Substudy group on Round dances

Collaborative research by academic dance practitioners

The Sub-Study Group on Round Dances was launched in 2002 and has held around 18 physical meetings since then, often twice a year. Following the publication of Waltzing Through Europe: Attitudes towards Couple Dances in the Long Nineteenth Century in 2020, the group began a new collaborative project.

Couples Turning in an Embrace investigates the specific movement logic of turning in an embrace across European dance traditions. Rather than treating dances as isolated national or stylistic forms, we focus on the shared technical mechanisms that travel, adapt, and hybridise across cultural and geographical contexts. The group brings together academics who are also active dance practitioners, combining embodied knowledge with comparative analysis of audiovisual material.

One aim in the present phase is to explore and test the digital tools and services emerging within the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH). Building on our already systematised movement terminology, we seek to identify how our material can be represented, annotated, structured, and made accessible within Cloud-related frameworks. Our work will also contribute sector-specific feedback on the needs and challenges of handling dance-related intangible cultural heritage in digital infrastructures.

The network currently includes contributors and research material from Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine. Built on shared embodied practice and collaborative annotation, the project continues to grow as additional practitioners and scholars join.

Because our members are embedded in extensive networks spanning dance organisations, community archives, safeguarding practitioners, and university-based heritage research and education, our new project is uniquely positioned to formalise and mobilise these connections and to draw wide attention to the possibilities offered by the Heritage Cloud.

We have already worked together in preparatory meetings in Vienna, Warsaw, and Prague, where participating members documented and exchanged practical insights. A few images from these events are shown above and below.

This project is run by the Substudy Group on Round Dances under the Study Group on Ethnochoreology of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD). The same research community previously published the open-access volume Waltzing Through Europe (2019): https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0174

Photos from project meetings, used with the participants' permission for project purposes.'

For information, contact: Egil Bakka – egil.bakka@ntnu.no

Archetypes of couple-turnings with an embrace

The following are descriptions of terminological tools we use in the project. They are posted here as a stable point of reference for the project. It is a survey of main types, and we call them archetypes (the core form around which variations cluster).

Couple-turning in an embrace

Two persons turn together in close contact, with one hand holding the partner’s body and the other either holding the body, arm or joining hands. This is an archetype (the typical form). Similar variants are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

The three basic techniques

At the present stage of our research, it appears that the immense variation found in couple-turning in an embrace can be distilled into three basic principles, each with distinct subtypes, and the illustrations below present these three principles.

Twirling Waltzing and whirling

The technique of couple-turning in an embrace seems to have emerged in central Europe in the 1500s. It spread across Europe and to the European diaspora and is still in use. It is Europe’s most prominent contribution to the world's heritage of social dancing. This project aims to investigate its development. This is possible because the core patterns - as shown here - are limited, even if the range of variations is immense.

Types of couple-turning in an embrace

These terms refer to techniques that serve as elements of dances. They do not refer to whole dances; even if, in some cases, a dance can contain only one technique. A technique is not restricted to specific musical meters; it is found across a range of meters. An element of waltzing in ¾ is found in the dance waltz, and waltzing in 2/4 is found in the polka.

Twirling
The feet of one partner are positioned to the side of the other partner’s feet while dancing, and turning clockwise or counterclockwise.

Elementary twirling
This twirling is danced with a step consisting of two paces[1], one more stressed than the other. It is often performed as LS – HT in terms of svikt (Example for Basque country) https://dantzan.eus/bideoak/barkoxe-1979-kontra-dantza (Example from Ireland) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpPUaN6ldaM&list=PLmJGagVAHqqYB6CdAi-ZQUZOUG5Zf90ox

Augmented twirling
This twirling is danced with one step of elementary twirling and two walking steps. The order of the elements may vary (example from Sweden). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKw3gtJHvcY&list=RDkKw3gtJHvcY&start_radio=1&t=74s

Back and forwards whirling
This twirling is danced with steps consisting of two paces. One partner takes a step forward while the other partner steps backwards, then they step vice versa. The steps are mostly done LS – RS in terms of svikt (example from Norway). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KJcPwRDkw&list=RDW8KJcPwRDkw&start_radio=1

Free twirling
This twirling is danced with other steps than the ones described above, most often with steps also used elsewhere in the dance, and different kinds of steps can be mixed. (example from Cratia). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaRin32ucww&t=63s

Waltzing
The partners face each other and both turn clockwise or counterclockwise. The right foot of one partner is placed between or in front of the gap between the other partner’s feet while turning. One complete rotation (360°) takes two measures of music. It can be danced with two kinds of steps, which are often mixed freely.

Waltzing - three pace step (Example from Norway) 2/4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ZQAIyYWe8, (Example from Poland) 3/4:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBiwBhnCHsA

Waltzing that mixes 3 pace and 1 pace steps ¾;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ZQAIyYWe8&t=190s

Whirling
The partners face each other and both turn clockwise or counterclockwise. The right foot of one partner is placed between or in front of the gap between the other partner’s feet while turning. One complete rotation (360°) takes one or one and a half measures of music.

Two-beat whirling
This whirling takes two beats of music, one for each pace (Example from Austria). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-w5qqfvi44&

Three-beat whirling
This whirling takes three beats of music and two paces; one pace takes one beat, the other takes two. In 2/4 (Example from Denmark); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5s3_tRq0Ec
In ¾ (Example from Sweden); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPkFmdt9p_s

The couple-turning types listed above are archetypes spread across Europe and represent the whole vocabulary of the technique known so far.

[1] The term phase is used in a meaning similar to a change of support, whereas step is used in the meaning of a period of footwork consisting of one or more paces.

Partners of the project Couples Turning in an Embrace

Sub-Study Group on Round Dances
The coordinating and applying organisation
https://sites.google.com/view/coupleturning/start

Association “Veliko Kolo”
https://www.velikokolo.org/

Austrian Federal Folk Dance Association
https://volkstanz.at/

Choreomundus - Erasmus Mundus Master in Dance and Movement as
Practical Knowledge and Heritage
https://choreomundus.org/

Polish Section of CIOFF®
https://www.cioff.pl/en

Dance & History e.V.
https://www.danceandhistory.org/en/V

Dantzan - Association for Basque Dance
https://dantzan.eus/

English Folk Dance and Song Society
https://www.efdss.org/

Hungarian Association for Ethnochoreology
https://etnokoreologia.hu/about-hae/

Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences:
https://www.eu.avcr.cz/en/

Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore
www.ukrfolk.ca

Nordic Association for Folk Dance Research
http://www.folkedansforskning.com/

Norwegian Centre for Traditional Music and Dance
https://www.folkemusikkogfolkedans.no/

Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute of Ethnomusicology
https://gni.zrc-sazu.si/en

Transylvania Folklore Association
https://www.asociatii.net/cluj/asociatie-asociatia-folclorica-transilvania-cui27968301.html

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