“Come to the chain dance! Support what’s Bulgarian!” the invitation goes like, as sent by students from New Bulgarian University to all their coevals and colleagues from Sofia’s universities. The big chain dance is happened on May 29 at 12:50 pm in the university’s yard. It is to be distributed across the social networks and different media. It is a part of the “I Like Bulgarian Dances” campaign. NBU student Tsvetelin Dimitrov tells more about the event – he is chairman of the Cultural Committee with the Student Council and also of the Cinema, Advertisement and Show Business Club.

“We decided, me and my colleagues, to support the “I Like Bulgarian Dances” campaign, since we are convinced that our unique rhythms should be popularized. Hand by hand along the big chain dance we will show appreciation to what’s good and of high quality in Bulgarian dances - we will show that the tradition continues. The students involved come from different departments – cinema, advertisement and show business, law, economy, journalism etc. The idea is not only to unite those people, but to do it as Bulgarians. I have practiced folk dancing for a long time, professionally over the past 6 years and I can share my visualization and experience, regarding the way those influence the person that practices them. These dances are a source of health and energy and a good relaxation method. At the same time they advertise Bulgaria well.”

The Balgare Ensemble and its head Hristo Dimitrov are among the main engines of the campaign.

“This is a national, but also a global campaign,” he says. “We want to show to the whole world that the Bulgarian folk dances are the richest ones in terms of rhythm. Chain dances from May 24 were shot and the videos were uploaded in Facebook. 400 cities and towns from this country and abroad have taken part so far. We want to popularize Bulgaria, as it is a very attractive tourist destination. We have products of good quality here, but this is not known abroad. We would like to invite more people in the campaign, which relies on personal initiative. We won’t wait for the state to subsidize ad projects – we will do it ourselves. We contacted Bulgarian folk dance clubs abroad via Facebook, we made contests for a video most watched, for the best chain dance. The award for the best chain dance is a free show of the Balgare Ensemble at the winning municipality. We will invite the creators of the best video to the festival of Bulgarian clothing in Zheravna, end-August. We even have a video from the Antarctic, shot by the members of the Bulgarian expedition there. They didn’t dance, but shot their speeches, supporting our idea. They said they would always take our folk tradition to the ice continent, along with the Bulgarian flag. We continue our campaign with an interesting dancing system that we named folknetics – something like aerobics, based on uneven rhythms. Famous Bulgarian choreographers are working on it and we will select the most suitable form to be interwoven with our unique rhythm and dances. We will give the system to all the clubs across the globe, which show interest. My dream is one day everyone to be aware and in love with our folklore and our beautiful country.”

A famous men fashion company is the initiator and major donor of the campaign. The NBU students will publish a video from the chain dance on Friday, Blagovest Zlatkov is the director. Another company was to shoot the event from a helicopter.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev