Gerontikos

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Gerontikos (Greek : γεροντικός) is the Greek name for the traditional Starsko Oro (Slavic) dance of the Florina region of Greece. Both names translate as the “old men’s dance.” Although this traditional men’s dance is rarely danced recreationally anymore, it is frequently performed on stage by Florina’s dance groups. It is a dance that begins with very slow, deliberate steps and later often segues into the more up-tempo Leventikos, or Pusteno (Slavic). The step pattern is structurally related to Berance, a dance just across the border in the Republic of Macedonia. Two traditional Slavic Macedonian ballads with bandit themes dating back to the years of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, Ibraim Odza and Dafino Vino Crveno, are commonly played instrumentally for stage performances of the Gerondikos by Greek dance organizations. The poetic meter of these ballads may be the determining factor for their unusual 12/8 (alternating measures of 7 and 5) musical meter and its variants.

Greek language language spoken in Greece, Cyprus and Southern Albania

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has the longest documented history of any living Indo-European language, spanning more than 3000 years of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.


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References

It’s All Greek To Me ... Or Is It? Balkan Bandit Ballads and Identity Politics on Stage by Joan Carol Friedberg.