Pentozali

The Pentozali or Pentozalis (Greek: Πεντοζάλης) is the trademark folk dance of the island of Crete. It takes its name from the five (pente) attempt or step (ζάλος zalos being a Cretan Greek word for "step"). It can thus be translated as "five-steps". The name also contains an element of wordplay, as ‘ζάλη’ (zali) means dizziness, and so it may also be interpreted as a dance that can make its dancers dizzy five times over ("five-dizzy"). In fact the dance has ten steps in total. The Cretan violinist Stefanos Triantafillakis (1715–1800) is credited with composing the music for the dance in 1770–1771. The Pentozali is a war dance, vigorous, with high jumping movements and allows for much improvisation. It starts either at a fast pace or at a moderate pace and accelerates progressively. The dancers hold each other by the shoulders and form an incomplete circle, which rotates counterclockwise very slowly, or sometimes not at all, because most of the lively steps are semi-stationary. The first dancer is expected to improvise whilst engaging in acrobatics: they and the second dancer link hands (as opposed to laying their arms over each other's shoulders, as the other dancers in the line do) and the second dancer stands still and rigid, so that the first dancer is provided a more stable base from which to perform.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Pentozali”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Pentozali is type of dance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶