OPA!! Let Do A Happy Dance

Greeks have expressed happiness, sadness, anger, and love through dance for thousands of years.

- Barbara Basbanes Richter

Vibrant costumes, distinctive music, and intricate footsteps reflect the diversity of the people who call Greece home. Greek culture is incomplete without choros—dance.

Musical notations that are thousands of years old show that ancient Greeks developed and performed almost 200 different dances. Choros kept the ancient Greeks physically and emotionally healthy. Professional dancers performed at special events, but most everyone danced to celebrate births and birthdays, weddings, funerals, and to prepare for war. Men’s dances, women’s dances, paired dancing, and group dancing all had a special place in ancient Greek society, and that richness still exists.

Much like their ancestors, modern Greeks dance to commemorate significant events. For example, the Dance of Zalongo recalls a tragic episode from the Soulite War. In December 1803, the Soulites (Greeks from the north) lost a major battle to the Ottomans. The villagers were evacuating when the enemy surrounded them. Rather than be taken hostage, the Soulite women and children held hands, danced and sang, and in the ultimate act of defiance, leapt over the Zalongo cliffs to their deaths. Greeks still perform the Choros tou Zalongou, and a commemorative statue of people holding hands, bodies suspended in movement, is perched at the Zalongo precipice.