This amazing footage… At a 2009 Haris Alexiou concert at the Roman Odeion of Herodes Atticus , a Greek GI jumps on stage to dance to the “Zebekiko Tes Eudokias,” a legendary Manos Loizos composition from a film, I think, of the same name. I don’t even know where to start with this piece. I’m posting it now and maybe will come back to it later. He’s gorgeous and a beautiful dancer and his brazen confidence and impulsiveness are deeply Greek — and she too, of course, is extraordinarily impressive woman. And the gender semiotics of the scene are sort of unfathomable really and should just be watched. The zebekiko, of course (see video in previous post: “The last bouzoukia in Astoria” — a video by yours truly), is never a couple dance; it’s quintessentially solipsistic and all about a particularly male loneliness, yet at first there’s an extended moment when he, a soldier — and one of Alexiou’s classic numbers, by Loizos also and lyrics by Manoles Rasoules (which I wouldn’t have imagined) is about a lonely soldier — actually dances it to her… In homage practically, and she, Haris Alexiou, being the reigning Queen Mother and Earth Goddess of Greek popular music for some forty years now…the whole thing is just…I dunno… Just, just watch it.
Because, of course, then, she does pull back and leaves him to his solitude.
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Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 