A Sense of Déjà Vu

It often happens that when you look at familiar things through someone else's eyes you see them as you have never seen them before.
John Mole

Today's post shows how the same music can be used for different dances. The musical arrangements are different but the tunes are similar. You get a sense of déjà vu.

Momino Horo  (Young Women's Dance) was featured on this blog about two years ago. Video #1 is the original, arranged by Yves Moreau using dance steps typical to the region of Lom in northwest Bulgaria. In Video #1, Yves also leads the dance.

Momino Horo is a "hybrid" dance.  From the beginning of the video until 2:07, the music sounds more Middle Eastern or Macedonian than Bulgarian. There are lesnoto steps that you usually see in dances from southwestern Bulgaria or Macedonia. After 2:07, the dance becomes pure Vlach, with stamps, shouts and the "penguin sway" step, also common to dances from Romania.

Pay attention to the music from 2:07 until the end, because you will hear it again in Video #2.



Video #2 is Vlashko Horo (not the one we know from Yves Moreau) that uses the same tune as Video #1 with different steps (recognizable as Vlach). Listen carefully at 0:13.

The group is a dance club from Pleven, Bulgaria.



Kasapsko Horo is another dance from northern Bulgaria.  It's not as fast as the dance in Video #2 but you can see the Vlach origins here, too.  The dancers do this slide from side to side that is common to dances in northwestern Bulgaria and southwestern Romania.  You'll see it at 0:53.

By the way this can be filed under Balkan Dances that are Often Confused because there is a Kasapsko Oro from Macedonia, and a different version of Kasapsko Horo from the Pirin region of Bulgaria.  Kasapsko is a butcher dance: the word has its origins in the Turkish word "kasap".



The music from the dance Sitno Vlashko sounds familiar. Why?  It's the tune from Kasapsko Horo. This is modern music in a modern setting, a shopping mall in Bulgaria.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Balkan Dances that are Often Confused (the series)

Dancing Through the Alphabet: Letter M

Variations on a Vlaško Theme

The Butcher's Dance in Balkan Folklore


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