Preparing to embark on another farewell from New York, I taste a bitter and sweet sadness.

When I set out to Athens, Greece six months ago, I had no clear intention of staying there. It was a lofty idea that, after completing my second University degree, I could simply fly eastward and let the Mediterranean air inspire my next steps.

In July of last year, I arrived to Athens in the beautiful summer, to picturesque beaches and to satisfied and colorful memories of my childhood visits. I found a base there, at my family’s home in a suburb of Athens, ready to revel in a clearer and more relaxed state of mind.

Because a vacation of doing “nothing” is much harder work, and less appealing to me than incessant running, the months carried me on travels and adventures to everywhere that called to me: to the perfect Greek Isles, to my dreams of Morocco, to dancing in Turkey, to the boarders of F.Y.R.O.M, and to both sides of Cyprus. Every moment was a new potential, a new travel plan, and a new surprise. Everyday, an adventure.

After the summer months of travel, I began “nesting”. I started filling my family’s otherwise empty house with anything that might make it “home-y.” I designated which wardrobe would be my “costume closet,” and I began dancing and teaching regularly, and slowly, began to feel a sense of “living” in Athens.

The effort of communication was the first struggle to take hold as I attempted to be less foreign, and accepted that I will never really blend in, despite my Greek-blood.

Moving to Greece has been a privilege and a challenge that has personally and emotionally kept me journeying from excitement to melancholy, from contentment to restlessness. I hold these experiences and emotions, and I believe, some of them will shape my character and my future.

For this article, I share my professional experience, and hope, at best it helps, or at least sparks interests.

I began, early on, ACTIVELY seeking out Middle Eastern dancers and venues in the Athens area. I was told that Thessaloniki, the northern largest city in Greece, has a more impressive standard of Middle Eastern Dance. When I traveled up there, I found one or two restaurants quite easily, which had a DJ playing a mixture of Greek and Arabic Pop music. The dancers each brought their CD and danced playfully to entirely upbeat programs.

The life of the place, however, was in the DJ- who left the booth to play Darbuka alongside the dancers and the young man who prepared the hookahs, who tied on a hip scarf and danced flamboyantly on the tables throughout the night. I managed to dance the following night at “Al Arabia” in Thessaloniki and was treated fairly and politely by the dancers and management.

Back in Athens, I became disillusioned with the status of Middle-Eastern dance when all the venues I could find were almost identical to one another, and that almost everywhere I turned, I would see a “belly-dancer,” in sometimes precarious positions, ( I cringe when I try to describe), shaking to a Hakim song. I quickly realized, this is not like back “home”.

“Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore....and certainly not NY!”

The Middle Eastern Dance scene (what they call “Oriental”) is intense in Athens. It’s EVERYWHERE, it seems, in some form. “Belly-dancers” are VERY popular, and popularized, though many of the dancers are completely unfamiliar with Classic or Traditional “Oriental” music. One dancer informed me that the CD we would dance to that evening would be “traditional” Arabic music. What played was Hakim and Amr Diab. After the show, when I politely offered to play a CD of Egyptian classics on our ride home, she commented that the music is beautiful, but imagined that it must be hard to dance to. The belly-dancers in Greece are accustomed to fast- paced music without major breaks or rhythmical changes which inspires them to shimmy incessantly.

The dancers who are working professionally do have a remarkable stage presence, despite their lack of professional technique. They are always smiling and engaging with the audiences. The audiences are typically a club-cafe crowd, (which incidentally is not one age- or class- bracket...)
The ambience is toned by the DJ who uses a lot of Pop Arabic mixing with the latest fusion sounds including Greek Pop and big clubby beats...ANYTHING that gets the people moving.

There is a literal and obvious distinction between the Greek traditional equivalent of "belly dance" - a cultural social dance "everyone can do" known there as Chifteteli, (which I believe developed out of the Turkish and Greek mixing historically / politically / geographically / culturally etc.) and what is considered "oriental" which seems to me to be referencing and attempting to mimic a more Egyptian/Arabic style. I've been told, sadly, that many dancers have no training AT ALL. They are simply good at Chifteteli, (being “pretty” helps too) and they learn a little hip drop here and there...and how to shimmy (improperly) for half an hour.

Now that I have found a niche there, I usually dance 5 days a week, two or three 15-minute shows each night. Of those, 4 nights are at a very nice, very BIG place called CHAKRA, which follows the same sort of clubby atmosphere as everywhere else, but is HUGE. I am always performing one solo song, before the other dancers enter, either with candles or wings, as the "show". They allow me 2 full solo shows on Sundays where I choose to introduce a more "traditional 5 part show" which we NY-ers are more accustomed to. The management, the staff, and the customers treat me very well at Chakra, and they seem to respect me. I am relieved and happy to say I am lucky to have found Chakra and Chakra to have found me.

A few other obvious characteristics I’ve noted in the time I’ve worked professionally in Athens: There is not a community of dancers and musicians as we have in NY, and I have commonly heard horrible stories of harsh rivalries among dancers. I have been lucky enough to stay in-tune with sensing budding attitudes and have only had minor problems. For the most part, all the dancers I’ve worked with have been very kind to me.

Props are not common, though audiences LOVE Wings, and frequently though the cane is used, but is just held or swung around to any pop music (with no correlation to Egyptian Raqs Assaya). Zills are not used, and not learned, and if they are, the music is usually too loud to hear them.

My advice to any traveling dancers: make at least one good contact in the city you visit. Get “the scoop” as much as you can. After speaking to the local dancers, I was more confident in my attempt to find my own venue to dance. I was able to gage what I knew about NY with what I was told to me about Athens. Do NOT steal jobs, do NOT make anyone angry, and learn from everyone. Even if you think they have nothing to teach you… you will be surprised. My students are teaching me the most right now. They are beginners, and are learning so fast. They are like sponges, but beautiful lively and creative sponges!

Now, as I anticipate my return to Athens, I foresee my experience as far less spontaneous. I know what I have started there, and I know what the next few months may look like. The adventure, for me, is now more in the realm of the ordinary and is tinted with the realistic day to day struggle of a self-identified semi-foreigner.

*** Athena Najat, a dancer and instructor emerged from the NY Middle-Eastern Dance community and completed her Masters Degree in Performance Studies and Dance Ethnography from New York University just before moving to Athens, Greece.
Athena uses the term “belly-dance” in this article because it is the term used among the dancers in Greece. They also use the English word as well as a literal translation “xwpo tis koilias”. The translation of "Middle Eastern" which is actually, in Greek, "Anatolian" is rarely used.