Dances from Oltenia Part Two

You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.
Merce Cunningham

At the Friday night and Sunday night dances there are a number of dances from the Romanian region of Oltenia in our repertoire. They tend to be fast, with lots of crossing, stamps, and grapevines.

One that we're working on is Hora Lui Chisar. The music is delightful with caval, cimbalom and panpipes.



The next dance is Vulpita.  It translates to "little fox" in English. We have been doing this one a long time.  It's short, only a minute and a half but really fast.



This is a dance I would like to introduce to the Sunday night group.  One of the Friday night leaders taught it a few years ago.  The one thing I remember about Hora Spoitorilor is that the first figure is in the form of a square.



Another favorite of ours is Rustemul. This is the tune that we use, although there are others out there. There are also other versions of Rustemul as well; you can see an example in Dances From Oltenia (part one).



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Dances from Oltenia

Variations on the Romanian Folk Dance Trei Pazeste

Balkan Dances That Are Often Confused Part Nine: Cimpoi and Sirba din Cimpoi


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

Horo for the Dead

Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life. – Albert Einstein

On Orthodox Easter Monday, the Bulgarian National Radio published a post on a Vlach custom: The Horo for the Dead.

It is done in the Northwest (Severnjasko) region of Bulgaria, a place where the population is aging and dying and few young people are born to replace them. The people in this region get together at the Albotin monastery or in the town square with pictures of relatives who died since the previous Easter. Unfortunately, the custom may disappear because the authorities don't support it.

Their way of mourning the dead is to dance with them in spirit. Each dancer holds the picture of a deceased relative. Most of the people in the line are elderly, although there are a few young people. They dance a slow pravo horo, accompanied either by an accordion or brass band.

I found this post shortly I had been notified of the death of a relative in Puerto Rico.  She was my aunt, who passed on at the ripe old age of 88.

This custom reminds me of the Mexican Day of the Dead, when relatives visit cemeteries and bring food and drink for themselves and the spirits of the departed.  They decorate the graves and celebrate the lives of their deceased friends and relatives.

The Sunday night group used to have a memorial dance in June. Tom Pixton (who is fantastic on the accordion), played requests from the group, usually a favorite dance in memory of a member who had passed on.  Our group is aging and few young people are replacing them. In that respect we are much like the northwest region of Bulgaria.

Here is the video (entirely in Bulgarian). It begins with a church service. It is worth watching in its entirety; but if you're limited on time the dancing (with accordion and drum accompaniment) starts at 11:34.  The dance in the town square, accompanied by a brass band starts at 15:00.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Dancing Across Bulgaria: The Pravo and Regional Folk Dance Styles


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

Bring on the Border Crossers, Part Two

We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth.
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

There are dances that have elements in common, even though they are from different countries.  Alunelul from (Romania) is a very popular children's dance.. Here the grown-ups have taken over. Video #1 includes instruction and a translation of the lyrics.  This version is instrumental; for the vocal check out Video #2.



Vocal version with sing-along lyrics:



Video #3 is Podaraki, a dance from Greece with similar steps.  The music sounds more like something from Bulgarian Dobrudja than Greece.  Must be the accordion and the stamping.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Bring on the Border Crossers!

Variations on the Romanian Folk Dance Alunelul

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