Two Variations on a Romanian Folk Dance: Hora Fetelor

If you like to listen to panpipes and watch female dancers this post is for you.

Today's dance is Hora Fetelor from Romania.  It means Women's Dance (although in recreational folk dance men as well as women do it).  It is usually an equal opportunity dance, although during performances (like version #2), women are the preferred gender.

Version one is popular in the Western Hemisphere and with recreational folk dance groups. If you're a regular reader of this blog you'll recognize the Dunav group from Jerusalem in Israel. Here it's an equal opportunity dance.



This is Hora Fetelor distilled and refined, Romanian style; very beautifully done; danced slowly and gracefully by a female group with large white handkerchiefs.  The panpipe music accentuates the performance; it is the national instrument of Romania, where it is called the nai. This is a treat for the eyes and ears.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Women's Dances From the Balkans

The "Flavors" of Bulgarian Rachenitsa, Part 2 (a dance which can be masculine, feminine, or flirty!)

If you can't get enough of female performers, check out the Bulgarian singer Neli Andreeva and her two daughters in Nusha, a Family Music Project.


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

In Honor of International Women's Day: Women's Dances from the Balkans

Today, in honor of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, here are several women's dances from the Balkans. In this part of the world, back in the day, dances were often used as the venue for men and women to meet, (and eventually marry) under the watchful eye of the older women.

The first, from Romania, is the very beautiful and graceful Hora Fetelor (Girls' Dance). Since The Alien Diaries is an equal opportunity blog, the dance immediately following is the very masculine Calusari, a springtime dance performed by men wielding sticks.



The next video is of Dobrudjanska Reka, from Bulgaria, also a women's dance, performed by a group in a mall. Notice that a woman is leading it. Nowadays, this too is an equal opportunity dance, even the men are allowed to join the line :)



The third women's dance is Tresenica, from Macedonia.



For some men's dances, click the next link (as I said before this is an equal opportunity blog!)

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-butchers-did-for-fun-butchers.html


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