Belarusian folk dance
ethnic dance of the Belarusian people
Belarusian folk dance (Belarusian: Беларускі народны танец) is a Belarusian folk dance art, presented in the form of folk domestic or staged scenic dance. The history of Belarus and efforts to preserve Belarusian traditions have shaped the dances in use today, which have many ancient and archaic elements. These dances started to form in the 14th century, and originated in East Slavic rites. In the middle of the 19th century, traditional folk dancing began to merge with quadrilles and polkas from Western Europe.
The Belarusian folk dances are divided into three groups: illustrative, playful, and ornamental. Belarusian choreographer Larisa Aleksyutovich further subdivides Belarusian dances into the following genres:
"actual" dances (traditional dances, quadrilles, polkas)
folk dances
circle dances
games in the form of a dance
The concept of a "Belarusian folk dance" includes three components:
authentic dance performed in everyday life
staged folk dance
ethnic dance
History
The main characteristics of Belarusian dance emerged concurrently with the shaping of Belarus and its culture in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, with its roots dating back to ancient Russian culture. These dances have manifested the emotions, sentiments, and personality of the Belarusian people.
For a long time, Belarusian dance was little known, even in Belarus, and was rarely seen outside of small villages. Ihnat Bujnicki (Belarusian: Ігнат Буйніцкі, also sometimes spelled Ignatius Buinitsky) popularized Belarusian folk dances on both Belarusian and foreign stages with the creation of the Belarusian National Theatre in 1907. Bujnicki worked there as a director, actor, and dancer.
“Belarusian folk dance” enters the record as ethnic dance of the Belarusian people. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Belarusian, folk and dance can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Belarusian folk dance” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.