Serbian folkdance seminar in Tripkova, Serbia
by Mika Yehezkeli
Maybe they haven’t exactly been keeping it a secret, but until recently, if you didn’t know French, you would have no way to know about this charming Serbian dance seminar tucked away in a village that isn’t even on the map.
Folk dance seminars in the Balkans have a charm of their own, and this one is no exception. It is run by a teacher-accordionist team who so obviously love what they are doing it is hard not to fall in love: with them, with the music, with the dances.
See more picturesThe dances are challenging, and the dancing is hard. Vladica believes in the “practice, practice, and more practice” method of teaching and by the end of the seminar, you will have practiced enough to know all the dances.
Vladica practices what he preaches, and in three different seminars, I’ve never found him unprepared.
Seminar participants are housed in houses around the village. Most of these houses are not really within walking distance of the school where the dances are taught and Tripkova is not somewhere you want to be without a car.
I don’t know what it was like in the other houses but our hosts won us over by greeting us before breakfast with shots of slibovic . They didn’t speak any English, and I spent the first morning pantomiming my infatuation with kajmak, evidently successfully since it appeared after that each morning. If you’ve never tasted kajmak, you don’t know what you’re missing, but you’ve probably met its poor relation, butter.
You will probably stop at least once on your way to Tripkova, and this will give you a chance to learn the important first word that you need to learn upon arriving in a new country. In Serbian, it’s “pivo” (beer). Tripkova is only 200 kilometers from Belgrade, but you cannot get there in 2 hours no matter how fast you drive, and after traveling 200 kilometers, you can stop expecting to arrive momentarily, since you are still only halfway way to your destination.
The French have other secrets as well: they have some serious dancing going on in France, and some seriously amazing dancers. Young dancers! But about that seminar…
Sorry, not finished yet.