ABSTRACT
This article ethnographically reconstructs the sousta as danced during a traditional wedding celebration on the island of Rhodes during the interwar period (1925–1940). I describe how courtship occurring when youth danced was imbued with meaning by the traditional celebration. The wedding ritual and related dance performances reveal the social dynamics connected to courtship and how the sousta played the primary role as signifier of the socially and religiously mediated experience of romantic union.
