This Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd April 2017, the 4th Annual Vimata Greek Dance Workshop will be held in Sydney. The great experience in Greek Dance will be held at Beverly Hills Girls High School and is being organised by Vasilios Aligiannis, Instructor at Greek Folk Dancers of NSW and Principal at the Institute of Hellenic Dance & Culture.
Vimata’s aim is to “educate people in traditional Greek Folk Dance both through research and dance practice”. The workshop will bring people with the same interests in Greek Dancing together, with dancers from across the country flying into Sydney to attend the workshop event.
The 4th Annual Greek Dance Workshop in Sydney will focus on the dances of Pontus with Kyriakos Moisidis from Thessaloniki, teaching at the workshop. Kyriakos Moisidis is a prolific researcher, instructor, and performer of Greek traditional dance. He learned to dance at an early age and has taught dancing since 1985.
Kyriakos has conducted extensive, ongoing research on traditional Greek dance, music, and customs and instructs the course "Traditional dance and Pyrihi" ("Παραδοσιακοί χοροί και Πυρρίχη") as a professor at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki.
This Vimata workshop will definitely be a sellout like last Vimata workshop held in October 2016, which had special guests from Greece, Katerina Asteriou-Kavazi and Amalia Papadopoulou-Symeonidou and from Melbourne George Kiriakidis who taught at the workshop.
The Macedonian focused workshop was enjoyed by all, as Katerina educated everyone about the areas of the dances she would be teaching from her homeland, as well as explaining that dancing is not only about the steps, it is the feeling you have, the feeling of the music, the traditions, the attitude and the costumes.
Amalia not only taught everyone how to sing some of the traditional Folk Songs of Greece, but also enlightened everyone that to sing and dance Traditional Folk songs is incredible. George coached everyone how to recognise the fundamental elements of timing and rhythm as without any understanding of what a person is dancing to, they are not truly dancing, they are just doing moves.
As Vasilios Aligiannis said “You cannot recreate this experience anywhere else”.
The Vimata workshop will also be accompanied by a Glendi night on the Saturday night with live music and of course lots of dancing. If it is anything like last year, it will be an amazing, feet hurting night with your tired legs begging you to stop but your heart and mind giving you strength to dance the night away.
To register for the event, please visit greekdancing.com.au/vimata-2017
