Dance and Performance: Performing the Wedding Ritual Outside of Its Context

Abstract

Marriage is a statute that seeks the reproductive union of the two genders, and the customs that accompany it are performed continuously even to this day. Nevertheless, this is not the case in the community of Pentalofos in Evros prefecture in Greece, where the wedding customs have stopped being celebrated, mainly due to the lack of new people in the community and therefore the lack of weddings. These customs are now experienced in a different way by the members of the cultural association of the community, who represent them outside of their context, in a different time and place. Thus, the aim of this paper is to study the wedding customs in the community of Pantalofos in the Evros region in Greece, treating their representation as a planned performance. The collection of research data was carried out with the ethnographic method, as this applied to the study of dance. For presentation and data analysis Geert’s model of ‘thick description’ was adopted, as in ethnographic method the analysis and interpretation of the data is done simultaneously. Finally, for the interpretation of the research data, the performance theory was used, according to which society can be seen in the light of a dramaturgical perspective, i.e. as a theater, where the performers unconsciously play multiple roles. From the analysis of the data it was found that the revival of marriage customs was a theatrical performance, which included an organizer, two coordinators and many actors. The women of the cultural association have functioned as actors with specific roles and the rituals which they performed was lost a degree of their character, but women experienced the performance of marriage rituals in a different way. For them, the wedding customs were a different experience, in a different reality.