Saturday, October 25, 2014

Serbian Folk Dance Around the World

The world's most famous and popular language is music.
Psy

What I like about the Universe of YouTube is that you can travel around the world without leaving your home. This is especially good during the fall and winter when it is sometimes too cold to venture outside.

Today's post features Serbian folk dance videos from the following countries: the United States, Canada, Israel, China and of course, Serbia!

Video #1 is from the United States. It took place at a festival in Sacramento, California and includes four dances: Groznica, Prekid, Treskavac, and Cicino from central Serbia.  The performers are the Asna Kolo Ensemble.

Their version of Prekid Kolo is different from the one done by recreational folk dancers, also known as "Kolo Interruptus."



Many Serbs emigrated to Canada, which is even colder than New England :) Folk dancing generates heat and is an excellent remedy for winter depression.  (Have you ever been to a dance in the middle of winter and watch people turn on the fans and open the windows?)

The group, Kolo, from Hamilton, Ontario performs at halftime during a basketball game. One of my daughters played basketball in high school, and the most annoying thing was that damned buzzer at the end of every quarter.

This is one of the best halftime shows I've seen. 

The dancers perform Vransko Polje, from the region of Vranje. Vranje is in southern Serbia near the borders of the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria.



If you are a regular reader of The Alien Diaries, you will recognize this group, Dunav from Jerusalem in Israel. The lady on the right, Mika, has a kolo named after her. It was created from two Serbian dances:  Liljano Kolo and  Kolo iz Dubrave.  It must be really cool to be named after a dance :)



This Chinese "Bonding Folk Dance Class" has been featured on this blog many times. Here they perform the very popular Popovicanka.



The final video in this post is a performance from the group Akud Branko Krsmanovic.  They are from the capital of  Serbia, Belgrade, and do a medley of dances from the region of Ĺ umadija. I recognized Moravac (at 2:49) and Cacak  (at 4:32). If anyone out there can tell me the names of the other dances in this medley it would be very much appreciated.

If you can ignore the chatter in the background, this is a very good video. 



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

The "Flavors" of Serbian Kolo

The "Flavors of Serbian Cacak"

Folk Ensembles Named After Dances

The Alien Diaries will be taking a break next week; look for the next post sometime in early November.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

No comments:

Post a Comment