Preface

Thank you for choosing to read this book on the folk dances of Europe and the Middle East. I hope you will find it interesting and useful. I wrote this book as a text for my University of Arizona General Education class DNC179A, Introduction to the folk dances of Europe and the Middle East and it’s aimed primarily at the students in that class, who have no background in the topic. But I hope it will be of interest to others too.

This is the open access (free) web version of the text. A print version and an ePub version for Kindle and similar readers will follow in a few months and will be available for sale at both online retailers and select book stores. The webformat of this version takes advantage of the more interactive nature of the internet. Every chapter is packed with links. Some links are for further reading and additional information on other websites.Other links will take you to dance descriptions on my blog http://folkdancemusings.blogspot.com, which provide explanations on how to do some of the dances discussed. Another great advantage of this format is the ability to include embedded media. At the time of writing this (July 2025), this is limited to a few videos in chapters 24 and 25. But this will expand over time. That brings me to the final advantage. I can update and improve this book at anytime. Traditional paper books and ePubs can’t be so easily updated, so in addition to the cost of such works, I decided to start with this open access web version, brought to you by the University of Arizona Libraries. I know, however, that many people prefer the physicality and portability of a book, so that option will be provided later.

First some navigational comments on using this web book version. The easiest way to navigate the book is using the Contents menu at the top left in the black bar.

This will give you access to the complete table of contents and you can click through to the chapters that interest you the most. Once you are in a chapter, you can also navigate forward and backwards, by making of the red navigation bar at the very bottom of your browser window.

Rather than having a traditional index, if you need to find something on a specific topic. Then I recommend you use the search in book function at the top right.

The book is organized into seven major parts. Part 1 considers the fundamental properties of folk dance. Chapter 1 explores the surprisingly challenging question of how to distinguish folk dances from other kinds of expressive movement. Chapter 2 looks at how folk dance is both determined by and is an important force in determining identity. We look at ethnicity, politics, religion and gender as critical factors. This chapter also has important sections on cultural appropriation and consent.

The next five parts of the book are about the cultural traditions around folk dance. Each chapter focuses on a regional style, or closely related styles, of dance. You’ll find a discussion of the geography and history of each region; information on the music and instrumentation of the dances; information on traditional folk costumes; and any special information on any unique dance traditions. These chapters do not include dance descriptions for specific dances, but at the end of each chapter you’ll find some hyperlinks to dance descriptions, I have written that are available on the web, should you want to try them.

Part two focuses on dance traditions in Western Europe and the related dance cultures found in the former colonies of Western Europe. Chapter 3 looks at Great Britain and Ireland. Chapter 4 explores the colonial dances that emerged from British dance styles in North America. The dances of the Romance countries of France, Spain, Italy and Portugal is the focus of chapter 5. Chapters 6 and 7 look at the derivative dance cultures of various Empires in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America.

Part three shifts the geographic focus to the center and north of Europe. Chapter 8 focusses on the interlinked dance traditions of Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia. Chapter 9 covers an expansive region of Europe including all the countries where they speak a Germanic Language, except for English. It looks at the dances of Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.  The dance culture of the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia are the focus of chatper 10.

The Balkans are historically and culturally at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East. Large parts of the region were part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, while others were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The impact of this history is reflected in the unique dance cultures of the region. Part 4 is about the dance cultures of the European Balkan countries. Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzogovina, and Serbia are discussed in chapter 11. The traditions of Greece, Albania, and Kosovo are found in chapter 12. Chapter 13 is devoted to the dances of Macedonia and Bulgaria and the section rounds out with a dicussion of Romania and Moldova in chapter 14.

Part five focuses on the dance cultures of the Middle East. Chapter 15 looks at the dances of the Turkish, Kurdish and Assyrian peoples who live in Anatolia. The Caucasus is land peninsula between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and it’s the home of the Armenians, Georgians, Azeris and other peoples. These ethnicities are the topic of chapter 16. Chapter 17 actually bridges from Iran in the Middle East over to countries like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan etc in Central Asia, which share aimilarities in dance and music culture. Finally we look at two cultures that are currently in terrible conflict, but have surprisingly similar music and dance traditions: Israel (chapter 18) and their Arab neighbors (Chapter 19).

Part six takes on a very different set of topics. It focuses the new tradition of “International” folk dancing (IFD), which is not focused on any particular enthnicity. Chapter 20 examines the origins of this unique tradition. Chapter 21 offers advice on setting up and running an IFD dance club. I’ve chosen 29 easy and fun dances that I recommend for teaching newcomers to the IFD movement in Chapter 22.

The chapters in Part seven are very different from the rest of the book. They probably shouldn’t be read from beginning to end as a normal book chapter, but should be used primarily as reference material for the technical vocabulary of folk dancing. Although I hope the truly geeky among us (like me) will take pleasure in the detailed descriptions of the foundational details of dance. Chapter 23 describes the many different configurations of dancers and handholds you find in folk dance. Chapter 24 is about footwork fundamentals. Chapter 25 describes many common couple and set dance figures. Chapter 25 is a quick look at arm, body and head positions and chapter 26 gives a brief survey of common props used in folk dance. Finally 26 is a technical discussion of the relationship between musical meter and the dancer’s rhythm.