Traditional Greek Dances

Traditional Greek dances are the folk dances of Greece, danced across the islands and the mainland. Each region shapes its own steps, songs and instruments. Topics here include the Sousta of the Dodecanese, the Pyrrhic war dance and the Pontic Serra. They also cover the Cretan and Pontic lyras, the laouto, Domna Samiou and Chronis Aidonidis of Thrace. Related pages cover Greek Easter traditions, Greek food and Crete tours. For trips with a host across the country, see Greece tours.

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What are traditional Greek dances?

Traditional Greek dances form an old tradition, mentioned by Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch and Lucian. The Greek word for dance is choros. Over 10,000 traditional dances come from all regions of Greece. Styles differ across the islands and the surrounding mainland areas.

Traditional Greek dances serve a mainly social purpose. They bring a community together at key points of the year. Such points include Easter, the grape harvest and patronal festivals. A patronal festival honours the patron saint of a church or village. Tradition frequently sets a strict order for the dancers, for example by age.

Each region formed its own choreography and style to suit local ways. Choreography means the planned steps and moves of a dance. Island dances have a smoother flow. Pontic dancing, from Greeks of the Black Sea coast, is very sharp. Epirote dances, from Epirus, are the slowest and heaviest in Greece. Great balance is needed to perform them.

Pan-Hellenic dances have been adopted throughout the Greek world. Pan-Hellenic means common to every Greek. The list includes the Syrtos, Kalamatianos, Pyrrhichios, Ballos, Zeibekiko and hasapiko. Traditional Greek dances are also performed in diaspora Greek communities. A diaspora is a community outside its homeland. International folk dance groups perform them too.

• Aegean islands: Aegean island dances are fast, light and jumpy, with couples more common than lines.
• Peloponnese: Dances of the Peloponnese are simple and heavy, and the leader of the line improvises.
• Macedonia: Dances in Macedonia vary, and the bulk of them begin slowly and then gain speed.

A study followed children in a programme of traditional Greek dances. It found the dancing to be effective exercise for young children. It strengthened their static and dynamic balance. Static balance means staying steady while still, and dynamic balance means staying steady while moving.

How does the Sousta fit into traditional Greek dances of the Aegean?

Traditional Greek dances include the Sousta, a wedding dance of courtship between husband and wife. It holds a strong place in the Dodecanese Islands and across the wider Aegean region. Its roots go back to ancient Greece, on the island of Crete.

Only the Syrtos is more common than the Sousta among traditional Greek dances. On ancient Crete, healers at times danced it to calm Rea, the earth goddess. Its large leaps were believed to influence growth in nature, making it a fertility dance. Its sway, two steps forward and one back, re-enacted boats fighting big waves.

Only a male was allowed to lead the Sousta. Girls joined it as a recognised community event at 14. Boys joined at 16 at the earliest. Young men spent time practising their own versions of the dance. Between 1925 and 1940, the southern coastal village of Kattavia on Rhodes danced it to strengthen social unity.

As praise for a skilled dancer, spectators threw coins on the floor or towards the musicians. Paper notes were also attached to instruments or belts. The Sousta was danced with a bowl, into which viewers threw money for the lead dancer. That money went to the Church for building work, priests’ salaries and public events.

• Name: The jump steps resemble a recoiling spring, and the dance takes its name from this.
• Handkerchief: In these traditional Greek dances, partners held a white handkerchief as a symbol of purity.
• Instruments: The tune is played on a lyre, a violin, a mandolin and a laouto, a Greek lute.

Today the Syrto has overtaken the Sousta in popularity among traditional Greek dances. Village and island schools do not teach the Sousta, while the Syrto stays a national staple. Official versions come from Crete, Rhodes, Halki, Leros, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kos, Tilos, Samos and Symi.

Which sound does the Cretan lyra lend to traditional Greek dances?

Traditional Greek dances from Crete belong to a musical tradition in which the Cretan lyra is central. This bowed instrument has three strings. It holds the same central place on other Greek islands of the Dodecanese and the Aegean.

The lyra heard in traditional Greek dances on Crete is closely related to the bowed Byzantine lyra. Byzantine names the empire once ruled from Constantinople. In the 9th century, the Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih named the lyra a typical Byzantine instrument. One view says it reached Crete through the eastern town of Sitia by the 12th century.

In 1990, the musician Ross Daly designed a new type of Cretan lyra. It blends the lyraki, an older small lyra, the Byzantine lyra and the Indian sarangi, a folk fiddle. Its three playing strings are 29 cm long. It adds 18 sympathetic strings, which ring by themselves when other strings are played. That number later rose to 22.

The old lyraki is tuned 5-1-4, so its middle string is the lowest in pitch. The contemporary lyra follows a design by Stagakis. It is tuned in fifths, like the three lowest strings of a violin. A fifth is a gap of five notes. Certain lyras add a fourth string, tuned like a violin’s E-string.

• Nisiotika: In nisiotika, the songs and traditional Greek dances of the Aegean islands, the lyre leads.
• Common lyra: Twenty years after 1920, a new blend of lyraki and violin produced the common lyra.
• Relatives: Living relatives of the Byzantine lyra include the gadulka of Bulgaria and the Calabrian lira of Italy.

Beyond traditional Greek dances, Yiorgos Kaloudis has played Bach’s suites for cello on the Cretan lyra. On Rhodes, Yiannis Kladakis is known for reviving this type of lyra. The bulk of lyras are played with violin bows, and their wood is mainly imported.

What links the Pyrrhichios war dance to traditional Greek dances?

Traditional Greek dances include the Pyrrhichios, also called the Pyrrhic dance. It was the best-known war dance of the Greeks. At first it served solely as training for war. Ancient sources describe it as a weapon dance, done with arms in hand.

Plato wrote that its quick moves imitated ways to avoid blows and darts. They also showed how to attack an enemy. It was danced to the aulos, an ancient double pipe, in quick, light time. The Sousta, one of the traditional Greek dances of the islands, relates to this war dance group.

Xenophon described the dance in his work, the Anabasis. It was performed at a banquet in Kotyora, where Greek and Paphlagonian forces settled their differences. Men in arms danced, and the Paphlagonians were amazed. A woman dancer then gave the Pyrrhic dance with a light shield. She danced with great agility, and loud clapping followed.

A tradition reported by Aristotle names Achilles as the creator of the dance. He danced it around the funeral pyre of Patroclus. The Spartans saw it as light war training and taught it to their children. Athenian youth performed it in the palaestra, a wrestling school, as part of gymnastics training.

• Serra: The Serra, a Pontic Greek war dance of ancient Greek origin, is also called Pyrrhichios.
• Soldiers: Pontic soldiers performed traditional Greek dances of their homeland to motivate themselves before battle.
• Panathenaic Games: At these Athenian games, men, youths and boys competed in the dance in three classes.

Pontus is a region on the Black Sea. Among its traditional Greek dances, the Serra is a men’s dance, done hand in hand. It takes its name from the Serra river, in the Trapezounda region. It is at times confused with the Atsiapat, which precedes it.

How does the Pontic lyra accompany traditional Greek dances of the Black Sea?

Traditional Greek dances of the Pontic Greeks, from the Black Sea, are accompanied by the Pontic lyra. Turkish people call it the kemenche. It is a bowed string instrument with three strings. Greek and Turkish folk artists play it now, as in the past.

The word kemance comes from a Persian word meaning little bow. The name kemenche first appeared in the 10th century. The Pontic lyra itself seems to date from the 11th to 12th centuries. At that time, Pontus was part of the Byzantine Empire. Pavlos Hairopoulos held that the Greeks of Pontus created it themselves.

Makers build the body, pegbox and neck from one piece of wood. Plum is the commonest choice and is traditionally held to be the best. The teardrop-shaped pegbox, where the tuning keys sit, is called kifal, or head, in the Pontic dialect. The soundboard, the resonating front plate, is pine or fir.

Until 1920, the three strings that sounded for traditional Greek dances of Pontus were silk. They gave a melodic but low sound. Today the strings are metal. The bow is about 50 to 60 cm long, and its fibres are male horse-tail hairs. Players stop the strings with the pads of their fingers, as on a violin.

• Shape: The Pontic lyra of traditional Greek dances has a bottle shape, a long neck and oblong body.
• Strings: The lowest string is called kapan, and the highest is called zil.
• Posture: The player stands or sits, and the lyra always keeps a slight tilt to the left.

For traditional Greek dances of Pontus, the lyra is held upright, on the knee when seated. Three ways of playing exist. In one, the tune runs on the highest string, with the next string as a drone. A drone is a steady held note.

Who was Domna Samiou in the story of traditional Greek dances and songs?

Traditional Greek dances and songs of the Aegean islands are known as nisiotika. Domna Samiou counts among the representative performers of this music. She was a prominent Greek researcher and performer of folk music. For over half a century, she collected, recorded and performed traditional Greek songs.

Samiou was born in 1928 in Kaisariani, a poor district of Athens. Her parents were Greek refugees from the village of Bayındır, near Smyrna in Asia Minor. At thirteen, while at night school, she began formal music training with Simon Karas. There she was tutored in Byzantine and folk music.

Her lessons also introduced her to field research in music, which means recording it on site. In 1954, she joined the state radio, in its folk music section. There she met the leading traditional musicians of the day. They had come to Athens in a great wave of migration from the countryside.

In 1963, she began touring the countryside on her own to record music for her archive. In 1971, she left the radio to focus on her own singing career. She later said her rise made people overcome their embarrassment about folk music. In 1981, an association bearing her name was founded to promote Greek traditional music.

• Old and new names: The songs she gathered were once called demotika, or folk songs, and now paradosiaka, or traditional.
• Island peers: Mariza Koch, Yiannis Parios and the Konitopoulos family also represent nisiotika, the island songs and traditional Greek dances.
• Dance tunes: Traditional Greek dances that go with folk music across Greece include the Kalamatianos, Tsamiko, Ballos and Sousta.

Greek folk songs are played mainly in two tempos, or speeds, syrtos and pidiktos. Pidiktos songs carry more energy and include leaps. Syrtos songs and their traditional Greek dances are slower and more free-flowing. Samiou died in Athens on 10 March 2012, at 84 years old.

What role does the laouto play in traditional Greek dances?

Traditional Greek dances move to music in which the laouto has a mainly supporting role. This long-neck fretted instrument of the lute family is found in Greece and Cyprus. It looks similar to the oud, another lute with a shorter neck.

Frets are raised strips across the neck that mark the notes. The laouto has four double strings. It is plucked with a long plectrum, a small pick, in much the same way as the oud. In Cyprus, players pluck it with a feather. In Albania it is called llautë, and in Romania lăuta.

Steel strings and a longer neck give the laouto higher string tension than the oud. Its tone is therefore brighter. Its movable frets allow the playing of the dromoi, the modes of Greek traditional music. Each mode is its own fixed scale of notes. The 11 frets on the neck are removable and made of nylon.

The soundboard is commonly spruce or cedar. The body is a harder wood, such as maple or walnut. The laouto has one sound hole, or at times two, while the oud family tends to have three. Two main variants serve traditional Greek dances: the steriano laouto of mainland Greece and the larger Cretan laouto.

• Duo: In traditional Greek dances and songs, the laouto frequently plays in a duo with the Cretan lyra.
• Fixed frets: Up to 9 wooden frets, mounted on the soundboard, stay fixed in place.
• Strings: The strings were traditionally gut, though modern laoutos also use steel.

Notable laouto players of traditional Greek dances and songs include Giannis Haroulis and Christos Zotos. On the laouto, the first pair of strings is tuned in unison, to the same note. The other pairs sit an octave apart. An octave spans eight notes of the scale.

Which voice did Chronis Aidonidis give to traditional Greek dances of Thrace?

Traditional Greek dances of Thrace are skippy and light in the main. Musicians and singers such as Chronis Aidonidis and Kariofilis Doitsidis brought the music of Thrace to life. Aidonidis came from Karoti, a village that now belongs to Didymoteicho.

Aidonidis lived from 1928 to 2023. His mother introduced him to traditional music. So did the musicians who played at local fairs. He learned his first songs in his hometown. His father first taught him Byzantine music, and professor Michalis Kefalokoptis taught him later. In 1950, he moved to Athens with his parents.

There he worked as an accountant at a hospital. In 1953, the folklore scientist Polydoros Papachristodoulou invited him onto a radio show. A folklore scientist studies the customs and songs of ordinary people. The show presented music from Thrace, the homeland of Aidonidis. He went on to release records of songs from northern, eastern and western Thrace.

He took part in hundreds of musical events in Greece and abroad. These reached the Americas, Australia, the former Soviet Union and Europe. He taught traditional singing in the Chalandri suburb of Athens. He also created and led the Workshop for Traditional Music in Alexandroupoli. He was one of the founders of the Archive of Greek Music.

• Line order: In the bulk of traditional Greek dances from Thrace, men dance only at the front of the line.
• Northern Thrace: Traditional Greek dances of Northern Thrace are fast and upbeat, close to the Thracian style.
• Favourites: Of all Northern Thracian dances, those from Kavakli and Neo Monastiri enjoy the greatest popularity.

Thracian traditional Greek dances include the Tapeinos Horos, Baidouska, Zonaradiko and Tsestos. The gaida, a goatskin bagpipe, is commonly heard in Thracian music. Clarinets are used too. Aidonidis died on 23 October 2023, at the age of 95.

What do travellers ask about Traditional Greek dances, and what are the answers?

Traditional Greek dances also count the Ballos, a form of sirtos. The Tsakonikos is danced in the Peloponnese. The tsampouna is a Greek bagpipe, widespread in the Greek islands. The Karsilamas is a couple dance still danced in Macedonia and Thrace, in northern Greece.

Among traditional Greek dances, where does the name Ballos come from?

The name comes from the Italian ballo, by way of Latin. That word goes back to the Greek verb ballizo, to dance or to jump. The Ballos is a couples’ dance holding all the elements of courtship. Island men were unable to approach women easily, so they created it to flirt.

How do dancers shape the Tsakonikos among traditional Greek dances?

The Tsakonikos comes from Tsakonia, a region chiefly in Arcadia. Its dancers form an open circle that slowly winds in upon itself. The line makes a snail-shaped design. According to legend, this maze-like form is linked to the Crane dance of Theseus. Theseus slew the Minotaur, a monster, in the Labyrinth of King Minos.

Which bagpipe joins traditional Greek dances in the Aegean islands?

The tsampouna is a Greek bagpipe with two chanters and no drone. A chanter is the pipe that plays the tune. The player inflates its goatskin bag by blowing into it by mouth. Among traditional musicians of Ikaria, a partial revival is under way. It is increasingly common at Ikarian festivals.

What does the name Karsilamas mean within traditional Greek dances?

Karsilamas comes from the Turkish word karşılama, meaning encounter, welcoming or greeting. Anatolian Greek immigrants carried the dance to Greece. Anatolia is the large peninsula of modern Turkey. In the dance, two people face each other, and the music rhythmically controls their next moves. Rhythmically means in time with the beat.