pass/TRES/pass is a project that I initiated after visiting Greece, in August of 2006, upon meeting Loretta MaCauley of the African Women’s Organization. Loretta was interested in collaborating with my performance collective, the Modern Dance Awareness Society, to co-create a project that highlighted the stories and plight of the participants. She was inspired to find a beautiful and creative way to bring light to the status issues of the African immigrants in Greece. She also told me she wanted to dance. I was intrigued by both her openness and her courage. Her migration story had both similarities and differences to my own. I wondered how place and migration affect the body. I also wondered how new bodies affect their environment. My interest in pursuing and developing this project was further stimulated by my own migration experience, my curiosity regarding the treatment of immigrants living in my country of birth and my interest as a dance artist about bodies negotiating space and boundaries when they are in an unfamiliar place and how that place absorbs them.
In this paper, I will discuss the projects Tunnel 14 and pass/TRES/pass, two direct action style art events that we participated in and facilitated. Along with the histories of the projects and some background about the participants, I will consider the modern history of Greece and the legal situation of immigrants in order to better understand the historical background that has shaped the attitudes and fears that influence legislation.
Global Migration Statistics
According to the United Nation’s report from the Global Commission on International Migration, 1 in 35 people worldwide, is an international migrant. 3% of the global population is on the move, leaving their home countries for at least one year. The actual figure released by the commission is 200 million immigrants worldwide in 2005. It includes 9.2 million refugees. Migrants leave their homes for many reasons, including political and social upheavals, war, wage disparity, unemployment rates, life expectancy and educational possibilities just to list a few. It is not an easy decision for most people, to uproot themselves and their families, yet for many people it is the only solution to bad circumstances (83).
My Migration History
My family emigrated from their home country of Greece in 1969, four years after water was finally piped into peoples’ homes, three years after electricity lit up our village of Pitrofos, 31 months after my birth and 30 months after the right-wing military coup took over the government. Greece was taken over by a military Junta in April of 1967 (Koliopoulos and Veremis 369). To begin with, there were few economic opportunities on the island of Andros in Greece. It was primarily an agrarian island and as such, people were barely able to keep hunger at bay. The soil, the climate and the topography are good for olives, pomegranates and figs but difficult for farming other crops and raising livestock. The winters were intense. Fresh food became scarce.
The only work available for my father was on the merchant marine, which he began at age 14. He would be at sea for 10 months out of the year. He had a brother in the US who had received his citizenship. He invited my father to come and try his luck. The leap into the unknown though frightening, was still an opportunity. He arrived in south New Jersey in April of 1969 with 100 dollars. He got a job in a diner washing dishes and two other jobs as well. After his full-time dishwashing job, he continued working by refinishing wood floors. He even worked part-time at Mc Donald’s because he wanted to learn their “secrets”. In six months, he saved enough to bring my mother and myself across the Atlantic. I was 2 and 1/2 years old at the time. My parents’ initial goal was to make enough money to return to Greece and live there. They had no interest in participating in American culture or society beyond gathering a nest egg to return to Greece. My father was a bit of a gambler in business. He kept reaching for the proverbial brass ring and in his attempts, moved us through eight different schools before I graduated high school. I was the new kid almost annually, a perpetually migrating immigrant, well acquainted with the perspective from the “outside.” My parents were able to come here legally because of my uncle’s citizenship. They brought with them their dreams, hopes and the desire for a life that was better than what they could have had in Greece at that time.
Modern Greek History
Greece has had a long history of strife and occupation. Prior to its modern inception, Greece was made up of different city/regions which included various Balkan ethnicities, who were sometimes in the majority: Slavs, Pomaks, Bulgars, Arvanites, to name a few. Many of these people spoke their own languages and dialects, some that had mixed with Turkish over the centuries. Greece became a nation in 1821, after 400 years of Ottoman subjugation, when the crumbling Ottoman Empire was drawing its last breath. There was a revolution for independence that was instigated by Greek emigrants, inspired by the French revolution, in collaboration with the leadership of the Greek church. Before the multiple occupations, Greece consisted of city-states with some common language and similar cultural practices (Koliopoulos and Veremis).
Immigration Facts and Attitudes: History and Present
Since its birth as a nation, Greece has been fraught with difficult periods making it a country that people emigrated from, not a destination to migrate to. There were always refugees that stopped there before moving on but it was not a country many considered taking up permanent residence (Koliopoulos and Veremis 201). The language is difficult and work is hard to find. According to Katerina Nasioka, a social worker in Greece, the unemployment rate for young people below age 24 is 22%. The Greek economy is based primarily on real estate, construction/development, tourism and agriculture. Money flows toward building and developing for tourism. There are few industries beyond that. A large percentage of the new immigrants are working in construction, agriculture, caring for children and the elderly and petty trade, like selling CD’s and DVD’s or handbags.
Population Details
Today, Greece is confronted with the challenges brought about by the current global conditions. It is now part of the European Union, which makes it a more desirable place to stay. Migrants and returning émigrés have been arriving since 1974 when the military Junta was overthrown, though not in noticeable numbers, until the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The 2001 census of Greece registered almost 800,000 foreign citizens living in Greece. The current estimate is over a million. The total population of Greece is 11,170,957 according to the National Statistical Services of Greece. Thus, these new immigrants constitute almost 10% of the population. The sharp rise in immigrant numbers began when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. Suddenly, Greece became accessible to the poverty-stricken Albanians, as well as the Bulgarians, Georgians and Romanians (Mantouvalou ).
Presently, the Albanians make up over 50% of the immigrant population and are the most vehemently reviled of the newly arrived. The Greeks have a historic distrust of the Albanians because they converted to Islam during the Turkish occupation. The Greeks, who are Orthodox, have a distrust of anyone that they perceive to have collaborated with the Turks. They remember their own subjugation as part of a national memory/consciousness, that invariably becomes distorted to fuel xenophobic sentiments. The nationalist propaganda that shaped and congealed Greek national, cultural identity colors how the “other” is perceived. The Albanians represent an enemy invasion, a security threat, the Balkan “Other” that threatens the image of Greece as a Western/European nation (civilized and wealthy) as opposed to an Anatolian primitive “village” (uncivilized and poor) (Mantouvalou ).
I found it interesting that the most vociferously despised group is fairly blond and blue-eyed. Coming from the US, where race, as pertaining to skin pigmentation, can be such a core issue, along with socio-economic class, this situation offered another aspect of xenophobia. I was later informed that the Albanians are a different race, namely Slavs (Halatsis). According to Dimitrios Halasis, a social activist and artist with the Reconstruction Community, many factors contribute to the vilification of the Albanians, including that they are competitive, prolific and numerous. They work in close proximity to the Greeks and are actively seeking to develop economically, therefore posing a competitive challenge to the Greeks. Besides, their collaboration with the Turks, they collaborated with Mussolini during W.W.II (Halatsis interview).
Another important factor has to do with the release and subsequent migration of Albanian prisoners after the Soviet collapse. There was a wave of crime that occurred initially because of this influx and because of the poverty of the people coming over. This was seized upon and sensationalized by the media to fan the fears of the citizens. Politically, the Albanians are used as scapegoats for social and economic problems (Halatsis interview). Acoording to Maria Vidali “Negative stereotypes are constructed and regularly revived in the Greek media and by certain political personalities. The consequent xenophobic feelings fermented amongst the Greek population have then been used to justify government actions (Vidali, 1).
African immigrant statistics
According to the General Secretariat of National Statistical Services of Greece, in 2006, there were 15,237 immigrants from the African continent. 9,461 of those are from Egypt. The second largest African population is from Nigeria with 1,632, then Ethiopia, with 979. Officially, there are only 85 immigrants from Sierra Leone. These numbers are minimal in comparison to 481,663 Albanian immigrants, 43,981 Bulgarians and 25,375 Romanians that make up approximately two thirds of the immigrant population. If the Africans had a larger presence, they too, would likely attract more Greek animosity.
Greece does not have the same imperialist history with Africa that the US has. In some ways, Greeks are kinder to the Africans, who along with other Christian minorities, like the Poles and the Filipinos, are stereotyped as being peaceful and productive (Mantouvalou). Greeks and Ethiopians share the Orthodox religion. Greeks have had minimal exposure to different cultures and races. Our friends from Africa suffer from the ignorance and racism of the Greeks, though, they are not the “primary” cultural scapegoats. That distinction, undoubtedly, belongs to the Albanians. Most negative media goes to the Albanians who are stereotyped as criminals (Vidali).
Even though the Albanians are the most vocally vilified, the Greeks still hold intense prejudices against the Africans. There is a big part of the population that believes people from Africa are inferior. Halatsis offered the following analysis of the situation. He believes that the capitalist model thrives on hierarchy and competition and needs perceived “inferiors” to continue its exploitation. He added that the pedagogy in Greece has led to a sense of nationalist superiority.
More Historical Context
Historically, bloodline has been a determining factor for citizenship in Greece. Due to its history of multiple occupations, Greeks remain somewhat suspicious and distrustful of strangers.
When the country was new, one of the methods used to unite the different areas was nationalist propaganda, which is only recently being reconsidered. The idea was that Greeks were special because they had “invented” Western civilization. This was an idea that was espoused by even the poorest of peasants, and Greece was certainly a country of poverty for a long time. The idea eventually became known as the “Great Idea” and it included the reunification of all lands previously inhabited by Greeks, including the coast of Asia Minor and Istanbul. This irredentist policy led to the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-1922 and the subsequent uprooting of the ethnic minority population of both countries with the Treaty of Laussane. One significant stipulation was the exchange of populations. At this time, the population of Greece increased by 25% causing major economic and social problems. The freshly displaced were treated badly because they brought Turkish customs back with them and also because Greece did not have the infrastructure to deal with the influx of so many refugees (Holst) .
Current Legislation
Greek people do not want to accept any strangers into their society because they claim that they want to preserve their cultural identity. Meanwhile, Greek cultural identity has been changing despite the attempts to keep that from happening. The changes that have taken place in my life time are tremendous. The proliferation of information and the availability of products have affected the way people live, their customs and their values. The media has expanded. In 1976, there were two channels; today the media landscape rivals most western countries. The Greek Orthodox church, once extremely powerful, has advocated against the citizenship of the new immigrants, yet the secular state has distanced itself from the church by creating legislation that will eventually allow non-Greeks by blood or relation to become citizens. The process at this time is absurdly complex and fairly expensive, (150 – 900 euro just for the application process) considering the economic and social situation of most immigrants. For example, in 2005, Law 3386/2005 Entry, residence and social integration of third-country nationals in the Hellenic Territory, was passed to go into effect in 2006. The Law is 88 pages long, and though it is an improvement on the 2001 law, it is still difficult to navigate for migrants and even many Greeks are unable to fulfil its requirements for residency (Tzilivakis). http://www.imepo.gr/documents/Nomos3386_en.pdf
Stipulations and problems of the law
According to Kathy Tzilivakis, of the Athens News,”Combine the infamous Greek bureaucracy with a convoluted application procedure, language barriers and a severe lack of information – and the result is always catastrophic. ” The law makes attaining legal status difficult for immigrants because it is complicated, expensive and punitive. Today, in order to reside legally in Greece, an immigrant must be employed by an employer that will declare/sponsor them and pay the social and insurance taxes. This makes it difficult for the immigrant to get work because the main reason Greeks hire an immigrant over a local is that it is less expensive because one is not paying the insurance taxes. For most immigrants, this means IKA, the insurance for people who are not part of a union of workers. Since immigrants are usually hired below market wage, they end up having to pay for this themselves out of their already sub standard wage, like a double penalty. The immigrant must also fill out the extensive and complicated paperwork, depending on the ever-changing legislation.
There is also a double standard, Migrants with money are encouraged to come with easier regulations. Tzilivakis notes that ” Under law 3386/2005, immigrants who wish to come to Greece to set up their own business may do so only if they have at least 60,000 euros deposited in a personal account in a bank in Greece and if their business “contributes to the development of the national economy.” (Law 3386) According to Article 26 of the new law, immigrants who wish to invest in Greece may apply for a residence permit at their local Greek consulate. The investment, however, must be at least 300,000 euros.”(“New Law Explained”).
Rights of Immigrants
The Greek constitution accepts the equality of foreigners/non-Greek citizens and allows free education, freedom of establishing associations, and freedom of assembly though there is not sufficient legislation to really enforce this ideal.
Tzilivakis provides a brief summary of the rights and obligations of immigrants in Law 3386, for the Athens News.
Article 71: Rights
Immigrants in Greece are insured by social insurance foundations and enjoy the same rights as Greek citizens
Immigrant detainees must be properly informed about their rights and obligations in a language they understand
An immigrant who legally resides in Greece and who leaves the country may re-enter if his/her residence permit is still valid
Article 73: Obligations
Immigrants are required to “personally” submit their application for the issue and renewal of their residence permit. The submission of any document through a bailiff or by fax is not permitted
Immigrants are obliged to declare to the competent immigration authorities (at their local municipality) the following personal details: a change in address; a change in personal status (nationality, marriage and divorce); loss or renewal or change of their passport or any other travel document; loss of their residence permit; and change of employer or type of employment
Note: Immigrants have one month after the relevant incident by which to declare the information to the authorities. The police should also be informed of a change in address
Immigrants must leave the country without any notice from the authorities before the last day of their residence permit’s expiration, except if they have submitted an application to renew it
Immigrants whose application for the issue or renewal of a residence permit has not been approved are also obliged to leave the country without any further notice
Immigrants who have remained in the country for up to 30 days after the expiration of their residence permit or visa are obliged to leave the country and upon departure pay “an amount of money four times higher than the deposit required for a residence permit of annual duration”. This is 600 euros. If they overstayed in Greece by more than 30 days, they will be required to pay eight times the amount (1,200 euros). Immigrant minors do not have to pay a fine (“New Law Explained”).
Children of immigrants are also addressed in Article 72 and summarized by Tzilivakis
Article 72: Access of third-country [non-EU] underage nationals to education
Immigrant children are subject to the same obligatory school attendance as Greek children
They have, without restriction, access to school or educational community activities
To enroll in public school, they must submit the same documents required from all Greek children, except if they are refugees, asylum-seekers or if their parent or legal guardian’s legal residence status is still pending
The education minister may arrange for the teaching of their native language and culture within the public school system if there are “enough students interested”
Immigrant children who have completed secondary school in Greece have access to university under the same terms and conditions as Greek citizens (“New Law Explained”)
Citizenship
Greece is part of the European Union and as such is supposed to be in compliance with the EU policies, except that the EU allows each member state to define its own criteria for citizenship. Greece has opted to define nationality by blood-line rather than birthplace. This means that all people born of Greek parents are Greek citizens if they can prove their parents’ ethnicity. This also means that children of immigrants that are born in Greece, are not citizens. They must apply for legal residency when they turn 18 and in order to do so they must be gainfully employed. The law is complicated and full of contradictions. According to activists, that have been working for the rights of the immigrants, the system is made this way to dissuade immigrants from trying to gain citizenship. In order to become a citizen, Tzilivakis writes,
Article 67 outlines five conditions for the acquisition of longterm resident status (a five-year-duration renewable permit that is recognized across the EU). To be eligible, the immigrant must be over age 18 and have resided legally in Greece for at least five years. He/she should possess “stable and regular resources”, medical insurance and a home that “meets the required specifications for hygiene”.
He/she must also show fluency in the Greek language and knowledge of Greek history and culture. They must also display high moral standards and a strong character. The government has not yet announced exactly how officials will determine the above criteria. Interior ministry officials say that immigrants will likely sit a special test administered by the education ministry to examine fluency in the language and knowledge of history and culture. A personal interview will be used to assess the immigrant’s personality.
Note: Periods of absence may be taken into account for the calculation of the five-year period, provided they do not exceed six successive months and in total a period of ten months. The years spent in Greece as a student or in a vocational training programme do not count. This is both expensive and highly unlikely given the difficulties in finding work to begin with(“New Law Explained”).
Despite Greece’s stereotype for hospitality, it is a restricted and restrictive society. Possibly in the future, with longer exposure to the new cultures that have chosen to reside there, this may change, but real change is likely to be a long, slow process.
In terms of integration, Anthony Koiloropoulos, who moved to Greece 28 years ago from Liberia to study political science in Athens told the Athens News in 2005, “Greek society is a ‘closed’ society that is still trying to deal with diversity,” It is much easier for people from neighboring countries like Albania to integrate because they are white. It is more difficult for Africans. Maybe it will be easier for my children or my grandchildren.”
( Tzilivakis “Be My Guest” ) . He was naturalized after 25 years, during which, he spent endless hours on lines renewing his temporary permits. He even served in Greece’s military. ( Tzilivakis “Be My Guest”)
Currently, there are over 150 NGOs working to assist the immigrants that have arrived. The first free school for immigrants to learn the language has just recently begun operating. There is a slow but steady re-examination of cultural identity taking place which is creating space for dialogue. Many artists have become involved with the issue.
Unlike my parents, who did not want to participate in the culture of their host country, many of the immigrants in Greece want to learn the language and to participate in Greece as legal residents. The women we worked with did not want to return to their home countries permanently because of the political and economic instability there.
The Projects
Tunnel 14
Loretta MaCauley
photo Nequi Ganzalez
Our project was instigated because of Loretta MaCauley’s enthusiasm.
MaCauley, a native of Sierra Leone, moved to Greece 20 years ago. She was interested in creating a performance project with us. I was interested in creating work that could provide a platform for the participants’ stories. On a previous trip, I had met with artist/contributors of the Reconstruction Community. The Reconstruction Community is a group of visual artists, historians, sociologists, social activists and theorists that produce and facilitate art work and actions, that bring art back into the public sphere. http://reconstruction.gr/en/index.html Harris Kondosphyris, a visual artist, instigated the action. The group was working on a project called “Tunnel 14”, that used Trolley 14 of Athens as an opportunity to bring attention to the second generation of African descent. We were invited to contribute to the action. The trolley line connects two neighbourhoods that have a high concentration of African immigrants. The Reconstruction Community and the African Womens’ Organization worked with the transit authority of the trolley system to create this event. The event was coordinated to bring attention to the plight of the second generation of immigrant children who were struggling with their identity in relation to Greek culture and their legal status in Greece.
photo of trolley fare box covered for free ride
The action offered a free ride to trolley riders during the run of the route of the trolley. On board were participants from the African community, artists and documentarians from the Reconstruction Community. Everyone wore a t-shirt, designed by a Reconstruction artist that had a long string of letters spelling euroafricaeuroafriceuro etc. On the back was the question, “Where is the second generation heading?”. The Reconstruction artists chose to pose the question to the public. As people entered the trolley, they were given disposable cameras in order to document different perspectives of the scene.
All participants met at the beginning of the trolley route. There was much excitement as the children, who live in a precarious state of being state-less (most have no citizenship), were given lots of press attention. The date, June 20, 2007 was chosen for the event because it was designated as World Refugee Day by the United Nations. Unfortunately, there were other events and situations that influenced the event. To begin with, a few days before the event, a videotape of an immigrant interrogation, where humiliating tactics were used, was aired on the news. In this video, the interrogators/guards made the Albanian detainees slap each other and say humiliating things. The Social Forum of Greece, a group associated with the World Social Forum, called for a protest of the police brutality toward immigrant detainees. This protest intersected with the trolley route. The transportation authority re-routed the trolley but this meant that the Tunnel 14 action would not be servicing its usual route. Also, the president of the trolley transit authority decided that he wanted to use the action as a photo opportunity for himself, so there was a large press presence for the action. These photographers stayed on board the trolley for the ride and photographed everything. The disposable cameras that were supposed to be for the riders were given primarily to the children, so in many cases it seemed like the photographers took pictures of the children taking pictures of them.
A week and a half later, there were articles in two of the main papers on Sunday, in the equivalent of the Sunday New York Times Magazine. One publication, K, the magazine of Kathemerini newspaper, wrote 4 pages about Tunnel 14., which was a good way to bring attention to the issue. The newspapers are popular and read by many Greeks. Our group, The Modern Dance Awareness Society, was mentioned as having collaborated in the event. The MDAS, consists of myself, Wen-Shuan Yang, my long time collaborator from Taiwan and Nequi Gonzalez, another collaborator from Puerto Rico. We had worked with the children three days prior to the event on some movement ideas and ways of interacting with the other riders. Unfortunately, because there were very few riders on the trolley that were not active participants or media, our initial idea was difficult to execute. The children were supposed to sing a song of their choosing for the event and pass a beach ball in the form of a world globe. This became difficult because the bus was full and many of the children had not been able to attend the rehearsal. There were also very few passengers to pass the ball to, with the re-routing of the trolley. The ride had a festive air that culminated with the African women singing before we arrived at the platiea or public square.
The second contribution we made was for the public square after the ride. We practiced a dance step along the lines of a “ballo”, a traditional island dance, where the participants look at each other in the eyes as they circle around each other. This was more successful as we were able to get other folks to join in at the square. The people at the plateia were also immigrants of other ethnicities. We also created a shadow screen performance for the rally after the action. At the square, there were lots of other ethnicities of immigrants and the festive air seemed to help create bridges between the various groups. This is important because the more groups can work together, the more they will be able to accomplish. Despite the issues that arose due to the unforseen circumstances, I felt that the action was successful in bringing attention to the plight of the second generation because it brought together the African community, the artist community, local transit riders and significant media attention to the topic in a creative way.
tunnel 14 slideshow
Creating performance work collaboratively transcends the abstraction of statistics and cuts straight to the physical reality of working together in time and space to make a joint vision come alive. It is an example to both participants and audience for considering the idea of working together to co-author a mutually empowering future. Dance, a physical expression shared by most cultures, that expresses our physical relationship to life itself, is a language that transcends other language. How we move through time and space and our consciousness of these elements give us a framework in which to experience the “other”. We are all migrants in life, weaving through space, encountering and co-existing with others. Some move through long distances physically and psychically, others stay closer to home. Everyone has a story.
pass/TRES/pass was performed on June 23rd at the Kipseli Market in Athens. The purpose of the work was to collaboratively create a platform for the migration stories of the participants. We wanted to perform it in a public space so that it would be accessible to the neighborhood. The neighborhood has a high concentration of immigrants from many countries and a pedestrian area that many Greeks frequent. It also has a plateia where immigrant and Greek children play together, as artist Jennifer Nelson noticed. We decided to create a performance installation that “migrated” through the neighborhood and culminated at the plateia, where we decided to create a “hybrid circle” dance, teaching each other our respective cultural dances and interacting with the people in the plateia. The goal was to get people to participate with us a rather ambitious goal considering the self consciousness of Greek society.
The site for the first section was a municipal marketplace, that was uninhabited for three years after the city raised the rents and all the vendors left. The building harkened back to the 1940’s. Last winter, a neighborhood activist group called Open City facilitated a community takeover of the space. It is currently being used as a community center and art space. file:///. http///reconstruction.gr/en/news_dtls.php/13
I conceived this project in collaboration with Wen-Shuan Yang, Nequi Gonzalez, Jennifer Nelson and the performers Jennifer Odewudia Francis, Loretta Macauley, Maria and Stefania Sankoh, Sandra Williams, Dimitris Halatsis, Panagiotis Andronithis, Aliki Germanou and the Reconstruction Community. The performers chose a story or song they wanted to share. We created solos together, based on two verbs, a feeling extracted from the stories, an event with the chair in the stall and a movement that references the space. We also created a dance phrase made of favorite dishes from our respective countries.
rehearsal at the African Womens space
Due to the economic reality that the African women live in, it was difficult to rehearse. We created the show in only five rehearsals. Two of the rehearsals, I picked up our two youngest dancers myself, because their mother was studying for her exams.
Loretta told us of the dictatorship in Sierra Leone and her search for her rights, her difficulties in Greece, and how after twenty years she is still one mistake from being deportable. Sandra Williams is from Ghana. She came to Greece to study computers and she was having a difficult time. She had overheard racist conversation from a mother to her child that had been hurtful. She chose to tell a joke from Ghana about the dangers of misunderstanding. In her joke, three men learning English are questioned by a police officer and arrested due to their inability to communicate. Jennifer Francis came to Greece when she was six from Nigeria with her mother Linda. She is 16, speaks flawless Greek, and chose a love poem for her solo. Stefania is 13 and her sister Maria is 11. They were born and raised in Greece. They did not like speaking English, which reminded me of my own embarrassment with Greek when I was their age. They both chose children’s songs for their solos. Interestingly, Stefania’s song was 10 little indians in Greek. Stefania also told us she wanted to go see her grandmother in Sierra Leone. All her friends had grandparents in their lives and she could not even meet hers. All these stories were incorporated into the soundtrack, constructed by Wen-Shuan Yang, as a way of providing a narrative for the audience.
The dance began just outside the tall gate of the market.
We started lying on the ground, a landscape of bodies with Dimitris Halatsis tracing the continents on us in white chalk, turning us into a global landscape of bodies. He continued this for 15 minutes as our stories played on the boom box, shifting and re-designing the boundaries of the territories. Meanwhile, pedestrians gathered to see what was happening. Slowly, we all rolled under the gate, disappearing into the market. The gate opens revealing the three Fates, a collaborative contribution from Greek artist, Aliki Germanou. Three women sit in a circle casting lots, spinning and cutting, as we begin our sequences. We began in our stalls with a dance phrase that we made using a gestural recipe for each woman’s favorite dish. We then performed solos, in the stalls, sequentially. The solos were created by the women from their stories, with our coaching. The solos were performed one at a time with the audience following the light source. After the last solo, performers entered each other’s spaces, continuing their solo movement but as duets co-existing in space. Each stall had a chair that was incorporated into the solos but during the duets, the performers had to share the chair/resources. The concept was that we all have our solos/patterns/cultural ideas, how do we coexist with others while maintaining our identity? How do we share space and recourses.
After the duets, the performers created a structure called lanes and grid, where the dancers move in lines turning only at right angles. This resembles a busy, urban, street scene. The music we chose for this was an old Greek song that is a lament about exile. During this section, Loretta entered a boxed off area and remained there until we set her free. We used red tape to enclose her and green tape to set her free. She then led the “migration”. Hanging on meat-hooks, were our bundles, full of balloons with our hopes and dreams written on them. We carried them on our heads through the neighborhood to the platiea. We chose the image of carrying the bundles on our heads because of the beauty of the spine as it balances weight through its center. We thought that it was an image of strength, balance and pride that represented the courage and cultural dignity of the women immigrants we worked with. There was a ritualistic element involved in carrying your hopes and dreams lightly on your head for ten minutes, that felt empowering. Along the way, people sitting in cafes and restaurants saw our procession go by. In the platiea, we taught each other dances from our respective countries and got people in the platiea to join us. Our event had coincided with an immigrant rally in the plateia that ended before we arrived. When we got there, there were many pan-ethnic immigrants still milling about. They became our audience and many ended up joining our dance.
I was touched by the generosity of the women. They had no experience with this particular style of “post- modern” Western, experimental, dance-theater, yet they were so open and generous. We had very little time to create this project, yet the participants gave their all. It was truly amazing working with people from such distances and find common ground.
Both projects were ways of creating visibility and more dialogue about the new immigrants, as well as ways of connecting with these communities in a creative and positive way. Both were also ways of putting “faces” on the statistics. By bringing these questions and stories to the public sphere, we helped provide visibility and support to a group of people who are both marginalized and often criminalized. Though both projects encountered the problems that occur when work is taken out of the safety of sanctioned theatre spaces or pointed political demonstrations, both projects got to reach an “audience” that may not go to theatre productions or rallies. Tunnel 14 with the media coverage it received brought the question, “where is the second generation heading?” to the Greek public, while pass/TRES/pass gave importance and a performance ritual to the participants as well as visibility and empowerment that that entails.
Beginning this paper, I wondered how place and migration affect the body and how new bodies affect their environment. These are questions that are best answered as a dance, after all, aren’t all our interactions a dance in progress and the reason we began this project.
In conclusion, each body carves and affects the space it inhabits, the space also provides possibilities for development or exploitation. The process is ongoing.
Works Cited
Global Commission on International Migration, Switzerland , SRO-Kundig 2005, pg 83 (accessed August 4, 2007)
Koliopoulos, John S. and Veremis, Thanos M. A Modern Sequel, NY: NYU Press, 2002.
Holst, Gail. Road to Rembetika: Music of a Greek Sub-Culture : Songs of Love, Sorrow, and Hashish. Greece: Denise Harvey, 1994.
Mantouvalou, Katerina. “Immigration as a Security Concern: The Case of Greece” Slovo, Vol. 17, no 2 Autumn 2005
Tzilivakis, Kathy. “Be my guest The debate over immigration reform is heating up, but it’s the issue of integration that is catching fire” Athens News http://www.athensnews.gr/Immigration/1immi6.htm
accessed 11/19/07
Tzilivakis, Kathy. “New Greek Immigration Law Explained” Athens News, http://www.helada.org/tzilivakis_articles.htm
accessed 11/19/2007
“Foreign Population by citizenship and sex-2006” General Secretariat of the National Statistical Services of Greece
http://www.statistics.gr/eng_tables/S201_SPO_2_TB_AN_06_7_Y_EN.pdf accessed 11/19/2007
Vidali, Maria. “Immigration: Living in a Policy Vacuum- The plight of Albanian
immigrants in Greece” Central European Review Vol. 1, No. 21 11/15/1999
Dimitrios Halatsis interview via Skype 12/03/2007
Other research
Glytsos, Nicholas P. “Stepping from Illegality to Legality and Advancing towards Integration: The Case of Immigrants in Greece.” The International Migration Review 39, no. 4 (December 1, 2005): 819-840.
http://www.proquest.com.library.esc.edu/ (accessed August 4, 2007).
Iosifides, Theodoros, Lavrentiadou, Mari, Petracou, Electra and Kontis, Antonios “Forms of Social Capital and the Incorporation of Albanian Immigrants in Greece” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 33, No. 8, November 2007, pp. 1343 1361
Fakiolas, Rossetos. “Regularizing undocumented immigrants in Greece: procedures and effects” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 29, No. 3: 535-561 May 2003
Kasimis , Charalambos and Chryssa. “Greece: A History of Migration”
June 2004
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=228
accessed 11/10/2007
Grant, Stefanie. “Migrants’ Human Rights: from the margins to the mainstream” March 2005
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=291
Baldwin-Edwards, Martin, “The Changing Mosaic of Mediterranean Migrations, Mediterranean Migration Observatory, Panteion University, Athens, June 2004
http://www.migrationinformation.org/feature/display.cfm?ID=230
Kasimis , Charalambos and Chryssa . “Greece: A History of Migration,” June 2004
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=228
de Haas, Hein. “Trans-Saharan Migration to North Africa and the EU:Historical Roots and Current Trends” University of Oxford, Nov 2006
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=484
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