Tsifteteli
Greek Belly Dance
By Caroline Kershaw https://www.facebook.com/carolyne.kershaw
In the south eastern corner of Europe with a land border with Turkey, islands in the Dodecanese only hundreds of yards from Turkish Asia Minor and a Turkish minority in Thrace, the most Northerly region of Greece perhaps it will be no surprise that there is a tradition of belly dance in Greece and that Middle Eastern music has influenced some of the traditional forms of Greek music.
What may be more of a surprise is that Tsifteteli came to Greece with the population exchange that followed the Greek Turkish war of 1920 – 1922. About 400,000 ethnic Turks left Greece to live in the new Turkish Republic and around 1.5 million ethnic Greeks left Asia Minor. There had been Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia Minor for 3,000 years. The Greek migrants brought with them different traditions of music and dance including Tisfteteli. Tsifteteli is not a Greek word but adopted from the Turkish Cifteteli.
The music of Tsifteteli is similar to the belly dance music of Turkey, the Levant and Egypt, though the range of instruments used is different. Drums may be used or may be absent, wind instruments are perhaps rare and always there is that instrument that is most recognisably Greek, the Bouzouki.
Instruments include the Pontic Lyre or Kementse (a three stringed violin like instrument played with a bow, usually played while sitting with the ‘reverse’ end of the instrument resting on the knee), the Outi, or Greek lute, similar to the Arab Ud, the Violin and of course the Bouzouki. These are the predominant instruments used for the music of tsifteteli, though clarinets and modern electric guitars drum kits may be seen.
Traditional Tsifteteli is perhaps best thought of as a form of folk dance, though perhaps improvisational folk dance. For the Greeks who were, under Ottoman rule, limited to farming and trading belly dance was not an entertainment of wealthy Turkish households or Ottoman coffee and shisha houses, this was the dance of the village celebration, of modestly dressed village girls and farmer’s daughters. If danced by two dancers together also of goatherds and millers’ sons.
This is, perhaps in consequence, a more restricted form of belly dance, without floor work or veils or similar ‘props’.
The movements of Tsifteteli are a lot simpler than the movements of the Arabic Raks Sharqi. But according to Chryssanthi Sahar, a teacher of belly dance in Greece, this doesn’t mean that Tsifteteli is easier to dance; it may be more difficult to dance because dancers do not usually learn or use routines, it is improvised and that improvisation depends very much on the feeling for the traditional Tsifteteli music.
The most common Tsifteteli movements are: shoulder shimmy, vertical backwards figure 8, hip circle, hip semi-circle, rotating using hip circles, hip lift to the front, hip lift in circle and half camel step. The hands may be stretched out to the sides or placed behind or beside the head. Fingers may be clicked, finger cymbals are not used. Back bends and belly rolls may be used occasionally. Certain movements including hip shimmies and hip swaying are not used.
Traditional Tsiftiteli demonstrated by Chryssanthi Sahar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVi-Brs2A6I
Modern Tsifteteli is in some ways more similar to belly dance in the Arab and Turkish world, including movements not present in traditional Tsifteteli, while retaining some distinct differences.
Modern Tsifteteli may be performed by a single dancer and there are professional teachers and performers like Katerina Stikoudi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8ilBrrV76c
Audience appreciation is shown by throwing flowers onto the dance floor and breaking plates.
But Tsifteteli is more usually performed by two dancers. These may be a man and a woman, two women or even two men. It is not performed in folk costume or ‘Turkish’ belly dance costume. This is belly dance performed in party dress, smart casual or jeans and t shirt.
The two dancers do not perform the same moves together. They may complement each other, each taking her or his turn to take centre stage while the other, his or her dance moves perhaps more restrained, metaphorically retires to become a chorus line of one. They may compete, each taking their turn to show how sexily or athletically they can dance, or the precision of their technique. Or the two dancers may flirt through the medium of dance, teasing the audience with this expression of their real or staged affection; a Mediterranean, non-contact, tango of belly dance.