John Hartford
Kolo is a dance from the countries which used to be part of Yugoslavia: Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. The literal translation of the word is "wheel" and kolo is often danced in a circle, but not always. According to a tweet from UNESCO: "Kolo, traditional folk dance just inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Congratulations, #Serbia!"
Today's post features two kolo videos from Serbia and one from Canada.
Video #1 is a group of young people dancing in the street in Belgrade, Serbia. The group's name is Krsmanac. They perform a medley of dances that people who folk dance regularly will recognize. Two of them are U Šest and Čačak.
Video #2 took place during a halftime show at a basketball game in Toronto, Canada. Skip the intro and start at 1:00. The dance that begins the medley resembles Bulgarian rachenitsa, apple-apple-pineapple, in 7/16 time. Čačak begins at 4:14.
Video #3 is Malo Kolo (small circle dance) from Banat, from a festival that took place in Novi Sad in 2011. This dance is anything but small and it is not to be confused with another dance with the same name from Croatia. This is a large group dressed in elaborate embroidered costumes. Check out the small circle in the middle of the crowd at 4:00.
If you enjoyed this you may also like:
The "Flavors" of Serbian Kolo
The "Flavors" of Serbian Cacak
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
