Kat Lahr
Once upon a time there was a country called Yugoslavia. It broke apart in the 1990's during a series of ethnic and religious civil wars. After the breakup it became six different entities, one of which was Bosnia. Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo, was reduced to a pile of rubble during the The Siege of Sarajevo , when the Serbian Army held the city for almost four years.
Barely ten years before Sarajevo had been the site of the 1984 Winter Olympics.
Nowadays, Sarajevo is again a tourist attraction, although if you look closely you can see remnants of the war.
Today's post features kolos from Bosnia. Some are in circles and some are in lines.
Sarajevka Kolo, according to John Filcich in the video, was one of the original dances brought over by the immigrants in the 19th century. The notes have it listed as a Serbian because it originated with Serbs living in Bosnia, so this is a hybrid dance with dual nationality. The recording, judging from the sound, is an old one. Somehow the video got cut somewhere in the middle of the dance.
In the past, Balkan Music Night used to feature costumed folk dance ensembles in between bands. This video dates from 2010 and features a costumed group performing dances from Bosnia.
A commenter on YouTube had noticed that there were no guys dancing with the girls. The reason is that Islam is the dominant religion in Bosnia (Eastern Orthodox and Catholicism rate second and third). In Islam, contact with the opposite gender is forbidden (except for family relationships).
Video #3 is another Bosnian kolo, with a group from Seattle, Washington. There is no gender segregation here.
If you enjoyed this you may also like:
The "Flavors" of Serbian Kolo
The "Flavors" of Croatian Kolo
Hybrid Dances from the Balkans
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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