Zorba's Dance

The music that the world now hears as timeless Greek folk dance was written for a film. Mikis Theodorakis composed "Zorba's Dance" for Michael Cacoyannis's 1964 Zorba the Greek, in which Anthony Quinn plays an earthy Cretan peasant and Alan Bates the buttoned-up young writer he befriends. Theodorakis drew on rebetiko, the Greek urban music built on Turkish makam modes, and adapted the theme from a traditional syrtos from Chania by the Cretan musician Giorgis Koutsourelis, chosen for its energetic rhythm. On the soundtrack it is played on a bouzouki. The dance was invented too. Quinn's sirtaki, filmed on the beach at Stavros on Crete, was created specifically for the film rather than taken from tradition, combining a slow hasapiko with a faster hasaposerviko. In the closing scene the two men dance it together on the deserted shore after their scheme has collapsed. The film was a hit, the soundtrack single topped the charts in Austria and Belgium in 1965, and versions by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Dalida and many others followed the same year. Then, for a time, Greeks could not legally enjoy it at home: like other works by Theodorakis, the music was banned by the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. The ban did not hold back its future. The sirtaki became a popular Greek dance, and the tune is now a staple of Greek tavernas, a film score that turned into a tradition.