The dances, explained
Zeibekiko to sirtaki: the dances you'll see at a Plaka dinner show
Six dances, six different corners of Greek history — what each one actually is, where it comes from, and which one is younger than it looks.
See Plaka dinner show tickets on GetYourGuide ↗The repertoire, region by region
| Dance | Region | Feel |
|---|---|---|
| Zeibekiko | Asia Minor / rebetiko | Solo, slow, improvised |
| Kalamatianos | Peloponnese | Circle, hand-in-hand, 12 steps |
| Pentozali | Crete | Fast, high-jumping, shoulder-linked |
| Tsamiko | Epirus & the mainland | Slow, stately, acrobatic lead |
| Pontian dances | Pontus, Black Sea coast | Tight, fast, closed circle |
| Sirtaki | A 1964 film set | Builds from slow to fast — the invented one |
This isn't one dance repeated all night
A Plaka dinner show like this one doesn't run on a single dance done over and over — the programme typically moves through several genuinely different regional traditions across the evening, from a slow solo turn to full-room circle dances. Neither GetYourGuide nor the taverna publishes a fixed running order for this particular listing, so what follows is the vocabulary this kind of evening usually draws from, not a guaranteed set list for the night you book.
Zeibekiko: the one danced alone
Zeibekiko began with the Zeybek irregular militia of Ottoman Asia Minor and travelled to mainland Greece with the refugees who arrived after the 1922 population exchange, where it fused with the urban rebetiko music of the port cities. It's a solo dance with no fixed choreography — a dancer works within a space barely a metre wide, building the routine as they go rather than following set steps, which is part of why it reads as more introspective than showy.
Kalamatianos and tsamiko: the mainland circle dances
Kalamatianos, named for the Peloponnesian town of Kalamata, is generally considered Greece's best-known folk dance — twelve steps to four bars of music, danced hand-in-hand in a slowly rotating chain, and the dance most Greeks would teach a visitor first. Tsamiko comes from further north, tied historically to the klephts who fought in the 1821 war of independence; it's danced at a deliberately slow, stately tempo that rewards posture and style over speed, with the lead dancer occasionally breaking into a scissor-kick leap.
Pentozali and the Pontian dances: the ones from the edges of Greece
Pentozali is Crete's signature dance, historically a war dance with high jumps said to have been performed before battle — dancers link shoulders in a loosely rotating circle while the lead pair peels off to show more acrobatic footwork. Pontian dances travel further still, coming from Pontus on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia and carried to Greece by refugees after 1922–23; they're danced in an unusually tight, fast, closed circle to the piercing three-string Pontic lyra, a sound and a shape that stand apart from the rest of the evening's repertoire.
Sirtaki: the one everyone expects, and the youngest one there
If one dance defines what most visitors picture when they think of Greek dancing, it's sirtaki — and it's also the newest thing on this list by roughly two thousand years. It was choreographed for the 1964 film Zorba the Greek, blending the old hasapiko butchers' dance with a faster companion dance so that Anthony Quinn, playing Zorba with a real foot injury, could perform something dramatic without the demanding jumps of the older forms. It has since become genuinely popular across Greece in its own right — it just isn't ancient, and a taverna show that says so plainly is doing you a favour.
Why a taverna show doesn't stick to one region
Greece's folk-dance tradition is regional rather than national — a dance from Crete and a dance from the Black Sea coast can look, sound and feel like they come from entirely different countries, because in a meaningful sense their originating cultures did travel very different paths before landing in the same modern nation. A Plaka dinner show built to entertain a mixed room of visitors from all over the world tends to sample across those regions rather than commit to just one, which is why a single evening can move from a solo Asia Minor lament to a fast Cretan circle dance in the space of twenty minutes.
What to actually watch for
If you want to get more out of the show than background noise, watch the formation as much as the footwork: a tight, fast, closed circle with dancers gripping shoulders is very likely a Pontian dance; a slow, open chain holding hands is closer to kalamatianos or tsamiko territory; and a single dancer working alone in a small footprint, seemingly lost in the music, is almost certainly zeibekiko. Recognising the shape tells you roughly which tradition you're watching even before the music or the costume gives it away.
A note on names you might hear used loosely
Some of these dances get used as catch-all terms outside Greece — 'sirtaki' in particular is often used loosely to mean any Greek circle dance, when it's actually one specific, modern choreography. If a menu or a programme note uses a dance name you don't recognise from this list, it's worth asking the staff rather than assuming — regional variants and local names for closely related steps are common, and taverna staff are generally happy to explain what you're watching if you ask between courses.