Billie Eilish
Valle Pogonishte is one of the most popular Albanian dances. People love the melody and sing along with it. You can find the lyrics here. The translation, in German, describes a festival in the Chameria region of Albania. Fritz, the teacher in the video, calls out the steps in German.
The group is from a workshop in Austria. They sing along, too. If you're a trivia buff, the artist for this song is Sami Kallmi.
Siriul is a dance from the Muntenia region of Romania. There are two versions: one with vocals and one without. I prefer the one with singing. Here are the lyrics if you want to sing along. There is also an English translation on the lyrics page. There is a mention of a place called Buzau that is a river in Romania. Siriul Mare is one of the tributaries. (Note: this is not a song about what you eat for breakfast! If you like confusion, there is a post at the bottom of this page for you).
If you listen to the music carefully at about 1:50 and also again 2:47 it evokes the sound of flowing water.
Another Romanian dance popular on Zoom is Hora Banateana. Thanks to Riki Adivi (who does Thursday night Zoom sessions at 8 p.m. Eastern Time) and the video, I'm learning the dance. For those who prefer written instructions I have also included the dance notes.
Banat is a region shared by three counties: Romania, Serbia, and Hungary.
If you enjoyed this you may also like:
Most Popular Folk Dances on Zoom, Part One:
And for those who enjoy confusion there's a 20 post series:
Balkan Dances that are Often Confused, Part 20 (this post has links to the rest of the series.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Thanks for your posting. I enjoyed learning about Siriul which apparently has been one of the most requested dances in Morristown NJ folkdancers and also New Paltz, NY. I never heard the vocal version and it is very nice and I appreciated the lyric translation. It took me more than half the video to realize the dance they were doing was pretty much what we do but their version seemed very staccato or something. I dunno, guess it’s that different village thing. 😉
ReplyDeletecomposthappens, love that name :) Thanks for reading. Most groups that I've been with on Zoom use the instrumental; our group (before Covid) used the one with the vocal. The lyrics are beautiful
DeleteThe posted version of Siriul is not as as I learned it from Theo Vasilescu although it is danced to the same melody.
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