“Take Only What You Carry …”
Pontiaki Estia (Pontian Dancers)
“You are to leave this place,” the officer shouted. “You will have three days to gather your things. You will take only what you can carry.” “Where are we to go?” an old man asked. “You are to leave this place,.. I am not here to answer your questions. Be ready when the soldiers come to take you away.” “But this is our home,…”, a woman cried as the officer and his men mounted their horses and trotted down the road toward Londone.
This performance of music, dance and spoken word gives voice to the struggle of a fading culture. It is a response to the uprooting of the Indigenous Hellenes from Pontos on the southern coast of the Black Sea. This theatrical and passionate dance reflects the hope for continuity. The dance resonates with the experience of relocation and preservation of Pontian culture in a foreign place. It impacts directly on those with first hand experience but also their children.
Take Only What You Carry depicts a heroic response to the attempt to eliminate the Pontians in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide in the time of the Ottomans. Hundreds of thousands of Pontians disappeared through massacres, persecution and death marches. After disposition and dispersion, through physical and cultural relocation, many surviving Pontians fled to Caucasus in Russia, Greece, Germany, Canada, America and Australia. Pontiaki Estia captures the defiance to banishment from one’s own homeland. As with many of the world’s diasporic cultures, it is through strong foundations in music and dance form, that personal and cultural identities survive. This is what is left. This is what we carry.