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Tsiftetelli (Greek: τσιφτετέλι, Turkish language: Ciftetelli ) is a Greek dance. Unlike Middle Eastern belly dancing, tsiftetelli is a more "relaxed" dance.

Contents 1 History 2 Tsiftetelli Movements 3 Bahriye Çiftetellisi 4 Video Example 5 See also 6 External links

Tsiftetelli was mainly brought to Greece by the Asia Minor Greeks, who had to leave their home towns and go over to Greece because of a population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Greece was occupied by the Turks for about 400 years (from the early 15th century to the early 19th century) and it was a part of the Ottoman Empire. In the 20’s of the 19th century Greece started an independence war against the Turks and by the middle of the 19th century, a part of Greece (as we know it today) was free and an independent state. But there followed quite some war, until the current Greek State was formed. In that time there were many people of Turkish origin and Moslem religion living in Greece and many people of Greek origin and Greek Orthodox religion living in Turkey. The Greeks that lived on Turkish ground even though had been living there since ancient times, had to leave.

The first Greek colonies at the west coast of Asia Minor were founded about 1000 BC which spread to the Black Sea shore. So there were Greek cities and towns at those areas until 1922 of our time. In that year there was a last big war between Greece and Turkey which ended with a catastrophe for both countries. But for the Greeks the catastrophe was bigger, because quite some Greek cities were destroyed by the Turks. Especially the Greeks of Smyrna (Izmir) were badly assassinated. At the end of that war Greece and Turkey agreed on exchanging their left over populations, except 100.000 Greeks in Constantinople (Istanbul) and a similar amount of Turks in North-eastern Greece and on some Greek Islands.

The population exchanged brought many new problems to the new Greek State. The Greeks that came over from Turkey had lost everything and the State had to take care of them. But the State was poor. That led to a very bad situation for new emigrants. Especially the Greeks from Smyrna suffered the most, mainly because they settled down in the urban areas of Athens and Piraeus. Those Greeks had a very rich musical tradition and they brought it with them to Greece. Their music was a mixture of Greek, Turkish, Armenian and Arabian elements. They developed that tradition further in Greece, mainly in order to remember their roots and to comfort their souls. This musical tradition is the so called “Rembetiko” (some people call it the Greek Blues).

Rembetiko was (and still is) not only a music style but it also includes dances, mainly 3: Zeimbekika, Hassapiko and Tsifteteli. So it was mainly those Greeks of Smyrna who spread Tsiftetelli all over Greece.

But most probably there was bellydance in Greece before that. The ancient Greek women used to dance it for worshiping Aphrodite. There must have been belly dance also through the Greek medieval times.

Nevertheless is Tsiftetelli, as we know it today, brought to Greece by the people of Smyrna and at first it was part of the Rembetiko culture. It developed though through the last 80 years, it got spread all over Greece and it got established as the most popular and most common Greek dance together with Zeimbekia. The Ciftetelli songs today are quite different from the original Rembetiko Tsiftetelli songs. The texts are not as sad, as the ones of the Rembetiko Ciftetelli. The original Ciftetelli texts are very sad, because they reflect the suffering of the people that created them. They mainly talk about poverty, emigration, lost love, desperation etc. The original Tsiftetelli is not a cheerful dance, as many people outside Greece consider it to be.

But the modern Tsiftetelli songs can be very cheerful and funny, even have texts that make no sense some times, but they can also be sad. The music is resembling more and the modern Arabian music. That’s why it is convenient to dance also the Arabian Raks Sharqi on modern Ciftetelli music.

Today Greeks dance Tsiftetelli almost everywhere: At folklore feasts, in Night Clubs, in Bouzoukia Clubs (Greek style Night Clubs), at private parties, at weddings and so on. It is seldom though, that Tsiftetelli is performed by a dancer. There are very few places (mainly some Bouzoukia Clubs and some tourist restaurants) were Tsiftetelli is performed by a dancer and in most of those cases the dancer dances not the common Tsiftetelli but either Arabic Raks Sharqi (on Ciftetelli music) or American style belly dancing.

Tsiftetelli is mainly a social dance. People dance it together and mostly in pairs (man and woman, woman and woman, man and man, mainly though man and woman). They improvise together, they communicate through the dance. And if a man and woman dance together they even flirt through the dance. This is one of the reasons why Tsiftetelli is immense popular also today and it will probably never stop being popular. It is the expression of the soul and the game of love.

The movements of Tsiftetelli are a lot simpler than the movements of the Arabic Raks Sharqi. But this doesn’t mean that Tsiftetelli is easier to dance. For non-Greeks it may even be more difficult to dance then Raks Sharqi, because it has no rules and it depends very much on the feeling for the music. In order to dance Tsiftetelli right, one has to become very aware of the Greek Tsiftetelli music. This is especially important for the traditional (Rembetiko) Tsiftetelli.

As it is a social dance, nobody plays cymbals while dancing it. Only in the seldom cases, when a professional dancers perform Tsiftetelli, then they play cymbals. Probably the Rembetiko Tsiftetelli dancers who had come from Smyrna, played cymbals, but the more Tsiftetelli spread all over Greece, the less common it became to play cymbals.

The çiftetelli appears in many variations in the folk music of Western and Central Turkey. The different compositions based on this popular rhythm each have their own name, combined with the generic name çiftetelli Çiftetelli means "with one pair of strings" and is named after the two-string baglama an which this dance tune was originally performed. Gypsies like to play the çiftetelli at the celebratians of non-Gypsies, who they call Baro-Gaci (non-self). Çiftetelli is the dance music most commanty used by the female Gypsy (Çengi) and Oriental (Dansöz) dancers.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Rx14hVdNDG8

• List of dances
• List of dances sorted by ethnicity
• Music of Turkey
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• Information about Ciftetelli
• Bouzouki / Ciftetelli ( D ) (youtube)

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