Will there not appear some person who would do the same for Greece? Organise a group of Greek national dances?” Such a project, of course, would presuppose immense financial and artistic complication.

Despite all obstacles, I decided to present our national dances in performances. I effected the idea in 1953; in the beginning it was a disaster. Maybe with time though, everybody—especially the Greeks—would understand how deep the concept hiding behind this idea was, and, in fact, how significant it was. So I decided to go on’.[1]

Although in this discussion we are not presenting a biography of the collector, her ideology warmly expressed in the above excerpt irradiates the methods she followed in collecting and in organising the performances.

Today, under Mr. Raftis’ regime, the organisation has expanded its activities considerably, especially in respect to the fields of education and research. Whilst Ms Stratou viewed the establishment as a theatre and was thus focusing on its dance performances, Mr. Raftis has been further involved in the transmission of the considerable information the organisation holds, by initiating multiple publications as well as research and tuition programmes. The president’s aspiration to catch up with modern international standards of professionalism, his special interest on the analytical study of world traditional dance, and his incentive to remain in keeping with Ms Stratou’s ideals on representing authenticity, have elevated the theatre into a multi-focus, diverse-activity, research, enjoyment and communication centre.

The collection

Embarking on this project in 1953, Dora Stratou managed to assemble, within twenty years, the impressive amount of 2500 village-made costumes, plus a large number of associated objects, including traditional shoes, masks, swords, kerchiefs, bells and jewellery. The dresses vary as to the quality and lushness—some are more elaborate and embellished than others; as to their use—wedding, carnival, indoors, outdoors; as to the material used—silk, velvet, or simple wool tunics.

The majority of the dresses in the collection were not everyday garments. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, because by the time Dora Stratou was collecting, most villagers had replaced rich and elaborate costumes with simpler clothes. Secondly, dresses in the collection were never seen nor treated as normal everyday garments anyway. On the contrary, they were already apprehended as ‘pieces of art’ by their makers, who put their personal effort and talent into their making.

With the exception of certain areas—like the island of Skyros—most costumes in the collection are referred to as wedding dresses—whether the women wearing them were wedded or not. Commonly it was the women themselves who made most of their dresses, which they wore all their life. Normally, they would modify certain parts of the costume—the colour of the head scarf, the addition of a belt or an addition of embroidery on the dress—to mark the gain or loss of a certain status (single, wedded, widowed).

We say most, because the collection also comprises a number of ‘carnival’ dresses, like the costumes for the Boulles dance in Naoussa (Macedonia)—where men danced both male and female roles—and those from Zante in the Ionian Sea. This part of the collection is of great significance today, when such customs as carnival dances are even more rarely encountered than other dances are.

The origins of Greek dresses are worth discussing. This because, at different periods, the Greek nation has engaged in a variety of interactions with its neighbouring cultures, both for commercial and other purposes. This phenomenon has influenced folk costumes, which very often carry marks of multiple and frequent interaction with Asia, Western Europe, but also north and north-eastern Africa.

Christos Broufas (1993) distinguishes four main poles of influence. Firstly, Greek costumes were considerably influenced by eastern Asia and its use of textiles which, as the writer notes, reached Europe through the Arabs in the Middle Ages. A second influence came from the south, mainly from the Arabs as well as other north-eastern African nations through trade. An additional influence, mostly found in richer areas, was the intrusion of Western styles and fashions. Finally, a great amount of influence came from the Northern Slavic races and is still encountered today, not only in dress, but also in music, dance, and other customs.

Influences were not only external but have also been observed from internal interaction. ‘Thus,’ as Broufas notes, ‘we see the brides of the mountain village of Samarina [Epirus] attired in long dresses of pleated silk, and the sumptuous and imposing outfit worn by the ladies of the little island of Nissyros [Dodecannese]’.[1] Equally often, women would introduce new elements onto the traditional patterns, such as expensive cloths, threads and, most often, jewellery. In Kastelorizo (Dodecannese), for example, heavy and rich jewellery was commonly presented to women from their husband—who were usually traders—and were shown off with pride and diligence.[1]

Dress in dance: the aesthetics of performance

Most dresses in the collection appear in sets of eight to twelve, with their jewels when possible and copies of those if not. As Ms Siomi remarked, Dora Stratou would never gather one or two examples of a dress if she were not assured that she could have enough to fulfil the requirements of a performance. When she found one piece she liked, Ms Stratou would make an order to the local tailor of the number of copies she required. If this were possible then she would proceed with getting the sample. The problem with this attitude, Ms Siomi noted, is that because she would not collect from all places, it is not possible for researchers today to know or make out any differences that might exist between neighbouring village and community dresses.

Interestingly enough, many of the dresses in the collection—like the ones from Farassa, Cappadocia—were modelled in accordance to the originals and redesigned by Tsarouchis, a prominent Greek painter, who had studied Greek folk dress under the guidance of Angeliki Chatzimichali.[1] Tsarouchis would often also draw on the dresses, most commonly to reproduce elaborate embroideries on aprons.

These pieces are of great interest today, especially in the light of issues of authenticity often raised among rival institutions. Even at the time those dresses were copied, the Lykeion Ellinidon, a major rival, protested about the authenticity of drawn dresses. Ms Stratou explained her action to the Ministry of Education—where the issue was raised—by saying that she was working in the same spirit that dressmakers for theatrical productions of ancient tragedies did. [1]

Dora Stratou also often mended certain dresses or parts of the dresses herself, for the purpose of accommodating the needs of the dance group. She often made changes, especially when the costume was not comfortable to dance in. For example, for a long time she had stopped using the inner white cotton shirt and replaced it with fake sleeves and collars, which made the ensemble look original. This habit though, led to the quick wearing out of certain costumes, and has been abolished today.

Another example of the priority given to the aesthetics of performance is presented in the case of dresses from the Zagori village in Metsovo, which traditionally used all three earth colours, brown, blue, and red. Not liking brown on stage, Ms Stratou resorted to changing it to blue. This led to a continuation of the ‘innovation’ by others who anticipated that since Dora Stratou was doing it, it must be right. Nevertheless, it was not until recently that the people in the theatre noticed the change in Stratou’s archives and made it known.

A few closing remarks

It is interesting to examine today the biographies of collections and find elements and meanings connoted which are often subject to contemporary interpretations. To assert that the ‘Dora Stratou’ collection would not have existed if it were not for Stratou is a truism. To observe though that it would not at all have been as such composed, if it were not for Stratou’s interests and her temperament, exposes a dimension of the history of collections that is usually overlooked.

As it appears, Ms Stratou collected Greek folk costumes on the basis of appearance and availability. All detailed precautions taken had to do with the dances and performance as a theatrical act, rather than the dresses as traditional objects. It could be argued then, that personal ‘touch’ or temperament of the person in charge of a collection plays a vital role in the destiny of the collection in question.

Change grounded in continuity

Anthropologists try to contribute to our understanding of the world, which, in fact, is undergoing rapid change and transformation. Different elements of culture acquire different meanings for the people under study. Tradition is commonly seen by anthropologists as a stable, temporal cluster of cultural elements. The historical contextualisation of this ‘temporality’ depends on the theoretical predisposition of the analyst.

Post-modernism, the latest analytical genre, invokes a timeless essence where prevails the phenomenon that ‘all aspects of culture and society are in motion, even when the actors themselves proclaim continuity’.[1] It seeks to replace the concept of tradition with an open-ended ‘history’ in the sense of ongoing change being the primary object of study. Flux and indeterminacy form the backbone of the approach, while any reification of culture, objectification, appropriation or essentialism of tradition are blindly rejected.[1] By distinguishing change as the only valid feature of modern research, post-modernism reaches the extreme and neglects the people’s reference to traditional continuity.

Change is grounded in continuities and in the annexation of further elements of everyday life into that continuous flow. As Herzfeld notes, particular objects or designs are strategically essentialised ‘as possessing the intrinsic qualities that define the indefinable: “tradition”’.[1] By ignoring the popular need for continuity and its current realisation—effected by objectifying and essentialising tradition—the anthropologist leaves out a large part of material to be studied.

Equally often, it occurs that the researchers’ experiencing of change is not seen as such by the people they are studying. Rather than dismissing their attitude as romantic clinging to the vanishing past, it would be more helpful to attain a better reading of tradition, taking into account its binarism with ‘the modern’.[1]

In being variably appropriated, tradition is essentialised by different individuals. Particular elements of culture and material culture are understood as traditional and are combined as such by individuals—who do not necessarily share scholarly definitions and criteria of ‘traditionality’. ‘This cultural alchemy’, as Herzfeld remarks, ‘is a kind of practical essentialism: it relies on representing the activity (or process) as intrinsic to the product’.[1]

In the case of Greece, ‘making activity rather than aesthetics the object of the discourse permits its actors to reframe the description of the product in a manner that disguised potential contradictions’.[1] In other words, the Greek proverb o skopos agiazei ta mesa (‘the end justifies, literally sanctifies, the means’) is deeply effected in everyday representations and variable reappropriations of the past.

For a ‘museological purist’, to use Herzfeld, this appropriation containing ‘the most obvious realia of modernity’,[1] is judged incomprehensible, incompatible and often invalid. In other words, in trying to understand and describe the modern world, ‘modern’ academia perpetuates the long-criticised practice of ‘intellectual imperialism’, by dismissing what lies outside their ‘categories’ as unavailing.

The theatre in a modern context

The ‘Dora Stratou’ theatre is important in that it represents a wholly different world, to the whole world. Equally, it presents traditional Greek life to the modern Greeks. For this reason, it is essential that we understand the way this representation is undertaken by the theatre.

What Stratou achieved, and the theatre is still doing today, was to combine three interconnected aspects of Greek folk culture: dance, music, and dress. The extent to which these elements were connected in ‘real life’ is overemphasised. It is overemphasised because it is made absolute. It need not be mentioned that this version of the traditional is acceptable, at least in wider Greek society.

In other words, when we take the situation strictly, folk costumes were not only worn for dancing. Most were worn on special occasions, including marriages and festivals that certainly included dance in their repertoire. In the theatre performances, however, all is combined so that the outcome has a triple action of presenting dance, music, and dancers wearing folk costumes.

In the field of museum studies, the ‘ethics’ of recontextualising material culture within museums form a central issue of discussion. Complex theoretical contemplation on the notion of aesthetics in cross-cultural discourse, and the relevance of Western categories for possible aesthetic appreciation have led many scholars to question the possibility of rendering full recognition to museum displays.

In some cultures, as Morphy notes, more than one quality of a piece of material culture may contribute to its aesthetic appreciation, which, if overlooked, could lead to ‘a distortion or appropriation of value’.[1] Namely, in Yekuana Basketry, non-material attributes, such as touch and smell are equal aesthetic properties which cannot be prompted through a museum-case display.

The theatre is unique in that it not only displays aspects of Greek traditional life but also uses them in a way to reconstruct—or at least reinterpret—activities of the past. It is indeed, as its slogan says, a ‘living museum of Greek dance’. In a sense, it comes closer to a theatre in that it recontextualises its ‘living exhibits’ multi-dimensionally, in action.

In understanding its symbolism, we need to clarify ‘symbols are effective less because they communicate meaning (thought this is also important) than because, through performance, meanings are formulated in a social rather than cognitive space, and the participants are engaged with the symbols in the interactional creation of a performative reality, rather than merely being informed by them as knowers’.[1]

Conclusion: The particularity of folk costumes

As it has been mentioned a few times in this discussion, the dresses in the collection were not at all representative of ‘everyday life in the village’. Nevertheless, these costumes are known today to be Greece’s national patrimony. In modern representations of folk dance, Raftis notes, dresses contribute to the creation of ‘the right atmosphere’ for the audience to get into the context in which they had once been.[1] I doubt that this can be done effectively unless the context is given to the audience, who need not necessarily have some image in their mind to expand upon.

Outside dance performances, dress is a basic tool for understanding man and society. Eicher describes dress as ‘a coded sensory system of non-verbal communication that aids human interaction in space and time’.[1] On a dress, you can read the history and local habits, structure and values of a society, and the position and personality of the individual. In a modern context, we are able to examine contemporary dress in conjunction with other observable phenomena surrounding the people wearing them—the social context and its influence on the wearer’s choice of appearance and action. This is not attainable for traditional dress because there is no further context available.[1]

The definition of dress as a coded sensory system of communication still holds for national dress, only it acquires a different, symbolic level of meaning for the people and the audience. Their role changes with history, specifically in the case of traditional dress, which is often used for different purposes. The foustanella, for example, has been established nowadays as the national costume of Greece. It is worn by the national guards and features in all national holidays for the celebration of Independence, as well as on other formal occasions. As Welters notes, it ‘reinforces the association of Greek dress with Greece as a nation’.[1]

As an ethnographic item, without its history dress certainly loses a considerable amount of its value. If the researcher does not know where a dress was found, when and by whom it was made, he or she can only view and understand it partially. In having focused on the study of ‘impressive’ dress, Greek scholars have forgotten other important aspects of appearance. Furthermore, by overemphasising the origin and ‘authenticity’ of folk dress and dance, they have left out the social and functional dimensions which were once of more importance.[1]

The point is that dresses are used for some kind of affiliation, namely cultural and national identification. This phenomenon is worth examining in its own terms. In this respect, the examination should raise no questions of validity or authenticity, since the criteria that determine such virtues are flexible and subject to change. By definition then, criteria of ‘traditionality’ are fluid, and conventional estimations of ‘the traditional’ often fail to account for the prospect of appropriation of different elements, old or new.

In this spirit, we see the theatre as offering performances of folk dancing, with folk music, where the dancers wear traditional folk costumes. There is no doubt that all the presented material, dresses, dances and music are authentic and original, taught from the elders of the village to the young, and this is something rare achieved by the ‘Dora Stratou’ theatre. Nevertheless, the performance as a whole is not a traditional practice, because the idea is not naturally traditional; for this reason, it should be seen within a modern context. It is essential for the theatre today to adapt to modern phenomena such as globalisation, instant mass communication and the effects of westernisation into modern Greek society. The organisation has chosen to follow a certain route, which combines the principles of the founder of the theatre, and the ‘demands’ of the new era in which they are progressing.

Epilogue

I wish to conclude this discussion with a voice of hope raised by the late Alki Kiriakidou-Nestoros, a prominent folklorist and social theorist: ‘Modern Greek history still designates gaps, especially in the domains of culture and modes of thought. The route is clear today, and, to a certain extent, enhanced with valuable studies. It is just a matter of resolving to give up sentimentalism and inaccuracies entailed in the symbolic use of popular Tradition (with a capital T) and to turn towards a scientific and clearly sensible encounter with the issues history presents us.”

Endnotes

[1]   In Greek, paradosi, tradition, literally means ‘delivery’, ‘giving’, ‘teaching’.

[1]   Kiriakidou-Nestoros 1993:50, my translation.

[1]   Ibid. 96.

[1]   Ibid. 30.

[1]   Papadopoulos 1983:165.

[1]   Ibid.

[1]   Ibid..

[1]   Ibid. 166.

[1]   Stratou 1978:12, my translation.

[1] Stratou, in Agrafioti 1994:85, my translation.

[1] Agrafioti 1994:101. In full, the book was called Greek Folk Art: Roumlouki-Trikeri-Ikaria, and was published in 1931.

[1] Stratou 1978: 11-13, my translation.

[1] Catalogue 1993:8.

[1] Ibid. 78.

[1] Agrafioti 1994:94.

[1] Ibid. 100.

[1] Harris 1996:8, original emphasis.

[1] Ibid. 8-11.

[1] Herzfeld 1995:227.

[1] Ibid. 226.

[1] Ibid. 229.

[1] Ibid. 228.

[1] Herzfeld 1995:229.

[1] Morphy 1992:2.

[1] Schieffelin 1985:707.

[1] Raftis 1985:53

[1] Eicher 1995:1.

[1] Raftis 1985:53.

[1] Welters 1995:54.

[1] Raftis 1985:56.

[1] Kiriakidou-Nestoros 1993:52, my translation.

References cited

   AGRAFIOTI, K.1994. Everything for dance: The Life of Dora Stratou, Athens: Dora Stratou Theatre. [in Greek]

   DORA STRATOU THEATRE 1993. Catalogue 40 Greek Costumes, Athens: Dora Stratou Theatre. [bilingual]

   HANDAKA, S. 1998. Visual Markers of National Identity: Greek Folk Costumes; the Collection in the ‘Dora Stratou’ Theatre, M.Phil. Thesis, OxfordUniversity.

   HARRIS, O. 1996. ‘The Temporalities of Tradition: Reflections on a Changing Anthropology’, in V. Hubinger (ed.) Grasping the Changing World: Anthropological Conceptions in the Postmodern Era, London: Routledge, pp. 1-16.

   HERZFELD, M. 1982. Ours Once More, Texas: University of Texas Press.

                   1995. ‘Hellenism and Occidentalism: the Permutation of Performance in Greek Bourgeois Identity’, in J.G. Carrier (ed.) Occidentalism: Images of the West, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

   KIRIAKIDOU-NESTOROS, A. 1993. Studies in Folklore, Athens: Poreia. [in Greek]

     MORPHY, H. 1992. ‘Aesthetics in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: Some Reflections on Native American Basketry’, JASO: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, vol. XXIII, n. 1, pp. 1-16.

   PAPADOPOULOS, S. 1983. ‘The Museological “Discovery” of the Peasant in Greece’, Museum vol. XXXV, No.3, pp. 164-167.

   RAFTIS, A 1985. The World of Greek Dance, Athens: Polytropo. [in Greek]

   STRATOU, D. 1978. Greek Traditional Dances, Athens: O.E.D.V. [in Greek]

   SHIEFFELIN, E.L. 1985. ‘Performance and the Cultural Construction of Reality’, American Ethnologist 12, pp. 707-724.

   WELTERS, L. 1995. ‘Ethnicity in Greek Dress’, in J.B. Eicher (ed.) Dress and Ethnicity, Oxford: Berg, pp. 53-77.

Sophia Handaka