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chapter 10 Folk Dance Groups 253 The tamburitza is intimately associated with South Slavic folk dance. Tamburitza and dance exert a substantial mutual influence upon each other. Having replaced earlier traditional instruments like gajde and dude (types of bagpipes), dvojnice (a double fipple flute), or lijerica (a pear-shaped bowed stringed instrument) as the most common form of dance accompaniment in many villages, the tamburitza’s association with dance music is more recent, coming with the popularization of the instruments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. South Slavic folk dances are numerous and varied. In many regions, villagers know several different dances, and one need travel only a short distance over the ever-changing cultural landscape of the Balkans to encounter variants of dance types. The communities that support the tamburitza tradition have older and newer forms of dance as a part of their festivities and displays of cultural heritage. There is informal dancing in European villages at celebrations of such holidays as Carnival, St. George’s Day, and St. John’s Day. Traditional dancing also takes place at weddings, christenings, and other important rituals. Informal dancing is also a part of festivities in the North American South Slavic communities. Staged presentations of traditional dance as a display of cultural heritage are common both in the KUDs of the former Yugoslav countries and in their ethnic communities abroad. Although today most traditional dancing is done primarily for recreation , exercise, expression of heritage, or as a social activity, in the past it is likely that folk dances had deeper religious or magical purposes— to help ensure success in hunting or fruitful harvests, to fight disease, and to ward off spirits. Nowadays, awareness of earlier magical functions may have disappeared or, if not entirely forgotten, transformed into a joke by the majority who no longer believe in its efficacy. Ivan Ivančan, a folk dance scholar and choreographer, mentioned the zečko koloorzajc(therabbitdance)anddučecornebeskokolo(jumpingdance) as examples of dances with a trace of ritual function remaining: the rabbit dance to ensure good hunting, the jumping dance to encourage flax or hemp to grow tall. Ivančan and other dance scholars have classified Balkan dances according to the cultural geographic zones developed by ethnologists, to which, for the most part, the boundaries of the dance zones correspond . Of these regions, the Pannonian, Dinaric, and Adriatic zones, which comprise most of the territory of the former-Yugoslav countries, have the most significant connections to tamburitza (Ivančan 1965). 254 Folk Dance Groups Kolo dancing to the Slavonski Bečari, St. Augustine Church hall, Milwaukee, 1979. (Photo by Timothy Sharko) In the Pannonian region, the most important dance type is the closed kolo, dancing in a closed circle. Generally the kolo here is close: each dancer holds the hands not of the adjacent dancers but the second nearest ones. The dancers’ bodies are close together with extended arms clasped either behind the back or in front of the adjacent dancers in a “basket” hold. In this tight circle, the dance motions are economical and intricate. There are no leaps, sweeps, or high kicks, but fast patterns of small steps. An erect posture is important, and while some dances call for the upper body to be relatively immobile, others of the drmeš type call for rapid shaking above the waist. In both the Pannonian and Dinaric zones, the direction of rotation of the kolo tends to be clockwise in the western but counterclockwise in the eastern portions of the regions. In the western Pannonian areas there are strong influences of the Alpine zone, namely couples’ dances, the polka, and the waltz, with extensive spinning while dancing, either in couples or in small kolos of four dancers. The Slavs share the Pannonian plain with Hungarians, so Hungarian dances, csardas, and koscinto are common. Although dance accompaniment used to be played on bagpipes, wooden flutes, or samice, tamburitza ensembles are now more common . Accordions and electronic synthesizers have replaced tambure in many places. In the Dinaric zone, both open and closed kolos are known. Some of the dances of this region are among the most ancient folk dances still actively performed; some, such as the silent kolos of Lika and the Dalmatian hinterlands, are danced without musical accompaniment of any kind. Dinaric dances tend to include a greater number of slow, strolling, dance motions accompanied by songs. The dancers hold the hands of the adjacent persons in the kolo. Thus there is more space...

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