Elizabeth Lloyd 1

Elizabeth Lloyd

Ms. Little

Dance History

21 October 2019

Meaning of Dance Reflection 1

On Friday night, I attended the Greek festival with my parents. I ate a ton of delicious

food and sweet cinnamon donut type things, but before, we watched the dances under the tent.

The dances were performed by different groups based on their ages, but all of them had very

similar elements throughout their unique performances. The first dance was performed by the

youngest group of kids and featured the largest number of dancers. The girls wore skirts with

jingly belts and the boys wore a shirt with pants. The dancers performed to fast songs with a

tempo for the audience to clap along. The next group was a little bit older. These children also

wore skirts, shirts, and pants. They performed fast dances but also performed slow dances as

well. The girls from the older group wore long dresses and the boy in the older group wore a

shirt with pants, just like all the other boys. All of the dances were performed with the dancers

holding hands, which emphasized equality among them. The boys in the dances and the girls all

did the exact same roles, also emphasizing equality among the dancers, regardless of their

gender. The audience was encouraged to clap along to the beat of the dances to give energy to

the dancers. There seemed to be an important relationship between the audience and the

performers, in which the audience were meant to feel included and important to the performance.

All of the groups performed the Kalamatianos, named after Kalamata in southern Greece. This

dance has the same steps of the Syrtos, a Spartan dance that showed a clear distinction between
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the men and the women dancers’ movements. This Kalamatianos dance was possibly made to

counter the expression of differences between male and female, and show them as equals.