DANCE AND EMBODIED MEMORY IN A SMALL TOWN OF KYNOURIA: ST NIKOLAS’ SNAKE AND “TSAKONIKOS” DANCE
Keywords:
embodied practice, “Tsakonikos” dance, snake, collective memory, symbolic practice, cultural conventionsAbstract
This paper focuses on the study of embodied memory through the shared social experience of the “Tsakonikos” dance in Leonidio, a village in the Peloponnese. In this study, the dance is seen as an embodied practice, as a way and field, where the existing notions are realized while abolishing the binary relationship between body and mind. The body and its movements are not a passive object but a subject, creatively interconnecting the sentiment with the knowledge. Combining, on one hand, the tradition of the snake in “Platanes” and generally the snake in the conscious and unconscious expressions with “Tsakonikos” dance on the other, it is investigated whether the bodies of the dancers can be considered as vehicles of cultural information, through which the past is textualised and maintained. The negotiation of the matter shows that “Tsakonikos” dance constitutes a powerful symbol of the identity of the place, embodying through selective movements and functional objects prototypes of relationship between humans and external procedures “ensuring the common history and common destiny” of the society in Leonidio. The snake-like dancing form of “Tsakonikos” dance is deployed for the community to negotiate the cultural conventions of the past in a present framework.
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