Maleviziotis Dance

Maleviziotis or Maleviziotikos, is Crete's fastest and most lively dance. It is a jump dance completed in sixteen steps (eight front and eight back). It is danced to a rhythm of a 2/4 metre, accompanied by a violin or lyre with a lute, mandolin or ascomantura in the mountains and 15 syllable verses of a mantinada. Maleviziotis, as its name suggests, is one of the variants of the Jumping dance performed in the usual way in the area of ​​Malevizi, Heraklion, Crete.

Maleviziotis is one of the most important aspects of its dancers' life, cultural identity, history and local culture. The inhabitants of the Malevizi province, as they usually say, "when they dance, everything goes well".

Since 2021, the Municipality of Malevizi, Crete, has started recording a live music history, that of Maleviziotis dance, in order to register it in the National Index of Intangible Cultural Heritage.