Thursday, March 24, 2022

In Memory of Atanas Kolarovski

Dance every performance as if it were your last.
 Erik Bruhn

 On March 3, 2022, the dance leader and choreographer Atanas Kolarovski passed away at the age of 95. His speciality was dances from North Macedonia.  He got around quite a bit, teaching and leading in North America, Europe, and Japan.  He briefly appeared on Zoom in January 2021 during the Global Folk Dance Party held in his honor.

 Video #1 is Cije e Ona Mome (whose girl is that)? It is one of my favorites.  I don't know if Atanas taught workshops in Israel, where the Dunav group dances.  There are two Balkan dance groups in Israel; the other is Balkanitsa.
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 Another dance that is very popular is Kasapsko Oro (butchers' dance).  Note: this video was taken in Japan in 1981. Balkan music and dance are very popular in Japan. Fusae Carroll was one of his assistant teachers. She currently lives in California, but returns to Japan periodically.  She specializes in dances from North Macedonia.
   

 Just about every group has Bufcansko in their repertoire. There are two versions of the music used among folk dance groups; a kaval version and an Izvor version played by Pece Atanasovski's ensemble. This is the Atanasovski music and it plays twice in the video. 

There is another version of Bufcansko played on brass instruments.  My dance group has it on their playlist. For some reason this one isn't as popular.

  
 
 
Balkan Blues, Some Really Depressing Folk Songs (includes Tino More, another Atanas dance)
 

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing this. I had not heard that Atanas had died (I've been out of the loop for a while). And thanks, of course, for all of your many postings!

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  2. thanks so much for reading this! I had no idea how many Atanas dances there were until last year when I went to the Peninsula Folk Dance on Zoom. He will be missed!

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  3. Haven't seen your posts for awhile. Glad to see you back. Thanks for the Atanas memorial! Loved that man. Loved his charm and humor!

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    1. Karla, thanks for reading. My carpal tunnel got really bad during the winter and I missed posting here. Finally found a keyboard that's user-friendly. You'll be seeing more posts in the near future.

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