thumb|Demonstration of Ekista Eskista (Amharic: እስክስታ) is a traditional Amhara cultural dance originated by the Amhara ethnic group in Ethiopia. "Eskista" means "dancing shoulders" in Amharic.
thumb|Demonstration of Ekista Eskista (Amharic: እስክስታ) is a traditional Amhara cultural dance originated by the Amhara ethnic group in Ethiopia. "Eskista" means "dancing shoulders" in Amharic.
Due to the widespread influence of the Amhara people, the dance is performed in almost every corner of the country and has gone viral internationally, becoming a global trend celebrated by diverse audiences. It is enjoyed by men, women, and children. The dance is characterized by its rapid, rhythmic movements of the upper body, particularly the shoulders, but also the chest, head, and neck. Eskista is typically performed to traditional Amhara music, but it is possible to incorporate the style of dance into modern forms of music such as the music played in modern Ethiopian music videos. The complex nature of eskista dancing is what makes it arguably one of the most technical forms of African traditional dance. The dance resembles and lis likely related to the shimshim of the Tigrayan-Tigrinya people in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea as well as the Beja Hadendoa traditional dance.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).