site.btaBulgarian Community's Jantra Folk Ensemble Enters Danube Carnival in Budapest

On the open-air stage in the garden of the Hungarian National Museum on Friday evening, performers of the Jantra Folk Ensemble of the Bulgarian community presented a Thracian dance and a Shoppe dance.

They joined groups representing Gypsy, Southern Slavic, Greek, German, Romanian, Ruthenian and Slovakian nationalities living in Hungary in a show titled "Colourful Homeland", part of the 24th Danube Carnival International Cultural Festival (June 7-14).

"The Bulgarian community has two folk dance ensembles," community activist Teodora Ivanova, who is personal assistant to the Chairman of the Bulgarian Republican Self-Government in Hungary, Dr Dancso Muszev, told BTA.

The two Bulgarian folk dance ensembles in Hungary, Jantra (established in Budapest in 1996) and Roszica, are named after two rivers in parts of Bulgarian from which most of the gardeners who started the Bulgarian community in that country originate, Ivanova said. The dancers (some 100-120 children and young people) rehearse once a week at the Bulgarian Culture Home. Kids as young as 3-4 years join Roszica, Ivanova said. They first attend the rehearsals to listen to and feel the music, and if they like it, they stay on. Roszica now has at least some 50 children, she added.

Prominent Bulgarian instructors and choreographers from Bulgaria have staged most of the dances of the ensembles in Budapest, Ivanova said, naming Kaya and Hristo Ivanov, Yordan Nikolov of Parvomay, Tanya Dimitrova of Pazardzhik, Biser Grigorov and Rositsa Lozanova, and Agripina Voinova.

Both ensembles were founded by Dr Muszev, himself a long-time performer in the Martenica Folk Dance Group.