Information: A dance.

Translation: Dragan's dance

Pronunciation: drah-gah-NOH-voh KOH-loh

Other name: Geamparalele

Source: Atanas Kolarovski

Region: Serbia

Music: AK-008 Side A, Band 4

"This line dance comes from East Serbia, from the Pirot region near the Bulgarian border. It is a popular dance done at festivals, weddings and other occasions. This particular music was arranged by Dragan, so it is called Draganovo kolo."

–Atanas Kolarovski

"Draganovo kolo is a Râčenica-type dance from the area around the town of Zaječar in Eastern Serbia. The Serbian styling distinguishes it from similar dances found in adjacent areas in Bulgaria; to wit, the feet tend to "stick" to the ground, with what will be referred to below as "hops" being accomplished by straightening and flexing the knee of the leg with weight, rather than lifting the heel (much less the whole foot) off the ground."

–JIP

Zaječar and Pirot are not terribly far apart and both are in fact adjacent to the Vlach-flavored bulge of Northwest Bulgaria. It is my understanding that the demography around Zaječar is mixed Vlach and Serbian, so that looks highly plausible to me. Standing in Pirot, in which I have spent some time on a couple of trips and in which Râčenica is well understood, there is at least one serious clump of mountains blocking the view in the direction of Zaječar and I think there are more on the other side of those, so I am disinclined to accept a dual-origin compromise without very serious persuasion. Rather than point fingers and pick favorites here, I would counsel asking Atanas Kolarovski from whom he learned this dance and follow the thread back from there. As with his Albanian repertoire, I conjecture Atanas obtained this dance from an ensemble or choreographer from somewhere up yonder and generously shared it with us.

–Michael Kuharski