2018 - Datina - Romanian Folk Dances (Bela Bartok)

"Romanian Vibrant Hearts", what a special project!

Datina Folk Ensemble wishes to thank NOCCO (North Corner Chamber Orchestra) and ROCCA (Romanian American Chamber Concerts and Arts) for the invitation to participate with a novel choreographic interpretation of Bela Bartok's "Romanian Folk Dances".

As far as we know, there haven't been collaborations like this one, between an orchestra and a traditional dance group, to add steps to Bartok's composition. We had no model to inspire us how to dance on this beautiful and uplifting music. We had to do it the old fashioned way, by exploring each piece, identifying the dance that it refers to, researching the vocabulary and soul of that dance and then trying to adapt it to the more sophisticated patterns of classical music, all of this without losing any of the folkloric authenticity. This was such a fulfilling and rewarding creation process for Datina.

As the majority of our choreographies, this one is also 'baked in house' and has a strong story embedded in the dance steps. You can witness how courtship was usually starting at the weekly dance in the middle of the village. First only a young men's dance, then an interaction with the young girls, then a sad farewell as men would leave to war, followed by a joyous reunion. Remember, Bartok's piece was composed during World War I.

We also encountered some challenges along the way. For example, we were not able to find for the fourth movement, "Buciumeana", how the original dance looked like. Our friends here in US and back in Romania became an army of researchers for us, reading books from the library, thoroughly searching the internet and asking old relatives from Alba county. So we could only try our best guess, feeling the inspiration of the music and using our knowledge of other dances of that region. This is the most lyrical piece of our choreography and it depicts women left at home while men are away at war: they comfort each other's sadness, they pray for their loved ones, write letters and are always ready and beautiful to welcome them back home.

We hope you will enjoy our choreographic interpretation of Bartok's "Romanian Folk Dances".

Видео 2018 - Datina - Romanian Folk Dances (Bela Bartok) канала Datina - Shows