The Symbolism of typical Arbëresh Dance


 "Arbëresh Dance" is a dance with popular, rhythmic motifs accompanied by a choir singing old traditional Arbëresh songs, of Balkan origin.

Arbëresh folk dance over the years is a popular event played on Easter Tuesday for countries with the Byzantine rite and Carnival for Latin rite countries.


Over the centuries in some areas, the dance has taken some of the motifs of the Calabrian dance "Tarantella". The dance is played in a circle, where groups of women dressed in magnificent costumes all take the same steps, or in a semi-circle drawn by the first dancer in a row with plays the role of the guide. The dance is performed mainly by groups of 6 or 12 people being connected to each other by means of a headscarf.


The dance ends when the first dancer in a row closes the circle to catch a person who does not belong to the Arbëresh community, to whom a soot mark is placed on his face, in such a way that he is obliged to pay to drink for it for the whole group.


In the past, this ritual symbolized the historical conflict between Albanians and locals. Perhaps it is the passionate poetic rite of Easter, perhaps it wanted to recall an important victory of the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg over the Turks on April 27, 1467.


In the dance danced by women, various Albanian rhapsodies are sung, such as "Konstandini and Doruntina", while in the dance danced by men is sung "Skënderbeg in one morning".


The dance for the inhabitants of Arbëresh represents something more than just folklore or history, which takes on the meaning of cultural claim, ethnic identity, where women, in particular, are its protagonists. 

Today, in some places the Arbëresh dance is a case where women, especially young women, wear beautiful clothes and men wear a woolen cone in the shape of a cone.

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