User:Dahhak/bulgarian folklore dance

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=Choreographic theory of the Bulgarian folklore dance=

Bulgarian folklorists started collecting information and samples of the Bulgarian folklore dance as early as the 1920's, with one of the first folklorists to do so being Rayna Kacarova, Boris Conev, Angel Drumev and others. By the 1940s the thorough recording and preserving of the folklore dances led choreographers and folklorists to systematize them in order to use the folklore material in the newly emerging genre of stage folklore dance. The work of choreographers and folklorists such as Kiril Haralampiev, Kiril Djenev   , Stoyan Djudjev  , Margarita Dikova  , Boris Conev and others has left us with a great number of folklore dances and detailed knowledge about their choreography.

Horo
Horo (Bulgarian - Хорó)- a collective chain dance. All the dancers follow a set combination of steps. Improvisation is usually done only in the end of the dance, sometimes during all the parts of the dance but just by the first and the last dancer in the chain, and sometimes it's not done at all. If the dancers are in a closed circle it is called Zatvoreno horo (Bulgarian - Затворено хоро, meaning Closed horo) and if the dancers are in a semi-circle or a straight line it is called Otvoreno horo (Bulgarian - Отворено хоро, meaning Open horo). An Open horo can either be led (Водено хоро, Vodeno horo), meaning that the steps of the dance make the chain move gradually (usually going right and very few cases left) or not.

The body part involved the most in this type of dance is the legs.

There are several different ways for the dancers to hold each other in a horo.

The most common is За длани (Za dlani, meaning By Hands) - the right hand of every dancer (except the leader if there is one) holds the left hand of the next dancer in the right-hand side. This gives certain freedom to the hands so in many dances of that type the hands would take part in the dance - swinging forward and backward in the rhythm of the music, sometimes bending the elbows. Generally both hands would perform the same movement at the same time.

The second most common way is formed by each person holding the belt or sash of the dancer on either side (Za Poyas, За пояс).

Other popular way for the dancers to hold each other in a horo are Lesa (Леса, meaning hedge), Za ramo (За рамо, meaning By shoulder)and others.

Other collective dances
There are dances, usually organized similar to a horo (the dancers are holding each other) with very few exceptions (the dancers are lined up, in a circle, etc, but are not holding each other).

Solo and couple dances
Solo or couple dances (Игра по саме или по двамина, Igra po same ili po dvamina) are dances performed by a single dancer or rarely in a couple. These dances usually have improvisational character although the dancers would follow the traditional steps and style of the dance to some extent.