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The Society of Folk Dance Historians (SFDH) Ajde lepa Maro Folk Dance Folklore                By Herwig Milde, 2024 [ Home | About | Encyclopedia | | Publications | Members ]

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By a discussion among members of the Eastern European Folklife Center (EEFC) list, we became again aware of a pretty and simple dance from Serbia, which we first got to know around 1980. As so often in this time, it came to us via the United States, i.e., into the German university folk dance scene. We talk about Ajde lepa Maro. At the time, we liked to dance to it quite often. We do not know its further fate, at least as far as groups outside our town are concerned. Here it was danced at least until 2014.

On its journey across the Atlantic (and due to frequent use), the dance suffered a little. We now see that its original form differs from "ours" in important stylistic details — by the way, this is the case already in my handwritten dance description of 1980. Also, we didn't care about the rather naughty lyrics of the song for a long time and we danced Ajde lepa Maro completely unaware for thirty years.

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THE SONG

Ajde lepa Maro is initially a song. It tells about a young woman who is called to various services to her master, but refuses every time on the grounds that she cannot stay away from the Kolo. The recording¹ usually used for dancing contains the following lyrics:

Other sources present the lyrics in the same form. Vladimir Djordjević's collection of songs from 1909² contains two other stanzas that go even further. They continue the rebellious attitude of the previous verses and push it to the extreme:

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THE DANCE

Thanks to Ron Houston (SFDH)³, we know the origins of the dance: According to recent information, Dennis Boxell presented it for the first time at the Kolo Festival in San Francisco in November 1964. Boxell refers to "the France Marolt Students' Folklore Group of Ljubljana" (Slovenia); their source is unknown. They can have learned or verified their knowledge of Ajde Lepa Maro from "Narodne igre, I knjiga" (Jankovic', Ljubica & Danica, Beograd, 1934), or from another book.

The song, on the other hand, already appears in a collection from 1909, see above. (Dance description here: Ajde Lepa Maro according to Dennis Boxell).

However, we think it is more likely that Dennis Boxell got to know the dance as part of his cooperation with Desa Djordjević.⁴ Ajde lepa Maro is included in her 1988 collection. We find it interesting that also in D. Djordjević's book only the first four stanzas of the song are noted.⁵ (Dance description here: Ajde Lepa Maro according to Desa Djordjević).

Youtube shows a whole series of videos with Ajde lepa Maro. However, almost all of them come from the Western folk dance community. So it looks like Ajde lepa Maro is a product of the recreational dance scene outside Serbia. On the other hand, however, there are the early incidences: in a collection of songs in 1909 and a collection of dances in 1934 — both are Serbian sources. On the other hand, the very active Serbian dance teacher Vladimir Tanasijević does not have the dance in his program of over 100 dances — not even other Serbian dance teachers, as far as we know. And finally, there is the over-representation of non-Serbian sources on Youtube. In addition, the first dance description from 1967 (Boxell) does not contain the bouncing in the ankle, which is so typical of the style of Serbian dances. Shouldn't one come to the conclusion that this, too, is folk dance folklore? Not quite ...

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Used with permission of the author.

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