Three Variations on a Bulgarian Folk Dance: Chetvorno Horo

Hang on to those belts, dancers, today's dance is Chetvorno Horo!

On the Universe of Youtube, I found several video examples on how different "villages" interpret the dance.

Chetvorno is from the Shope folklore region of Bulgaria  (western region near the capital, Sofia). The time signature is 7/8 (pineapple-apple-apple).This dance has traveled around the world and undergone several incarnations, from easy to moderately difficult. You will see them here.

Although there are other dances in 7/8 (or 7/16 depending on the speed) such as the rachenitsa and the lesnoto; the accents fall on different beats and each one has a distinct feel.  Read the posts Dancing in Sevens (part one and part two) to find out more. You can find the links to them at the bottom of this page.

Tbe first video shows a group dancing in a shopping mall.   This version is the least complicated and uses the basic steps (hop-step-step in the first part and one two three in the crossovers, also called pas-de-basques.  Where they got that fancy French name for that step, I don't know.



Version two is slightly more complicated and introduces the slide step as well as the basic ones. This video comes from the series "Teach Yourself Bulgarian Folk Dance" and features professional dancers in elaborate embroidered costumes.  There is also step by step teaching video (pun intended) which is posted on YouTube.



The next version of Chetvorno has a more complicated choreography; if you look at the dance notes you will see five distinct figures.  People in international folk dance groups seem to thrive on complex dances and go to workshops to learn them.  This one is from the village of Bistritsa, and the person demonstrating the dance is from the "village" of Haifa, Israel.



Kolokoalition, a group from the United States, has many dances posted on YouTube. In this video, they dance Chetvorno to live music, the same version and music as shown in the previous video.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Dancing in Sevens  Part One and Part Two

Two Variations on the Bulgarian Folk Dance Kraj Dunavsko Horo

The "Flavors" of Bulgarian Rachenitsa Part One and Part Two


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

Dancing in Sevens Part 2: The 7/16 Rhythm in Macedonian Folk Music

Life is about rhythm. We vibrate, our hearts are pumping blood, we are a rhythm machine, that's what we are.
Mickey Hart

Asymmetric rhythms are extremely common in Balkan music. The Bulgarians, especially are best known for music in odd time signatures such as 7/16. There is variation within that rhythm...it all depends on which beats have the accent.

Today we will explore the 7/16 rhythm in Macedonian folk music.

The first is Sitna Lisa (3-2-2 or galloping-apple-apple). I especially enjoy the brass band orchestration in this video; it's loud enough to wake the dead. The Bulgarian equivalent of this rhythm can be found in the dance Chetvorno Horo.



Most folk dancers in North America are familiar with this version of Sitna Lisa: played on tupan (drum), tambura (a string instrument similar to a lute), gaida (bagpipe) and kaval (flute).  There is something about this music that sounds uniquely Macedonian, especially the long introduction on the gaida and the kaval solo. It's very beautifully done.



The next example of the 7/16 rhythm in Macedonian folk music is the song Zurli Trestat na Sred Selo.  (I couldn't find an English translation; if anyone out there can translate the lyrics, please post  in the "comments" section). This time the accent is a little different: it's 2-3-3 (apple-apple-galloping).  The Bulgarian equivalent is rachenitsa.



These young people perform the dance that goes with the song.  Looks like rachenitsa, doesn't it?



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Dancing in Sevens (part one) This post explores the folk dances lesnoto, chetvorno and rachenitsa.

The "Flavors" of Bulgarian Rachenitsa, parts one and two.

 The "Flavors" of Daichovo Horo. Daichovo is a folk dance from Bulgaria with nine beats to the measure.


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

Dancing in Sevens....

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.—Leo Tolstoy

Remember when you took fractions in school?

Some of us found them easy while others found them difficult to comprehenend. It all depended if you were mathematically minded or not.

Fractions are parts of a whole. As the fraction is part of a whole, the rhythm is part of a dance. In fractions, the pieces can be arranged in different ways, and in dances the same time signature (7/8) can have a different rhythm, depending on where the accents are.

This link, Math For Poets and Drummers describes the mathematics of music and poetry. This is especially good for right-brained people like myself who tend to see the whole first, then break down the parts. We don't analyze, we synthesize.

http://www.sju.edu/~rhall/Rhythms/Poets/arcadia.pdf

By the way I am a poet as well as a dancer so my sense of rhythm is very well developed. Math? Well, that's a different story.

I happen to be fond of dances with odd numbers in the time signature, and today we're going to examine the rhythms of the lesnoto, rachenitsa, and chetvorno, dances popular in the Balkans, and all of them with with seven beats to the measure.

The first example will be a lesnoto, a walking dance popular in Bulgaria and Macedonia. The rhythm for this is "galloping-apple-apple." The video is not in English but don't let that deter you; he does an excellent job teaching the dance even if you don't understand the language.



The next dance will be the ubiquitous national dance of Bulgaria, the rachenitsa, which can be done as a solo, couple, or group dance. The accents are on different beats than the lesnoto; apple-apple-galloping. This one is moderately fast and very macho :)



Chetvorno Horo, a dance from the Shope region of Bulgaria, is also in 7/8. The rhythm for Chetvorno is galloping-apple-apple, and has a slightly different feel from both the rachenitsa and the lesnoto. This group performs it in a shopping mall. How often do you see that?



By the way, chetiri is the number four in Bulgarian. If you look at the word in Cyrillic it looks like this: четири. The "ch" resembles a four. Which poses more questions: How does one do a seven beat dance in four? The steps themselves are in groups of two and three. (3+2+2=7) I have yet to figure that out.

If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Dancing to the Rhythm of a Different Drummer

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/01/dancing-to-rhythm-of-different-drummer.html

Dancing by the Numbers

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/10/dancing-by-numbers.html

Balkan Folk Dancing and its Relationship to Math
(a little geometry in this one)

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/06/balkan-folk-dancing-and-its.html


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