Dora Stratou

 

 

Dora Stratou                                                        ΔΟΡΑ ΣΤΡΑΤΟΥ                                 

Born 1903, Athens                                                Died, January 1988

 

Section 5, Number 81

 

Dora Stratou and Family

Back in the day a visit to Athens meant museums, the acropolis and an evening under the stars at the Dora Stratou Theatre to see Folk Dances collected from all over Greece. I enjoyed it although to say I considered it anything other than a colourful and affordable entertainment would be incorrect. I absorbed it the same superficial way I did a similar performance in Dubrovnik that same year. Many years later, as a Greek citizen, I came to understand the magnitude of her contribution.

 

Dora Stratou and her younger brother Andreas had no reason to love Greece. She was 19 years old when her father, parliamentarian Nikolaos Stratos, was unfairly executed for high treason by a Greek military court. The family’s wealth was confiscated and Dora and her mother spent 10 years in exile. Her younger brother returned to Greece in 1927 and became a member of parliament in 1932, the same year that she and her mother returned to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. He remained a parliamentarian while she worked in the theatre until the idea of a Dance Theatre was born in the early 1950s.  Theirs is a compelling story that brings into focus the ideological ruptures in Greece after 1900.

It’s complicated.

Her Early Life

Dora was born in 1903 in Athens. She lived on Hypatias Street , a narrow thoroughfare between Mitropoleos and Apollonos Streets  behind the Metropolitan Church. It would have been a one minute walk to Ermou street, three minute walk to the royal palace in Syntagma and a five minute walk to the parliament building on Stadiou Street where her father worked. Growing up, she led a happy and advantaged life. Her family moved in the highest echelons of Greek society including the royal court.

 

Ermou Street as Dora would have seen it in 1920

The Stratos family had a long history of service to the nation. Her great grandfather had fought in the War of Independence, had been a general under Kapodistrias and a senator under King Othon. Her grandfather Andreas was a major general and parliamentarian representing  Aitoloarkanania. Her own father, a lawyer, had entered parliament in 1902. This kind of continuous family service was not only common in Greek politics, it was almost de rigueur for a politician during that period to have an ancestor who had fought to free Greece.

Hers was a musical family. Her father Nikolaos played the piano and her mother was an accomplished soprano. Dora and Andreas both inherited their love of music. Dora would later say she had wanted to be an actress, but this would not have been allowed in her social circle. Instead she studied piano (with future maestro DimitrisMitropoulos, no less) and entered the social activities of her class which included balls at the palace and visits to the theatre.

 

A ball at the Royal palace of Athens in 1889 to celebrate the wedding of Prince Constantine with princess Sophia of Prussia.

 

Sheep roaming the Filopappou hill in 1904

Athens was small back then and its elite led very different lives from the general population. As a teenager, Dora might have expected to make a good marriage within her social circle and continue her life in the same vein.  

The First World War, the Smyrna Catastrophe, and the Execution

Dora’s father had become Minister of the Interior in 1909. In 1910 he joined the new Liberal Party of Elefterios Venizelos, becoming the President of parliament a year later.  He subsequently abandoned the Liberals to join the royalist faction, not because he was against Venizelos’ liberal reforms but because he could not support Venizelos’ growing republicanism. The ideological gap between Venizelists and Royalists was becoming even wider as time went on.

The Royalists were against joining Britain, France, and Russia (the Entente) in the war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914. Venizelos believed that the Entente would win and that if Greece participated she would gain the coast of Asia Minor when the victors divided the spoils (1). The fact that the three Entente countries had been guarantors when Greece became a new nation and had a long history of involvement with Greece (not always benign it has to be said) was also a factor in their favour. King Constantine and his supporters contended that the Central Powers might very well win and that joining the Entente might endanger the Greek population still in Ottoman territory, particularly if the Ottomans joined them (which they subsequently did).  King Constantine admired Germany; he had gone to military school there, and the Kaiser was his bother-in-law.  He favoured the less risky strategy of official neutrality.

 

A Punch cartoon in 1915 showing Constantine (Tino) being pulled by the Entente on the left and the Central Powers on the right.

The debate was not about Greek expansionism. The ‘Great Idea’ of Greek expansion had had the support of almost every Greek since the 1840s.

The clash between the Venizelists and the King led to a seven month period in 1916-7 when Venizelos, supported by the Entente, headed a provisional government in Thessaloniki and the royalists governed in Athens, insisting on neutrality even as the Entente was deploying troops on Greek territory. The royalist side demonized Venizelos and the Archbishop in Athens excommunicated him, after which his ‘effigy’ (a bull’s head) was paraded through the streets of Athens and stoned by the populace in a public park (2).

 

 

The standoff ended with a victorious Venizelos returning to Athens on a British warship to lead the government and King Constantine being forced into exile. A purge of royalist politicians and army officers ensued (not to mention the replacement of the excommunicating  Archbishop).  Many Royalists were forced into exile. Dora’s father was not, but the Royalist faction’s  leader, Dimitris Gournaris, was.  There was great bitterness and no real middle ground.

Greece did join the war on the winning side and Venizelos successfully negotiated for the Greek share of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. With the Entente’s blessing, a Greek army landed on the coast of Asia Minor in May of 1919. Their arrival would mark the beginning of a three year long Greco-Turkish war which would turn the perfect ending to the ‘Great idea’ into a crushing defeat.

There were many factors. The rise of the Turkish Nationalist Movement led by Mustafa Kemal meant there was suddenly an army based in Ankara willing to fight for a secular Turkish state(3). Then, surprisingly, Venizelos lost the 1920 elections in favour of the royalists who brought King Constantine back after a questionable referendum.  At that point, Britain made it clear that the return of the ‘hostile’ King would mean there would no longer be British support or financial backing from the Entente (4).

And yet, the Royalist government decided to continue Venizelos’ policies, reversing their election promise to ‘bring the boys home’ from Asia Minor.

The Greek army pushed deep into the Turkish hinterland but, after initial successes, they were forced to retreat in August 1922. The troops were evacuated but the Greeks of Smyrna were left to fend for themselves. When the Turkish army entered the city, thousands died.

 

Greeks waiting in vain for ships to save themas Smyna burns

The Smyrna catastrophe shocked the nation to its core. Disgusted army officers were left seething. Blaming the civilian government and their own military leaders, they led a successful revolt, asked Venizelos to negotiate with the Big Powers for them, and looked for scapegoats.  At the time of the catastrophe, Dora’s father was the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Trial and Execution of the Six

Nicolaos Stratos was arrested along with eight others including Dimitrios Gounaris and tried in a hastily assembled military court. He was one of the six sentenced to death for treason in the early hours of November 29th.

 

Nikolaos Stratos

 

They faced a firing squad just hours after the verdict. It was a sordid and clandestine affair. Dora and her mother were not allowed to attend the burial although they were allowed to see him briefly before the execution.  17 year old Andreas and a single priest were grudgingly allowed to bury his body in the First Cemetery that afternoon. (5)

International opinion had been against the entire process. Venizelos, who was in Europe negotiating the Treaty of Lausanne at the time, did nothing to stop the trial. He did protest after the sentencing but it was too late; they were already dead. Traumatized and hounded by the public outcry, Dora, her mother and her brother left the country.

The Exiles

A difficult ten years followed in which Dora’s mother sang professionally and worked as a seamstress to make ends meet and to allow her children to continue their education.  They lived in Germany, France, and New York. Andreas studied law in Germany and Paris before returning in 1927 to complete his degree at the University of Athens. Dora continued her musical studies and briefly married in Paris in 1925. Her maid of honour was the exiled princess Alice, mother of Prince Phillip of England (6).

 

The Return

When Andreas and then Dora returned, Greek politics was still a revolving door of Prime Ministers with Elefterios Venizelos usually the one on the inside and Greece had been a republic since 1924.  Why did they come back? Of course, they had family and supporters in Greece and the passions engendered by the Smyrna defeat had damped down, but I suspect it was simply because, notwithstanding the cruelty of the state towards their father, they believed in their country.  Just hours before his death, Nicolaos Stratos had said to his son,

 Greece is your fatherland. Love it. Those who are killing me are murderers. (7)

Andreas

When Andreas ran for parliament in 1932 he declared, I am the son of the executed Nicolaos Stratos. I have come to serve my country, not to avenge the wrongful death of my father(8).  He was subsequently elected to Parliament nine times and was a minister five times before he retired in 1962 to write a history of the Byzantine Empire in the seventh century.

 

Andreas attends the opening of the new Agrinion hospital in 1960

 Dora

Upon her return, Dora began to mix with the new crop of intellectuals, writers and artists who were emerging in Greece during the thirties and renewed her interest in theatre, mostly behind the scenes. The return of the King (the exiled King George 11 this time) in 1935 and rule of dictator Ioannis Metaxas formed the political background of those years before the beginning of the Second World War. In 1941, she helped her friend Karolos Koun in founding his now famous Arts Theatre (Theatro Technis) and continued to help in its administration from 1941 to 1949. During the German occupation she took an active part in the philanthropic work of the Archbishop of Athens and in 1951 became one of the original members of the Hellenic Centre of the International Theatre Institute.

 

Dora and friends

“Greek Dances – Dora Stratou”

In 1952 Dora saw a performance that would change the course of her life. It was a one hundred strong Yugoslavian dance troupe which was travelling Europe, featuring the Folk dances, music, and costumes of their native country. Nothing like that existed in Greece, only a few yearly performances by the women of the Lyceum of Greek women, but that was more of an urban pageant allowing daughters of the elite to imitate the real thing.  Greece had nothing even close to the Yugoslavian troupe.  George Megas, a university professor of folklore, suggested that they should create a national ensemble. Dora asked Sophocles Venizelos, vice-president of the Liberal government at the time, for financial assistance and Queen Frederika, wife of King Paul of Greece, was also enthusiastic.

The plan was to create a permanent professional ensemble capable of daily performances as well as making tours abroad to introduce the rest of the world to authentic Greek dance. It was to have a large repertoire, a rich and authentic wardrobe collected from all over Greece, and a program designed to attract audiences. The Greek Dances – Dora Stratou society was created in 1952 and their first performance was in January of 1953 in Thessaloniki. In the same year Dora created The Greek Company of folk Dance and song, a group which would perform outside of Greece. Their first performance was in Holland in 1953.

 

The Dance Theatre would be her passion for the rest of her life and the timing was perfect.  Greece was at the very beginning of the tourist boom that would change the face of the nation and folk art, folk dances, and folklore had been occupying the minds of many in Greece for quite some time. After Smyrna, the nation  began to look inward and back to their more recent past in order to reveal the long tradition of dance stretching right back to the ancients, and proving in the process  that there was something uniquely ‘Hellenic’ about the dances being gathered from around the country.

 

She was helped in her endeavours by many of her artist friends along with folklorists Like Angeliki, Hatzimichalis. What an amazing group they were: composer Manos Hatzidakis, painter Yannis Tsarouchis, musicologist Foivos Anorgheianakis, musicologist Simon Karas, painter Giannis Moralis, poet Odysseas Elytis, and  actor Dimitris Horn, just to name a few. The troupe’s first costumes were created by Yannis Tsarouchis who painstakingly painted the embroidery details by hand.

 

 

Over the years, Dora and others in her troupe toured villages collecting authentic dances, songs, costumes, and jewellry. It was not always easy as she described in an interview in 1967. A lot of time, patience, ouzo drinking, and cajoling was required to persuade the locals to reveal their dances and bring out their costumes. She would ultimately amass the biggest collection of folk costumes in Greece and, as with everything, she insisted on authenticity. For that reason, she did not hire choreographers to enhance the dances. She wanted to present the ‘real thing’. 

In 1963, Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis, ordered the construction of an 860 seat open air theatre for the ensemble on the Filopappou hill, which is where the troupe performs today. The stage area had to be as large as the open areas in Greek villages where so many of the dances were originally performed.

 

 

An indoor area was created for rehearsals.   Dora could not have done this alone. Many in her troupe also scoured the country for material and she had financial help from the Greek government and from private donors.

In Greece, political turmoil is never far away and Dora ran afoul of the 1967 military dictatorship because she hid left-leaning publishing tycoon Christos Lambrakis in her home when the Junta was hunting him down.  She was arrested but was released because of protests led by actress Melina Mercouri.

Dora would subsequently be awarded the prestigious World Theatre Award, the Academy of Athens Award, a Ford Foundation grant and many other honours for her contribution to the nation.  She wrote three books “A Tradition, an Adventure”, “Greek Dances, a Living Link to the Antiquity”, and “Traditional Greek Dances”.

 

In 1983 she retired due to ill health but her work has continued and is housed in a three storey building at 8 Scholiou Street, the largest building in the Plaka in Athens. All three levels are needed for offices, areas for the many student programs run by the organization, and a place to store their amazing collection of costumes.

Dora passed away in January 1988.

An Afterword

In 1932, the year Dora returned, Eleftherios Venizelos was Prime Minister. In parliament that year, he went so far as to agree, that the six men executed were not guilty of treason. But he refused to condemn the revolutionary officers behind the execution because they had acted in a patriotic and virtuous way. Well...  small comfort to the Stratos family. Nikolaos Plastiras, the architect of that trial and execution went on to become a Prime Minister of Greece and died a well respected figure.(9)

The Stratos family story highlights for me the multileveled meanings of the word patriotism in Greece and the shifting line between loyalty to the Nation and loyalty to the State. Venizelos used this dichotomy himself to justify his breakaway regime in 1916. He argued that  

Whereas the state had betrayed its obligations, it remains to the Nation to act in order to achieve the task assigned to them. (10)   

 In 2010, a lawsuit was brought to the courts by the descendent of one of the six and the court reversed their conviction. They accepted that the six had been victims of circumstances beyond their control. Textbooks were altered in the light of the decision.  It was a kind of vindication.

 

The Grave

 

Section5, Number 81

 

The Map

Footnotes

 

(1)  There were other players involved in the potential breakup of Ottoman lands, France, Italy and Britain all had their eyes on the body of the dying Ottoman Empire, as did Russia. Venizelos had tried to bring the King over to his thinking. In 1915 he wrote: "I have the impression that the concessions to Greece in Asia Minor ... would be so extensive that another equally large and not less rich Greece will be added to the doubled Greece which emerged from the victorious Balkan wars”.  Venizelos was even willing at that stage  to give up Kavalla and Drama so recently acquired in those Balkan Wars, if he could get the much larger Greek population of Asia Minor into the Greek state.  

(2) When the bull’s head story reached the foreign press it caused quite a sensation among folklorists like Sir James Fraser author of The Golden Bough. He wrote an article about it as an interesting aspect of Greek folk custom. There was one other response to the stoning: the next morning the stones were covered with roses with a note:  From the Venizelists of Athens!

(3) Mustafa Kemal (later Attaturk) was as fanatic about creating a Turkish state for Turks as any other nationalist of his era although he was more ruthless. As fellow statesmen, he and Venizelos developed a rapport over time.

(4) From Roderick Beaton’s Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation.

(5) The trial and execution of the six is described in detail by  Andre Gerolymatos,  in his introduction to Red Acropolis, Black Terror.

(6) Alice’s husband, Prince Andrew had been one of the military leaders in Asia Minor and narrowly escaped being tried himself. He was evacuated from Greece by the British when Prince Phillip was a baby.

(7) From Εις Θάνατον by Basily Tzanakaris, quoted by Beaton in Greece:  biography of a Modern Nation

(8)"Ήρθα να βοηθήσω και να υπηρετήσω την πατρίδα μου και όχι να εκδικηθώ τον άδικο θάνατο του πατέρα μου". From: http://www.epoxi.gr/%CE%A0%CF%81%CF%8C%CF%83%CF%89%CF%80%CE%B1/persons73.htm )

(9) Soldier Nikolaos Plastiras was called the ‘dark rider’, by his many fans and was a hero of the Balkan Wars and the only Venizelist officer not purged in 1917. He had every right to resent the handling of the Smyrna campaign. He is buried in the First Cemetery as well. I might be inclined to call the story of his life “The Dark Horse”.

(10) (From the chapter The Self Divided 1913-1923 in Roderick Beaton’s Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation.

Primary Sources

https://www.maxmag.gr/afieromata/dora-stratoy-mia-gynaika-poy-stirixe-tin-paradosi/

Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation by Roderick Beaton

Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power by Anthony Shay

Εις Θάνατον by Basilis Tzanakaris

Red Acropolis; Black Terror by Andre Gerolymatos

https://www.wnyc.org/story/interview-with-dora-stratou/  Avery interesting  radio interview in which Dora talks about her life and work. The discussion is in English.