If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius.
Larry Leissner
Tsigansko Horo is a dance popular in Bulgaria as well as North America. It bears a slight resemblance to Chichovo Horo, another Bulgarian dance. Video #1 shows a dance group from Bulgaria. The song is actually Serbian. by Sanja Ilich and Balkanika. You can find the lyrics here.
You can read more about the song Djipaj and its associated dance in the first post link listed below.
Another dance that I have frequently seen on Zoom sessions is De Secerat, from Romania. It is a women's harvest song. It was introduced by Cristian Florescu and Sonia Dion.
The group is Balkanitsa, from Haifa, in Israel. This is another sing along song! If anyone can find the lyrics please post them in the "comments" section.
The next dance, originally taught by Yves Moreau, made popular by Murray Spiegel on his bi-weekly Wednesday night Zoom sessions, is Vidinsko Horo. He has a teaching video on Youtube as well, with the faster parts slowed down.
Murray mentioned that Boris Karlov (the musician, not the actor, here we go with that confusion thing) composed the music. As a matter of fact, many of our dances use the music of Boris Karlov: for example: BavnoOro, Gankino Horo, and Zizaj Nane (a daichovo dance with calls). You can read about it in post #2 below.
"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. " (Buddhist proverb)
According to a study done on senior citizens 75 and older by the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York City, people who dance are much less likely to develop dementia. The article describes how dancing increases cognitive acuity.
I was probably one of the youngest attendees at a dance workshop in upstate New York, held in late September. The majority were people in their "golden years"; retirees who keep their brains and bodies healthy with frequent folk dancing. They had amazing energy.
There were workshop sessions in the morning and afternoon; and dance parties that continued late into the night. The teachers were Yves Moreau (Bulgarian dance) and Danny Pollock (Israeli dance).
Here are two of the Bulgarian dances that were taught at the workshop. I still have yet to master them although I'd been watching and practicing with YouTube videos for several months before the workshop.
The first is Novozagorsko Horo, from the Thracian region of Bulgaria. It's named after the town of Nova Zagora. This dance has a belt hold which makes it even more challenging, and you have to be in good physical (and mental) shape to do it. I still can't remember all the steps in the proper sequence. That will take practice.
Yves taught a dance that I've been watching on YouTube for about six months, Vidinkso Horo, and I was glad he chose it for the workshop this year.
Vidinsko Horo is a "hybrid" dance, best described as Romanian steps to Bulgarian music. It is also named after the town of Vidin in northwestern Bulgaria. You also can see similar footwork in the Romanian dance Trei Pazeste. The Vlach people who live in this region have influenced the music and dance. Their dances are characterized by stamps and shouts, and you will see that in the video.
Does dancing make you smart? It does, because it involves a lot of memorization, especially when learning and doing a fast dance with complicated steps like Vidinsko.
Some food for thought here: a brain is a terrible thing to waste. Use it or lose it.
By the way, the picture above was a view of Sylvan Lake near the building where the workshops were held. The lakefront was a great place to relax and chat with people in between dances.
photo from Wikipedia Commons, Danube Bridge 2, taken March 2013
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
Sir Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton's words certainly ring true, both literally and figuratively, and here at The Alien Diaries building bridges between cultures is one of the main reasons for this blog.
I find bridges fascinating because I grew up in New York City, a city linked together by hundreds of bridges. One of my childhood nightmares involved a drawbridge that opened when I was halfway across, and one of my favorite memories was summer nights in one of New York's waterfront parks. We often stayed late enough to watch the bridge lights come on.
Many years ago I had won tickets to the 100th Anniversary of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a beautiful, festive ceremony that I will never forget.
Today's post celebrates the official opening of Danube Bridge 2, (Bulgarian: Дунав мост 2, Romanian: Podul Vidin-Calafat), connecting the cities of Vidin, Bulgaria, and Calafat, Romania.
You can get information on Danube Bridge 2 from its official website: Click on one the flags to read about it in the language of your choice.
Until Danube Bridge 2 was completed in 2013, there was only one bridge crossing between Romania and Bulgaria; the Giurgiu–Ruse Bridge, completed in 1954. This made things especially difficult for truck drivers and other commercial traffic; they had to deal with long waits at ferry crossings, since one bridge couldn't accommodate them all.
The Giurgiu–Ruse Bridge was also known as the "Friendship Bridge" during socialist days, a term used for propaganda purposes. There couldn't have been too much friendship going on between the two countries. The dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, had his country under lockdown. The situation in Romania became so bad under his regime that people risked their lives swimming across to Bulgaria to escape oppression.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, things have changed in Eastern Europe for the better. Hopefully.
Because The Alien Diaries is a music and dance blog (among other things), the first video is a dance piece, Sârba de la Calafat. The notes on the video a describe a course for accordion video lessons. (If you're interested click here:) The accordionist here does an excellent job, he has learned his lessons well.
Unfortunately, there is no dancing in this video, if you want to see some Sârba, click this link. It is a very energetic and lively dance, especially when it's done by people who've had a little too much booze.
This colorful group of costumed dancers performs Vidinsko Horo. Energetic dances like this are typical of the Severnjasko (northwest) region of Bulgaria.
Diko Iliev, a Bulgarian composer who lived from 1898 to 1984 wrote a very well-known piece which has almost become the second national anthem of Bulgaria. It's played during celebrations, especially at the start of the New Year. This is Iliev's Dunavsko Horo, which was most likely written while the composer lived in Oryahovo. If you look closely you can see a photo of Iliev at center stage.
And now we come to the water underneath that bridge. The composer of this waltz (yes, they play waltzes in the Balkans!) was of Serbian origin and he made his home in Romania. His name was Ion Iosef Ivanovici, and he was a bandmaster in the Romanian army who composed music in his spare time. He was quite prolific, having written over 350 dance pieces.
His compositions was quite popular at the end of the 19th century, but unfortunately he was pretty much forgotten after his death in 1902.
According to the article here, Ivanovici was influenced not only by the music of the Austro-Hungarian empire (they and the Ottomans held sway over this part of the world in the late 19th century), but also by Romanian traditional music. He wrote several hora pieces, hora being the national dance of Romania.
This is his best-known piece, Waves of the Danube. If you read the Wikipedia article, you'll find it has undergone several incarnations such as as The Anniversary Song in the United States and in Korea as the Psalm of Death (how morbid!) This is the original orchestration, and like many other pieces on The Alien Diaries, it has an odd time signature. This one is in 3/4, and played in true Romanian style. Note that the conductor is Korean, but the orchestra is from the town of Bostusani, in northern Romania.
By the way, the waltz is listed on the video under its German name, Donauwellen. There is also a cake with the same name!
If you enjoyed this, you may also enjoy the rest of the series Crossing the River Parts 1, 2 and 3. Part 3 is where you'll find the links to the earlier posts.
The River of Many Names, parts 1 -6. (you can find the links from 1-5 in Part 6. If you like Close Encounters of the Danubian kind, you will love this series.
We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.
Maya Angelou
Bulgaria has seven folklore regions. Oftentimes the dances are named after cities and towns, and sometimes the region. Despite the fact that it's a relatively small country, Bulgaria has a lot of diversity in its music and dance.
For those who are not familiar with Bulgarian folk dancing, the two major groups of dances in this country are rachenitsa and horo. Horo simply means "dance." It can be any rhythm, and some of them can get quite interesting, especially the asymmetrical ones.
Radio Bulgaria's translation of horo is "chain dance." The dancers hold hands or each other's belts, the idea is being linked like a chain. Rachenitsa, on the other hand can be done in singles, couples, and groups. It's a dance in an irregular rhythm, apple-apple-pineapple. There are seven beats to the measure.
There is a well-known rachenitsa from the town of Kyustendil, a town in the Shope region (west central Bulgaria) near the capital Sofia. Here's a description of Kystendil from Wikipedia:
The video is of Kystendilska Rachenitsa, performed by the Bulgarian ensemble Accent. This is an example of "rachenitsa na horo", which means the dance is done in a group.
The next dance, Vidinsko Horo is a lively number from the town of Vidin, in northwestern Bulgaria. In the dance notes below you can read about the Romanian influence in this dance; the steps include stamping and arm swinging. The dancers shout and make a lot of noise....that's Romanian too. There's a lot of cross-cultural pollination in the Balkans.
The shouts, or "calls" are known as "strigaturi" in Romanian, and they have crossed the border, however, I don't know the Bulgarian name for them. Maybe someone can enlighten me on this.
This very graceful and smooth dance, Varnensko Horo is from the seaside town of Varna, in the folklore region of Dobrudja, northeastern Bulgaria. Dobrudjan dances have also been influenced by nearby Romania in that a good number of them involve stamping (this will be covered in a future post). This one is definitely an exception to that rule.
Pazhardiska Kopanitsa is a another dance with the irregular rhythm pattern that Bulgarians are famous for. Pazhardik is in south central Bulgaria, in the region of Thrace. This dance is a Kopanitsa, a dance in 11/16, and the rhythm is like this: quick-quick-slow-quick-quick. I call the "slow" beat in the middle the hiccup.
For more on Kopanitsa and other related dances, this may be of interest:
If you love Balkan music and dance you have come to the right place! The Alien Diaries began in February 2010 and is updated at least twice a month.
This blog is dedicated to the memory of my cat Fatso (see avatar), who passed away on April 9, 2011 from congestive heart failure. He was the inspiration for several of my early posts.
Don't forget to check out my second blog, Light and Shadow, for some humor, satire, photos and poetry!
