Dance Kolo

It is inscribed on the UNESCO List of Intagible Cultural Heritage for Serbia.

According to Wilkes (1995), the kolo has an Illyrian origin, as the dance seems to resemble dances depicted on funeral monuments of the Roman era.

The circle dance is usually performed amongst groups of at least three people and up to several dozen people. Dancers hold each other's hands or each other's waists. They form a circle, a single chain or multiple parallel lines.

Kolo requires almost no movement above the waist. The basic steps are easy to learn. Experienced dancers demonstrate virtuosity by adding different ornamental elements, such as syncopated steps. Each region has at least one unique kolo. It is difficult to master the dance and even most experienced dancers cannot master all of them.

 

Kolo is performed at weddings, social, cultural, and religious ceremonies. Some dances require both men and women to dance together, others require only the men or only the women.

Music

The music is generally fast-paced. The dance was used by Antonín Dvořák in his Slavonic Dances – the Serbian kolo is the seventh dance from opus 72.

Traditional dance costumes vary from region to region. Bordering regions are mostly more similar to each other.

Various kolos are performed at social ceremonies. Often traditional clothing, which is unique to a region, is worn. The most common kolo is the narodno kolo or drmeš; a standard step followed by accordion music.

Elsewhere in South Slavic countries, there is horo (Bulgarian: хоро) in Bulgaria and oro (Macedonian: оро) in North Macedonia and Montenegro.

 

Wiki Commons has media related to Kolo (dance).

• Armenian dance
• Assyrian folk dance
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• Greek dances
• Hora (dance), an equivalent of the kolo
• Khorovod, an Eastern European circle dance
• Kurdish dance
• Serbian dances
• Turkish dance