March 20, 2015
 

Dear Dancing Sisters!                    

Today is the Spring Equinox, the New Moon and a partial Solar Eclipse. This rare configuration of events will not happen again for over two hundred years.

I invite you to welcome and celebrate the sacred themes of Balance and New Beginnings on this auspicious day, themes which traditional dances can always help us invoke and integrate.

As you are friends of Greek dance, now is a particularly good time to send positive thoughts to our beloved Greece, and I have two suggestions for practical ways we can do that.

Firstly, I invite you to show your support in the Greek humanitarian crisis by signing this Avaaz petition.
It asks for for medical care to be exempted from the drastic cuts to social services demanded of Greece by its creditors, including the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.

Mass closures of hospitals and clinics and mass firings of doctors, nurses and essential medical staff have led to a sharp rise in infant mortality rates as well as many illnesses. Since medical care is tied to employment in Greece, the quarter of the adult population which has been thrown out of work now has no access to health care.

'Austerity' has become a matter of life and death here.  This petition is particularly important because it originated in Germany and acknowledges Germany's complicity in the Greek humanitarian crisis through the insistence on brutal austerity measures which have caused untold suffering to the innocent and the poor. 

Your solidarity now means so much. At a time when the banking industry shows not even the pretence of concern for the high human cost of the pursuit of profit – and make no mistake, the Greek 'debt problem' is generating enormous profits for foreign speculators – and governments almost universally support the banks over citizens, it is up to individuals to demonstrate our sense of shared humanity and common destiny.

In this way we can invite balance once again into politics and economics, and help nurture the new hope and new beginning which the new Greek government has dared to initiate.

Second, I invite you to celebrate life with Greek dance this year! There are many opportunities which I warmly recommend, including my own workshops of Women's Ritual Dances on Lesvos, June 10-17, 2015, at the Milelja Inselgarten Centre, and in Mani, August 30-September 6, 2015, at the Mani-Sonnenlink Bio-Hotel and Retreat Centre. Both these events are for women only. I also recommend seminars offered by my friends Babis Almpantis (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Kyriakos Moïsidis (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

Best of all, you can also have an authentic and unique Greek dance experience this summer in the UK, as we have invited Dimitris Barbaroussis to be the guest teacher at the Findhorn Festival of Sacred Dance, Music and Song. See sidebar for more information about Dimitris and the Findhorn Festival, now entering its 29th year!

Along with Dimitris, teachers at this year's Festival include: Peter Vallance (Sacred Dance), Susanne Anders Bartholomäi (TanzMeditation), Barbara Swetina (Sacred Song), Bill Henderson (Scratch Orchestra), and other teachers and musicians. I will be sharing Armenian Lyrical Dances and other Armenian, Greek & Balkan ritual dances, with live music from Kostantis Kourmadias. For information on bursaries and special non-residential prices, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

As you will know if you have danced with me, traditional
women’s ritual dances are among the oldest circle dances. Simple yet profound, they celebrate the sacredness of the natural world, and help us reconnect with ourselves, each other and the cycles of life.  Coming from cultures which have survived many times of transition, these dances open doors to ancient wisdom and joyfully guide us through our own life changes. Strengthening our own capacity for creative change gives us the courage to show solidarity with those friends who need our support at this time.

On the holy day of the Spring Equinox, I invite you to send your loving prayers for balance and new beginnings  to our brothers and sisters in Greece - and everywhere else in the world where suffering is being deliberately permitted, not to say provoked. We've seen that we can't count on European governments to do the right thing to relieve suffering when profits stand to be made. It is we ordinary people who must show that we care about community, hospitality, and mutual support – the highest traditional values, which have been Greek treasures since ancient times.

For more thoughts along these lines, check out my recent articles, All We Are Saying Is Give Greece a Chance, on the Feminism and Religion website, and Values of Community and Sustainability: Surviving Austerity in Greece on my blog Greek Fire.

For information about any of my workshops in Greece, Europe or the UK, please visit my website or email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.