There are to my knowledge two different dances named Fatiše kolo circulating (no pun intended!) in the United States recreational folk-dance scene, one that I introduced in 1967 and another introduced by Anatol Joukowsky, also in the late 1960s; I don't know the second one exactly: it has grapevine steps plus individual complete turns by all dancers at the end of the pattern. The version I taught is exactly as Martha notated it with the addition of "hands joined and held forward at shoulder height, without straightening elbows; leader (on R end of line) may flourish handkerchief in R hand."

I learned the dance in Vranje in 1952 while on tour with the Duquesne Tamburitzans. We performed there and were hosted by the local dance group, who taught us a few Vranje dances, including Fatiše kolo vranjske devojke, whose steps and lyrics I notated. Already at that time the old dances of the area were no longer spontaneously alive at local doings, but this group (some of whom were members of the families of the older dancers seen on the 1948 dance film doing Vranjanka to the tune of "Belo Lenče") was dedicated to preserving them. I recall their performance as being minimally "choreographed" and impressively tasteful (except for their mandatory "Partizansko" number where they all trooped on in uniform with rifles and went through an epic mock-combat drill to a peppy tune in Pajdučko meter!). Those were my earliest Balkan dance research days, and in retrospect I realize I should have asked more questions; however, retrospect sometimes has the advantage of greater wisdom, so I'm better prepared now to make some background comments on the dance.

I was later to learn that the melody of Fatiše kolo vranjske devojke was used by the Serbian composer Petar Konjović in his opera "Koštana," based on the Vranje-based play of the same name by Bora Stanković. Whether Konjović took the melody from the folk repertoire and stylized it for his opera, or whether, like so many of that work's tunes, he composed it and it was later embraced by the local vranjanci and perpetuated as their own, I don't know, although it wouldn't take much research to find out. In the opera score, the song is entitled, interestingly enough in the light of current Eastern European Folklife Center (EEFC) e-mail discussions, "Velika čočečka igra." I have never seen a performance of Koštana, so I don't know how the dance has been staged by modern choreographers.

The music first became available in the early-to-mid-sixties in the United States on an imported RTB 10" 33 disk entitled "Musical Landscapes of Yugoslavia – Vranje" ("Muzički pejsaži Jugoslavije – Vranje"), recorded by an ad-hoc group of singers and Djordje Karaklajić's "Veliki narodni orkestar."

The metrical pattern of the "9" IS unusual: 2 3 2 2 (q-S-q-q), found principally in Bulgarian and occasionally in Macedonian music. On the other hand, at that time Macedonia was known as "Southern Serbia" and to Belgradians "Southern Serbia" started at Niš. So maybe this treatment of the "9" was Konjović's impression of a suitable rhythm.

(Side note: The composer Belá Bartók was one of the first "Western" musicians to investigate what he called "Bulgarian rhythms." In his actual works, however, such as his "Bulgarian Dances," he never used an actually attested Bulgarian rhythm pattern – he was totally familiar with the "ethnomusicological" data, but in his own work he merely implemented the "principles" of it. Maybe Konjović did the same thing.)

Fatiše kolo, contrary to common belief, does not mean "a kolo called 'Fatiše'" (I heard of a folkdancer up north who called it "Fatima's kolo"). It is actually the 1st two words of the first line: "Fatiše kolo vranjske devojke" ("The Vranje girls joined in a kolo" or, with Serbian word order: "They joined in a kolo, the Vranje girls.") "Fatiti" is dialect for "hvatiti" meaning "to join, to grasp (hands)." The song goes on to tell how the Vranje girls "fatiše kolo" near the town well in Vranje, led by "Mitko's beautiful daughter Taša" (characters from the play/opera). Another character, Koštana herself, was an actual person, a Romani woman whose photo appears in one of the volumes of the Janković Sisters "Narodne igre." The sisters told me the story of how the aging Koštana was brought from Vranje to Belgrade to see the opera bearing her name, and created a scene in the theater, screaming "To nisam ja! To nisam ja!" ("That's not me!").