The Alkis Raftis affair

CID stands for Conseil International de la Danse, a world-wide organization formally linked in a consultative capacity to the humanitarian organization UNESCO. It was founded almost 35 years ago by Kurt Jooss and has more than 2300 members today – both individuals and organizations – in 140 countries. It has national committees and permanent programmes, of which the best known in Greece, the home-country of its president, is the (over-ambitious) annual Dance Research Congress.

Despite its list of members in this country, it has not managed to gain widespread trust or be recognized as anything other than a lobbying and canvassing body for “dinosaurs” and people “cut off from the reality and needs of the contemporary dance scene of Greece.” 

President Alkis Raftis has been through a lot of upheaval over the past year-and-a-half. Behind the distinguished façade of the institution, there has been intense opposition to Raftis’ presidency, leading to various accusations, ranging from embezzlement of funds to his unsuitability for the position of president, and law suits. One wonders, then, what the true nature and potential of such an organization is, and whether CID is just about ...