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31 / 03 / 2025

The Senior Dancers of Sydney’s Pontoxeniteas NSW were special guests at this year’s Assyrian New Year festival in western Sydney on Sunday, March 30.

Amongst those who enjoyed their performance were Federal Opposition Leader the Hon Peter Dutton MP and NSW Premier Chris Minns.

Led by Pontoxeniteas NSW President Maria Anthony and Dance Instructor Christina Iwannidou, they performed a set of traditional dances from the Black Sea region, accompanied by Kosta Papoulidis on lyra and Peter Tsenkas on daouli (drum). 

The Pontian dancers later joined their Assyrian hosts in performing a traditional Assyrian folk dance, a powerful show of solidarity and multiculturalism in action.

Assyrians and Hellenes have a relationship going back millennia, with its origins lost in time. Hellas and Cyprus have served as safe havens for the Christian Assyrian people, especially during the times of their genocides in the early 1900s. Since the Gulf Wars of the 1990s, thousands of Assyrians have fled their homeland in modern Iraq and Syria, temporarily settling in Hellas and Cyprus before arriving as refugees in Australia.