“Teach me to dance, will you?” Basil asks Zorba. Towards the end of the film Zorba the Greek, after the uptight and English-bred Basil’s dreams of running a lignite mine on his father’s land have been crushed, after he has stood by in helpless inaction as his lover’s throat is cut in front of his eyes, he decides to try this dancing thing that seems to so affect his friend. Zorba, who has been mulling over his own disasters, jumps up, throws off his jacket, and begins to teach Basil the steps of a version of the Greek folk dance “hasapiko,” the now-famous “sirtaki.”

The film ends with the two men cackling and dancing joyously through their pain on a deserted Cretan beach. After all, as Zorba has already said earlier in the film, “When a man is full, what can he do? Burst?” No, he dances.

Several decades later, the words of Zorba continue to hold true on the third floor of a dingy apartment building in the busy Metaxourgeio area of Athens.

Against a backdrop of African drums and a map of West Africa (the dance classes take place at a percussion school), dance tutors Panayiotis Petropoulos and Katerina Kikaki of Antipatima teach Greek folk dances to a varied group of thirty and forty-somethings. The lesson structure is loose. Students trickle in between 19:30 and 21:00, joining in some dances, sitting out others. One student brings in two liters of homemade wine and cheese pies for his name day; a break is called, and people crowd the small waiting area, drinking and chatting before going back to the lesson.