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 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 bookstores. The web format of this version leverages the internet’s more interactive nature. 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 of how to perform some of the dances discussed. Another great advantage of this format is the ability to include embedded media. At the time of writing (May 2026), 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 web book at any time. Traditional paper books and ePubs can’t be updated as easily, 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 to use the Contents menu at the top left of 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 backward by making use of the red navigation bar at the very bottom of your browser window.

Rather than using a traditional index, I recommend using the search-in-book function at the top right when you need to find something on a specific topic.

The book is organized into seven major parts. Part One 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 identity and is an important force in determining it. We consider 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 focus on the cultural traditions surrounding 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 details on any unique dance traditions. These chapters do not include descriptions of specific dances, but at the end of each chapter, you’ll find hyperlinks to dance descriptions I have written that are available online, should you want to try them.

Part Two focuses on dance traditions in Western Europe and related dance cultures in the former Western European colonies. 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 are the focus of Chapter 5. Chapters 6 and 7 examine the derivative dance cultures of various Empires across Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America.

Part Three shifts the geographic focus to central and northern Europe. Chapter 8 focuses on the interlinked dance traditions of Hungary, Slovakia, and Czechia. Chapter 9 covers a broad region of Europe, including all countries where a Germanic language is spoken, except England. It looks at the dances of Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. The dance cultures of the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia are the focus of Chapter 10.

The Balkans are historically and culturally at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East. Large areas 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 region’s unique dance cultures. Part Four is about the dance cultures of the European Balkan countries. Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 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. The section rounds out with a discussion of Romania and Moldova in Chapter 14.

Part Five focuses on the dance cultures of the Middle East. Chapter 15 examines the dances of the Turkish, Kurdish, and Assyrian peoples living in Anatolia. The Caucasus is a landmass between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and it’s home to Armenians, Georgians, Azeris, and other peoples. These ethnicities are the topic of Chapter 16. Chapter 17 actually bridges from Iran in the Middle East to countries like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, which share similar dance and music cultures. 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 on the new tradition of “International” folk dancing (IFD), which is not tied to any particular ethnicity. 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, 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 straight through as in 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 26 is a quick look at arm, body, and head positions, and Chapter 27 gives a brief survey of common props used in folk dance. Finally, Chapter 28 is a technical discussion of the relationship between musical meter and the dancer’s rhythm.