FOLK DANCING ABROAD: BULGARIAN FOLK DANCE ACTIVITIES IN THE UNITED STATES TODAY

Folk dance of the Bulgarian Diaspora in the United States today is related to today's Bulgarian folk dance scene in Bulgaria at many levels. Folk dance activities in the United States (US) are initiated by people who belong to the so-called mlada emigracia (recent immigrants). These are Bulgarians who came to the US in the 1990s and later, and to a certain degree are still bound to the homeland. The majority of them are well settled and open to activities beyond their vocations and the expanding recreational folk dance movement in Bulgaria (and its driving forces) acts as a potent stimulus. Where US dance group leaders have choreographic training from Bulgaria one may observe connections to their previous professional experience in terms of repertoire and methodology. Inexperienced enthusiast-leaders, on the other hand, develop repertoire from sources distributed via media; this re-discovered Bulgarian dance repertoire gradually becomes the centrepiece of local community parties and celebrations.