Abstract
In this chapter Shay discusses Zorba dancing that became popularized in Greece and other places by the film Zorba the Greek, starring Anthony Quinn. The author asserts that Zorba’s Dance or the syrtaki have had a place in the construction of modern Greek male identity. In order to pursue this assertion, Shay looks at what constitutes masculinity in Greece, and the West in general, to shed light on an under-theorized area in gender and sexuality studies. He contrasts masculinity and homosexuality, and attempts to unlink the connection between homosexuality and effeminacy. He then demonstrates that in performing Zorba’s dance, men dance for one another in a show of power and prestige. He concludes the chapter by provideing a detailed history of the dance’s origins.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Ameri, Azardokht. 2003. Raqs-e amiyaneh-ye shahri va raqs-e mowsum be klasik-e Irani: barresi-ye tatbiqi dar howze-ye Tehran. (Popular urban dance and so-called classical dance: A comparative investigation in the Tehran region). Mahoor Music Quarterly 2(Summer): 51–74.
And, Metin. 1959. Dances of Anatolian Turkey, New York: Dance Perspectives, Summer 1959, No. 3.
Barthes, Roland. 1972. Mythologies. New York: Noonday Press.
Berco, Cristian. 2007. Sexual hierarchies, public status: Men, sodomy, and society in Spain’s golden age. Toronto/Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.
Bjelić, Dušan, and Obrad Savić (eds.). 2002. Balkan as metaphor: Between globalization and fragmentation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bristow, James. 2000. Effeminacy. In Gay histories and cultures, ed. George E. Haggerty, 268–270. New York/London: Garland Publishers.
Brittan, Arthur. 1989. Masculinity and power. New York: Blackwell.
Brod, Harry, and Michael Kaufman (eds.). 1994. Theorizing masculinities. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Brown, Peter. 1990. The body and society: Men, women, and sexual renunciation in early Christianity. London: Faber and Faber.
Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York/London: Routledge.
Butterworth, Katherine, and Sara Schneider (eds.). 1975. Rebetika: Songs from the old Greek underworld. Athens: Komboloi.
Castro, Donald. 1998. Carlos Gardel and the Argentine tango: The lyric of social irresponsibility and male inadequacy. In The passion of music and dance: Body, gender and sexuality, ed. William Washabaugh, 63–78. Oxford/New York: Berg.
Chapman-Sutton, Kelsey. 2012. Masculinity and emasculation: Manhood in mainstream American culture and the social construction of the male. Unpublished essay.
Chauncey, George. 1994. Gay New York: Gender, urban culture, and the making of the gay male world, 1890–1940. New York: Basic Books.
Clarke, John R. 1998. Looking at lovemaking: Constructions of sexuality in Roman art 100 B.C.–A.D. 250. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Cleminson, Richard, and Francisco Vázquez García. 2007. ‘Los invisibles’: A history of male homosexuality in Spain, 1850–1940. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Clogg, Richard. 1992. A concise history of Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cowan, Jane K. 1990. Dance and the body politic in northern Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Demirsipahi, Cemil. 1975. Türk Halk Oyunları. Türkiye Iş Bankası Kültür Yayınları.
Desmond, Jane C. 1999. Staging tourism: Bodies on display from Waikiki to Sea World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fisher, Jennifer, and Anthony Shay (eds.). 2009. Introduction. In When men dance: Choreographing masculinities across borders, 3–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gagnon, John H., and William Simon. 1973. Sexual conduct: The social sources of human sexuality. London: Hutchinson.
Gilmore, David D. 1987. Honor and shame and the unity of the Mediterranean. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.
——— 1990. Manhood in the making: Cultural concepts of masculinity. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Girman, Chris. 2004. Mucho macho: Seduction, desire, and the homoerotic lives of Latin men. New York/London: Harrington Park Press.
Gleason, Maud. 1995. Making men: Sophists and self-presentation in ancient Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gore, Georgiana, and Maria Koutsouba. 1992. ‘Airport art’ in a sociopolitical perspective: The case of the Greek dance groups of Plaka. In Proceedings of the 17th symposium of the Study Group on Ethnochoreology, Nafplion, July 2–10, 29–34.
Gunderson, Erik. 2000. Staging masculinity: The rhetoric of performance in the Roman world. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Gutterman, David S. 2001. Postmodernism and the interrogation of masculinity. In The masculinities reader, ed. Stephen M. Whitehead and Frank J. Barrett, 66–71. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Halperin, David M. 1990. One hundred years of homosexuality: And other essays on Greek love. New York/London: Routledge.
Halperin, ——— 2002. How to do the history of homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hart, Yvonne. 1996. Traditional dance in Greek culture. Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies.
Hearn, Jeff, and David L. Collinson. 1994. Theorizing unities and differences between men and between masculinities. In Theorizing masculinities, ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman, 97–118. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Herzfeld, Michael. 2005. Cultural intimacy: Social poetics in the nation-state. New York/London: Routledge.
Holst-Warhaft, Gail. 1998. Rebetika: The double-descended deep songs of Greece. In The passion of music and dance: Body, gender and sexuality, ed. William Washabaugh, 111–126. Oxford/New York: Berg.
———. 2003. The female dervish and other shady ladies of the Rebetika. In Music and gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean, ed. Tullia Magrini, 169–194. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hubbard, Thomas K. 2003. Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A sourcebook of basic documents. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Jankowiak, William. 1995. Introduction. In Romantic passion: A universal experience? ed. William Jankowiak, 1–19. New York: Columbia University Press.
Jordan, John Bruce. 2009. Pricked dances: The spectator, dance and masculinity in early 18th-century England. In When men dance: Choreographing masculinities across borders, ed. Jennifer Fisher and Anthony Shay, 1818–213. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Karayanni, Stavros Stavrou. 2005. Dismissal veiling desire: Kuchuk Hanem and imperial masculinty. In Belly dance: Orientalism, transnationalism, and harem fantasy, ed. Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young, 114–144. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers.
Loizos, Peter, and Evthymios Papataxiarchis (eds.). 1991. Contested identities: Gender and kinship in modern Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mosse, George L. 1996. The image of man: The creation of modern masculinity. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Murray, Stephen O. 2000. Homosexualities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 2005. Women with mustaches and men without beards: Gender and sexual anxieties of Iranian modernity. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Őzbiligin, Mehmet O. 1998. Differences of creative processes in local communities on stage with the example of Aegean Region Zeybek dances. In The proceedings of the 20th symposium of the Study Group on Ethnochoreology. CD Rom.
Öztürkmen, Arzu. 2002. Dance and identity in Turkey. In The Garland encyclopedia of world music, vol. 6, the Middle East, ed. Virginia Danielson, Scott Marcus, and Dwight Reynolds, 811–818. New York/London: Routledge.
, ———. 2014. New identities for old. Forthcoming.
Petrides, Ted. 1975. In Rebetika: Songs from the old Greek underworld, ed. Katherine Butterworth, and Sara Schneider, 27–33. Athens: Komboloi.
Petropoulos, Elias. 1975. Rebetika. In Rebetika: Songs from the old Greek underworld, ed. Katherine Butterworth and Sara Schneider, 11–15. Athens: Komboloi.
Plato. 1993. Plato’s symposium. Trans. Seth Benardete. With commentaries by Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reinhard, Ursula. 2002. Turkey: An overview. In The Garland encyclopedia of world music, vol. 6, the Middle East, ed. Virginia Danielson, Scott Marcus, and Dwight Reynolds, 759–777. New York/London: Routledge.
Rocke, Michael. 1996. Forbidden friendships: Homosexuality and male culture in Renaissance Florence. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Ruggiero, Guido. 1985. The boundaries of Eros: Sex crime and sexuality in Renaissance Venice. Oxford/London: Oxford University Press.
Savigliano, Marta. 1995. Tango and the political economy of passion. Boulder: Westview Press.
Shay, Anthony. 2005. The male dancer in the Middle East and Central Asia. In Belly dance: Orientalism, transnationalism, and harem fantasy, ed. Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young, 51–84. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers.
———. 2014. The dangerous lives of public performers: Dancing, sex and entertainment in the Islamic world. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Skinner, Marilyn B. 2005. Sexuality in Greek and Roman culture. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Sluiter, Ineke, and Ralph M. Rosen. 2003. General introduction. In Andreia: Studies in manliness and courage in classical antiquity, ed. Ralph M. Rosen and Ineke Sluiter, 1–24. Leiden: Brill.
Steingress, Gerhard. 1998. Social theory and the comparative history of flamenco, tango, and rebetika. In The passion of music and dance: Body, gender and sexuality, 151–171. Oxford/New York: Berg.
Talvacchia, Bette. 1999. Taking positions: On the erotic in renaissance culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tapinc, Huseyn. 1992. Masculinity, femininity, and Turkish male homosexuality. In Modern homosexualities: Fragments of lesbian and gay experience, ed. Ken Plummer, 39–49. London/New York: Routledge.
Taylor, Julie. 1998. Paper tangos. Durham: Duke University Press.
Tobin, Jeffrey. 1998. Tango and the scandal of homosocial desire. In The passion of music and dance: Body, gender and sexuality, 79–102. Oxford/New York: Berg.
Todorova, Maria. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. New York: Oxford University Press.
Urry, John. 2002. The tourist gaze, 2nd ed. London: Sage.
Vance, Carol S. 2005. Anthropology rediscovers sexuality: A theoretical comment. In Same-sex cultures and sexualities: An anthropological reader, ed. Jennifer Robertson, 1–11. London: Blackwell.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. 1986. The black hunter: Forms of thought and forms of society in the Greek world. Trans. Andrew Szegedy-Maszak. Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Washabaugh, William. 1998. Introduction: Music, dance, and the politics of passion. In The passion of music and dance: Body, gender and sexuality, ed. William Washabaugh, 1–26. Oxford/New York: Berg.
Wells, Christopher. 2015 Forthcoming.
Williams, Dyfri. 2006. The Warren Cup. London: Brittish Museum.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Shay, A. (2016). Chapter 2 “Breaking Plates on the Plaka”: Zorba Dancing. In: Ethno Identity Dance for Sex, Fun and Profit. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59318-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59318-4_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59317-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59318-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)