Two Bay Area Balkan bands share our stage in a night of very live and lively Eastern European and Greek dance music. Both the Helladelics and Panacea boast instrumental masters who have dedicated their lives to this music and to making sure listeners and dancers reach the ecstatic state.

Tonight sadly marks the Helladelics’ farewell performance at Ashkenaz. The four bandmembers have been fixtures on the Bay Area Balkan music scene: soulful clarinetist Mary Farris, laouto strummer extraordinaire Tom Farris, Gari Hegedus on rippling violin and oud, and Michele Simon with her velvet voice and percolating percussion. Together they create richness and grit, low gears and deep grooves, capturing the rocky valleys of Greece and the blue Mediterranean. Their recent CD “Underdrive” is a delectable collection of mostly Greek, mostly traditional dance and trance tunes, with captivating melodies, driving rhythms, and passionate improvisations. They dig into the hypnotic, bluesy material from the Epirus region of northwestern Greece, upbeat dance tunes from Thrace, softly lilting songs of the islands, and the odd meters of Macedonia, as well as tastes of Armenia and Turkey.

Panacea returns with its stirring Eastern European and Roma-Balkan dance mix. This all-star quintet came together in the ’90s to play implausibly demanding pan-European rhythms, the kind that drive dancers to ecstasy, and weave in some vocal harmonies. These masters of odd meters and exotic tunings deliver performances marked with humor and considerable abandon. Panacea features accordion doyenne Nada Lewis (featured in the 2012 West Coast Accordion Babes calendar), joined by santour player Robin Petrie (from such bands as Carnahan and Petrie and Party of Seven), Shira Kammen (founder of Ensemble Alcatraz and music director of the Revels) on violin, Mark Bell (Helm) on percussion, and vocalist Bon Singer (founding director of Kitka).