Hasapiko

What is Hasapiko?

Hasapiko is a Greek folk dance whose very name means the butcher's dance, a tip of the hat to the Constantinople trade guild that first stepped it out. It works at two speeds. Taken slowly it is the hasapikos varys, the heavy hasapiko, moving in 4/4 time; sped up it becomes the grigoro hasapiko, or hasaposerviko, in 2/4. Some dancers keep the old Byzantine title makellarikos horos, which likewise means the butcher's dance, just for the quick kind. Many people outside Greece know its steps at one remove: sirtaki, the routine most often shown as Greek dancing, is a newer choreographed work assembled from hasapiko material.

Where does Hasapiko come from?

The dance took shape in Constantinople during the Middle Ages. Its first dancers belonged to the city's guild of Greek butchers, who borrowed it from the army of Byzantium and turned the drill of fighting with swords into a danced display. Under the Byzantines it answered to the name makellarikos horos, which likewise means the butcher's dance. The very word hasapiko points the same way: it joins the Ottoman Turkish kassâb, meaning butcher, to a Greek ending.

The music of Hasapiko

The dance runs to two distinct clocks. The slow kind, the hasapikos varys, whose name means heavy, moves in 4/4 time, four even beats to the bar. The quick kind answers in 2/4 and carries two names: grigoro hasapiko, literally the quick hasapiko, and hasaposerviko. Some dancers use the old title makellarikos horos for this brisk kind alone, keeping it off the slow one.

Styles of Hasapiko

Two tempos divide the repertoire. The hasapikos varys, literally the heavy hasapiko, takes 4/4 time and a measured pace. Its quick counterpart runs in 2/4 and answers to two names, grigoro hasapiko and hasaposerviko, though usage varies: some Greeks save makellarikos horos, the Byzantine-era title, for the fast kind only. Beyond these, sirtaki stands as a modern offshoot, a newly choreographed dance rather than a handed-down one, assembled from hasapiko material and now a staple of Greek dancing.

What Hasapiko means

Few dances carry their working-class badge so plainly: butcher stands in the very name, in Greek and in the Ottoman Turkish word behind it. The form outlived the guild world and the empire that named it, keeping a Byzantine nickname alive in modern Greek speech. Its steps also travelled into sirtaki, today one of Greece's signature dances, so that hasapiko survives both in its own right and inside the newer routine built upon it.

Questions people ask about Hasapiko

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle

• Hasapiko on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data
• Videos of Hasapiko on YouTubeSearch results, not chosen by Ghungroo