Dancecapes of Dionysus

This paper aims to study dance and its relation to the construction and the negotiation of cultural identity of the ethnic group of locals (dopioi) in the community of Kali Vrysi in the Prefecture of Drama, in Eastern Macedonia (Greece). The linguistic otherness (the villagers spoke a local Slav idiom) of Kalivrysians (Kalivrysiotes) in the past cast doubt on their Greekness. This resulted in social, ethnic, and cultural stigmatization of the community. The dancing ritual of babougera, characterized as distant echo of Dionysian cult, has a central role in the community’s identity formation. A recent example of the appearance of the babougera ritual, the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Athens (2004). In this dancescape of modernity, Kalivrysiotes negotiate their identity and appear as “super-Greeks.”