Opa! The Greeks are a very passionate people, and it comes through in their dances. I’ve posted about Greek dances before.

Zorba the Greek:

There’s a Greek Orthodox church in the next town from us, and they hold a Greek Festival every year. They have dance groups of all ages that perform, and they also open the floor for everyone to dance. They teach a few steps, and the band plays a million verses of a song, and each musician gets to improvise a solo while the whole community dances. It feels like this—Adanali:

Axi Vaxi is an easy dance with only two patterns:

Kali Tihi means “good luck.” We do this fun dance at Phoenix International Folk Dancers. Here it is led by the choreographer, Lee Otterholt:

Alta es la Luna is based on traditional dance steps used by Sephardic Jews in Greece. This is another dance we do at PIFD:

Amoliti Gaida is a spirited dance with a lot of hopping and deep knee bends for the men:

Karagouna is another favorite we do at PIFD, but we don’t do the “look left, look right” as in this version (but I like that very much!):

Hassapiko Mozart is another PIFD favorite. You may recognize a little bit of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 (“It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a Mozart,” as we used to sing in music school while studying for a listening test). Choreographed by Ira Weisburd using traditional Greek hassapiko steps.

Ziglos involves a lot of arm swinging:

Gerakina looks familiar to me; I think we learned it at PIFD: