Bulgarian shovel dancing: is it a real thing?
- 10 years ago
This video has been floating around LiveLeak today and we thought we'd look into it.
The sparse information available about it says it's a Bulgarian shovel dance, so we went downstairs and asked our resident Bulgarian, Dobry, about it.
Yes, we have a Bulgarian at NMA.
Dobry explained that this video is actually narrated in Turkish and not Bulgarian.
Then he went and looked at some Bulgarian video-sharing sites and if those sources are correct, the video was in fact filmed in Bulgaria, in 2011, in Veliko Tarnovo, the historical capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Charming, no?
It's hard to confirm, but Dobry said the people in the video are Roma, or gypsies in less-politically correct terms, and it seems whoever took the video probably paid the people to perform.
He also noted that, not surprisingly, there is no traditional form of shovel dancing in Bulgaria.
The sparse information available about it says it's a Bulgarian shovel dance, so we went downstairs and asked our resident Bulgarian, Dobry, about it.
Yes, we have a Bulgarian at NMA.
Dobry explained that this video is actually narrated in Turkish and not Bulgarian.
Then he went and looked at some Bulgarian video-sharing sites and if those sources are correct, the video was in fact filmed in Bulgaria, in 2011, in Veliko Tarnovo, the historical capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Charming, no?
It's hard to confirm, but Dobry said the people in the video are Roma, or gypsies in less-politically correct terms, and it seems whoever took the video probably paid the people to perform.
He also noted that, not surprisingly, there is no traditional form of shovel dancing in Bulgaria.