Dances from Oltenia

The saddest country I went to was Romania, years ago, during Ceausescu's rule.
Christopher Lee

Before the revolution of 1989, Romania was a totalitarian regime ruled by an autocrat who wouldn't let people leave the country. Food and clothing shortages were commonplace. There were also orphanages full of children whose parents couldn't afford to raise them, many who got AIDS from unsterilized needles. Birth control was forbidden in Ceausescu's Romania. The situation was so bad that people froze in the winter because the government exported heating oil for foreign currency. It was a terrible place to live until 1989, when on Christmas Day, Ceausescu and his family were assassinated.

Although the situation in Romania is much better than in the past, poverty and discrimination against the Roma population are still social issues. Despite the problems, the country has a rich folklore tradition that has survived World Wars and totalitarian rule.

Today's post features three southern Romanian dances from the province of Oltenia, on the northern side of the Danube from Bulgaria.

Video #1 is a dance very popular in one of my groups: Hora Lautareasca din Dolj. Dolj is a county in the province of Oltenia. The dance is named after the Lautari, the term for a band of Roma musicians.

There is a review of the dance at the beginning of the video.  The dance teacher is one of those "crazy" instructors and keeps a running monologue going throughout the dance. Her group consists entirely of senior citizens (old enough to remember Communist Romania).

Dancers tend to live longer and are less likely to suffer from dementia than non-dancers.



Video #2 is another dance from Dolj and one of the numerous variations of Trei Pazeste.  There are Trei Pazeste de la Goicea Mare,  Trei Pazeste Batrinesc, and others.  You can read about them in one of the posts below.



Video #3 is a Japanese group dancing Rustemul Oltenesc. This is a different variation with different music than the Rustemul we usually do (although some of the steps are similar). Notice that the young woman in the line wears a man's costume.



If you enjoyed this, you may also like:

Variations on a Romanian Folk Dance Tune:  Hora Lautareasca

Variations on the Romanian Folk Dance: Trei Pazeste

Crazy Dance Instructors


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

Three Variations of the Romanian Folk Dance Trei Pazeste

Today's post features three variations of the Romanian folk dance Trei Pazeste.  I looked up the translation and it was rather odd.  It means "Three Times Beware."  In other words, you are being forewarned of sudden step and/or directional changes. This is a dangerous dance if you don't pay attention!

This group from Boulder, Colorado, does the generic Trei Pazeste, a dance native to southern Romania. It is especially popular in the Oltenia region, across the Danube from Bulgaria. I don't know which village this dance comes from but parts of it are very similar to the Bulgarian dance Vidinsko Horo.  It may have crossed the river from Calafat to Vidin. The shouts you hear are typical of Romanian dances, and they are called strigaturi.



The next Trei Pazeste is from a different village: this one is from Bistret.   Regular readers of this blog will recognize the dancers: the Dunav group from Jerusalem in Israel.  They have recently updated their YouTube videos and you can visit them on their website as well.  At 1:02  and at 1:28 you can hear the leader count in Romanian: unu, doi, trei!



The last Trei Pazeste is from Dolj, a county in southern Romania.  It starts slow and builds up speed, so you really have to pay attention! There are only two dancers here, so you know this one's tough. This one has plenty of stamping, sudden direction changes and arm swinging, but no shouting.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Dancing by the Numbers

Bulgarian Dances Named After Cities and Towns (includes a very lively version of Vidinsko Horo)

How to Stamp Out Your Frustrations and Relieve Stress (dances from Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia)



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