What Can Classical Greek Dance Offer Us Today?

The very first associate teaching exam I took was Classical Greek Dance with the ISTD when I was an 18 year old college student.   Two years prior to this, I had never taken a Greek class in my life and, if I’m absolutely honest, I thought is was all a little silly and old fashioned.   I was a music theatre baby, all jazz hands and razzle dazzle, so all those chiffon tunics and Greek gods seemed like something from another era.   But my teacher, Amanda, had such passion for the subject that it was infectious and everyone who studied with her very quickly fell in love with the genre, myself included.   The freedom of movement, expressiveness, the dynamics, softness, athleticism, the wild abandon of bacchic, and when you’re at the height of your teenage angst era, you get tragedy.   It really does have it all.

It therefore saddens me to see Classical Greek dance going into decline with very few schools offering classes, and festivals often down to just a handful of entries.   I suspect the reason for this is that, like the teenage me, people think it old fashioned and outdated.   Now that we have lyrical and contemporary dance that offer the same freedom, expressiveness, dynamics, and yes, the drama of all the sad songs, plus there are professional companies for dancers to go into, why bother with Classical Greek?

The irony is, Greek has so much to offer lyrical and contemporary dancers.   The use of breath which is trained and coordinated with movement right from an early age.   Using nature studies as a pathway into improvisation and the creation of novel shapes which in turn leads to new styles and innovative choreography.   From a technical perspective, the development and use of the spine in Classical Greek dance is unique, and the foot progressions and skips are fantastic for building strength and articulation in the feet and ankles.   And the specific training of expressive lines and movement gives dancers the ability to perform with an inner sense of artistry and sincerity, rather than a forced, external expression.   All of these truly compliment lyrical and contemporary training.

So how does Classical Greek dance stay relevant and stand alongside the newer disciplines in the 21^st century?

Maybe we have to look to other artforms that have struggled with popularity in the past.   The one that leaps to mind is classical ballet.   At various times over the past century, ballet has fallen out of favour, being considered elitist, traditionalist and out of date.   All those fairies and classical music were a little dull compared to the excitement of variety, cinema and jazz.   Ballet had to reinvent itself.   There was the revolutionary work of the Ballet Russes followed by neoclassicism and then contemporary ballet.   Today ballet is performed to Black Sabbath, swans are all male and theatres are full of people from all walks of life.   Ballet technique wasn’t abandoned through all these incarnations, instead, choreographers discovered new ways of speaking through an existing movement language, and traditional ballets are now equally as popular as their modern counterparts.

So what could this mean for Classical Greek Dance?  

Ruby Ginner was an innovator, a student of the human body, kinetics and biomechanics, a believer in a holistic approach to dance with a desire for it to support mental, physical and spiritual well-being.   With the huge advances in dance medicine and science, and the evolution of somatics since her time, I wonder what she would conceive today.   What would she alter or add to her creation?   The growth of somatics and biomechanics has altered our understanding of how dancers move; weight, momentum and use of gravity.   How would this have influenced her exploration of natural movement?

Perhaps innovation isn't only about movement.   Greek Dance is no longer confined to piano accompaniment or classical music, we've already accepted film scores, contemporary composition and soundscapes.   If the music can evolve while remaining unmistakably Greek in spirit, perhaps the movement language can evolve too.

There is no floorwork in Classical Greek Dance, although ancient Greek art contains numerous images of wrestlers, athletes and figures moving close to the ground.   Now depicting a wrestler may not appear to lend itself to dance, but when you remove the label and focus on the movement, it immediately adds another layer to the natural movement of the body that Ruby Ginner valued so highly.  I'm not suggesting that Greek should suddenly become contemporary dance, but it does make me wonder whether there are movement possibilities within the original source material that we simply haven't explored.   Perhaps the question isn't whether floorwork belongs in Greek Dance, but whether we've stopped looking at the ancient images with the same curiosity as that of Ruby Ginner.

Britain has borrowed ballet, adopted tap, and embraced jazz and contemporary dance. Yet, with the exception of our folk dances, only one theatrical dance genre was conceived and developed here: Classical Greek Dance.   Ironically, this may be part of the challenge facing it today.   Many genres survive because they became international, they belong to everyone, but Classical Greek Dance has remained comparatively small and largely tied to British examination systems.   This has helped to preserve it, but it may also have limited its evolution.   A genre grows when choreographers, performers, and scholars continually reinterpret it.   If most activity occurs within a syllabus framework, preservation tends to become stronger than experimentation.

Imagine if ballet had remained exactly where it was in 1900.   No George Balanchine, no Kenneth MacMillan, no William Forsythe, no Matthew Bourne.   We would probably regard ballet as a historical curiosity rather than a living art form.

Yet that is arguably the situation Classical Greek Dance finds itself in.   Its technique has been carefully preserved, but there have been relatively few figures who have done for Greek Dance what Balanchine, MacMillan, Forsythe or Bourne did for ballet.   The result is that the genre is often judged by what Ruby Ginner created rather than by what subsequent generations have added.   Most living art forms are conversations across generations, but Classical Greek Dance sometimes feels as though the conversation paused with the founder.

Maybe a relaxing of the rules to give choreographers an opportunity to fully explore and experiment without fear of penalty, could lead to new ways of moving within the discipline. After all, innovation rarely happens when artists are worried about whether every movement will lose marks. Sometimes creativity needs permission to ask, "What if...?"

Perhaps the future of Classical Greek Dance doesn't lie solely in preserving it as a separate subject, but in allowing its ideas to influence the wider dance world.   After all, ballet teachers borrow from pilates, contemporary teachers use yoga and somatic practices, and jazz teachers incorporate conditioning.   Why shouldn't we also draw upon the wealth of training that Classical Greek Dance has to offer?

So, teachers, try beginning an improvisation with a Greek nature study rather than an abstract task.   See how the novel movement can transition into steps and choreography.   Use Greek body progressions to develop spinal mobility, articulation and expressive use of the torso in ballet or lyrical classes.   Explore breath as an integral part of movement rather than something that happens accidentally.   Use Greek skips and foot progressions to strengthen the feet and develop dynamic jumps and allegro.   Try using expressive lines to connect movement to emotion as a way of deepening performance quality, so encouraging dancers to find sincerity and inner intention rather than relying on exaggerated facial expressions.

Classical Greek Dance doesn’t have to survive by standing apart from the rest of the dance world, it could survive by quietly enriching it.