EDITOR’S NOTE. Few traits define a nation’s identity better than its dances! When it comes to our identity, we are proud to have among the longest dance heritages on earth! Not only is it rich in form and performance but it is at the center of our definition as Hellenes… We are Hellenes because we dance our 3,000-year-old dances with pride and jest… As long as our youth practices the same, we should not be afraid that our identity will be lost: Nobody can dance our dances as these teenagers unless they feel their “Greekness” deep into their hearts and soul!! Yes, we should address many other issues regarding their education, but we should not doubt their identity – it’s as strong as it was a hundred years ago!
Below are two samples – one from northern Epirus and one from Ikaria. Enjoy!
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Nick, will the Church of Greece (is the Church of Greece?) doing anything regarding the demographic collapse in Greece? Some of the recent figures that have come out are pretty damning. Though I think a decent amount of this is due to “brain drain.”
There’s precedent for the Church reversing demographic decline: Look to the Georgian Patriarchate and more recently there are signs that the same thing is happening in Russia from programs under the Moscow Patriarchate.
There’s no reason the Church of Greece would not be able to do the same.
We all wished that they were more active on this. Unfortunately their reaction to the same-sex marriage bill was rather lukewarm. They had an opportunity to take action but they care more for their salaries and pensions (paid by the State). The biggest mistake the Church made was the exchange of their real estate properties (now worth untold billions) for state-paid salaries.
Also the biggest opportunity Greece lost was in the 1990s after the fall of communism. They could have invited not only Albanians but also all other Orthodox Balkan people or even Russians, Ukrainians and Georgians and others. These are Orthodox and many of them are even genetically related to Greeks as they are around the Black Sea. As you know the Black Sea was the 1st colonization movement of ancient Greeks (the myth of the Golden Fleece and the Argonauts) which started more than 1500 years BC.
Η Ελπίδα μαζί με τις φιλενάδες της γιόρταζε προχθές , δεν είδα καμία νεολαία να της δώσει σημασία.