Natalie Zervou
(Associate Professor, Dance Department)
Congratulations to Associate Professor Natalie Zervou on her new book, Performing the Greek Crisis: Navigating National Identity in the Age of Austerity (Studies in Dance: Theories and Practices, University of Michigan Press, 2024) published in 2024, which received the De la Torre Bueno Prize® from the Dance Studies Association
Natalie Zervou is an Associate Professor in Dance at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She holds a PhD in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California, Riverside. Her work focuses on the intersection between dance practices and the socio-political sphere and particularly on the interplay between dance and crises. Her first book Performing the Greek Crisis: Navigating National Identity in the Age of Austerity (University of Michigan Press 2024) received the de la Torre Bueno Prize® from the Dance Studies Association in 2025 and explored the ways that dancing bodies negotiate national identity construction in the fluctuating landscape of the socio-political and economic crisis in Greece. Zervou’s current research pairs Dance Studies with Horror Studies to explore bodies in extreme states of crises, such as those proposed in horror films or live performances experimenting with grotesque aesthetics. Her article “Dancing with/the Monster: Coming of Age, Female Sexuality, and Healing through Monstrosity” is featured in the essay anthology Monstrous Utopias: Performance and the Radical Possibility of Hope (Routledge 2026).
Performing the Greek Crisis: Navigating National Identity in the Age of Austerity
Performing the Greek Crisis explores the impact of the Greek financial crisis (2009–19) on the performing arts sector in Greece, and especially on contemporary concert dance. When Greece became the first European Union member to be threatened with default, the resulting budget cuts pushed dance to develop in unprecedented directions. The book examines the repercussions that the crisis had on artists’ daily lives and experiences, weaving the personal with the political to humanize a phenomenon that, to date, had been examined chiefly through economic and statistical lenses. Informed by the author’s experience of growing up in Greece and including interviews and rich descriptions of performances, the book offers a glimpse into a pivotal moment in Greek history.
In Greece, dance (and, by extension, the body) has historically held a central role in the process of national identity construction. When the crisis broke out, artists had to navigate through a precariously fluctuating landscape, with their bodies as their only stable referent. By centering the analysis of the Greek crisis on the dancing bodies, Performing the Greek Crisis is able to examine the various ways that artists reconceptualized their history and reframed ideas of national belonging, race, citizenship, and immigration.