Koula Pratsika and her dance school: embracing gender, class and the nation in the formative years of contemporary dance education in Greece

Abstract

The purpose of this article was to provide a historical examination of the interplay between Koula Pratsika’s dance school, its historical and social context and the formation of social categories of class, gender and nation in the 1930s as part of a greater project, that of the formation of upper class culture. This perspective reveals the interrelationships of upper class Athenians with modern dance against ballet’s and musical theatre’s dancing bodies. Moreover, it stresses the embodied aspects of discourses on ‘Greekness’ and relates contemporary dance with issues of gender roles and practices initiated by the women’s movement in the early twentieth century in the country. By stressing the crucial nexus of social identities and dance practices as a methodology for historical enquiry, dance becomes an adventurous area for interdisciplinary research, expanding dance’s impact on and importance in areas other than the arts, while revealing tensions and power struggles.