Sifnos folk dancing festival

There was a two-day folk dance festival in Kamares while we were in Sifnos. The people at our hotel urged us to go and we were glad we did, as we had two wonderful evenings.

 

The programme was as follows: 7-9 pm the participating groups would rehearse. At 9:00 the groups would parade through the town, encouraging people to join the procession. Then they would congregate in the square, where the professional groups would dance for the audience. They would finish at 11:00 when the stage would open up for the audience to start dancing themselves - this went on until the morning.

The first evening groups from all over Greece took part, while the second evening it was groups and dances from the islands.

We enjoyed watching the dancing as well as listening to the music which was wonderful

Sometimes it was single-sex dancing, as here, where the men are dancing, some times it was the turn of the women

and sometimes it was mixed.

Children from the audience joined in, doing their own version of a Greek folk dance

The costumes were wonderful, particularly of the women. I saw a group of them in town earlier on, and noticed that their costumes were made of very thick wool: 'How are you going to cope with the heat, and so much movement?' I asked them. 'We are wondering about that too', they answered. But, they managed just fine.

Later, there were fireworks.

When the performance had ended, the public took over - lots of people joined in, including tourists and children

This group of four men were fabulous - they did a dance from Pontos which looked very complicated

We left at 1:00 but as I said earlier, the dancing went on until the morning. As we were leaving we saw people dancing in the street.