Title:
ARE SERGIANI DANCES FEMALE BYZANTINE DANCES? COMMON FEATURES IN DIFFERENT PERIODS

Authors:
Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Abstract:
One of the main concerns in the study and the research of dance is whether today’s dances are the continuation or the result of ancient or even recent dances and that there is perpetual performance of these dances. Our assumptions are based on secondary sources, and in various depictions and pictures that represent dance images. However, in order to draw safer and scientific conclusions maybe we should include other criteria as for example the common structure or the common components of dances depicted with each specific traditional dance. The aim of this study is to lay out these common components and the context as well, of the female Byzantine dances, and of the Sergiani dances in Thessaly (Karagounides ethnic group), in order to show if there is any connection between these two. The collection of data was based on the principles of the ethnographic research as it is applied in the case of dance and comes from primary (fieldwork research) and secondary (archival ethnographic and historical research) sources. In conclusion, it can be concluded that the way of dancing between these two cases is common, and maybe Sergiani dances constitute an evolution, a continuation of the female Byzantine dances.

Keywords:
history, visual anthropology, component elements of dance, Thessaly, Karagounides

DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.37500/IJESSR.2021.4324