Peć Choreography

About Choreography – Songs and Dances from Peć

The song and dance of this region do not bring anything specifically Metohian compared to other regions. In Peć, Prizren, Kosovo, and Montenegrin folk traditions intersect, and recently also Serbian.

A characteristic of the Peć region is the appearance of a mixed dance circle where women and men are not separated, as Peć citizens were not subject to Turkish influence and did not separate women from men. The only exception was adult girls who, from the age of fourteen, were not allowed to join the mixed dance circle until they got married. In exchange, girls in Peć had their own day for dancing, the third Saturday of the Easter fast, when they gathered at the Patriarchate of Peć from all over the region, dressed festively, and after communion in the Patriarchate, danced.

A characteristic of the dance itself in the Peć region is greater freedom of movement, a cheerful spirit that even characterized women's dancing. Women in Peć were allowed to dance lively, jump, and shout. This cheerful, effortless life and the joint dance of boys and girls created a kind, direct, and accommodating type of Peć woman, reflected in the general opinion that "Prizren women are proud, Peć women are cheerful and approachable" - as they used to say. These qualities are reflected in the way of dancing - while Prizren women bring measured noble bearing and a cultivated sense of measure to the dance, Peć women express a lively temperament and open directness through dance.

Older residents of Peć danced Pećko lesnoto, a light dance, the most widespread type of southern Serbian dance that was played all over Serbia before World War II as Kraljevo oro. In Peć, women dance this type of dance with the songs Posejo dedo sitan bosiljak, Igralo kolo na livadi, Aj, što mi se bunar voda muti. The last of these three songs is also sung in the Kosovo region, but it is not danced to.

Dancing without musical accompaniment, so-called mute, occurs in Peć. Its peculiarity is that it lasts a long time and the tempo significantly speeds up. Unlike other regions of Southern Serbia, Peć does not dance with Prizren's double steps forward, the soft emphasis of Lazarpolje's dancing, or the improvised small steps that Priština residents introduce into this type of dance.

In Peć, they also dance kalachoyna or kalađoyna (Kalacojna ala turca), but without knives. The origin of this dance is Turkish, as indicated by its name, type, as well as musical elements, melodic and instrumental. This dance is one of the few performed without singing, only with music. Kalachoyna is usually accompanied by zurna and drums. In addition to these instruments, tambourine and clay pots are also used in Peć's music.

A special type of songs, which can be classified in the group of ritual songs, are wedding songs that accompany all wedding customs. Like all ritual songs, wedding songs from Peć are almost uniform, so very often there are several songs that differ only according to the text related to a specific act in the wedding ceremony. All songs for dance in the Metohija region have an erotic character - the texts contain love motifs and depict different male-female relationships.

In Peć's dance songs, the eight-beat predominates, mixed eight and six-beat, ten-beat, mixed ten-beat, eleven-beat, and twelve-beat. The melodies for the dance have a uniform, archaic character. They are of small range and similar to each other in color, with minor variations.

The music of the Peć region was influenced by other regions and cultures, which it unified into a specific whole, so the way influences were received and the choice of elements that were adopted is an indicator of the authenticity of Peć's dance and music, which best shows the nature and way of life of Peć's people. Such music and dance can serve as an example of harmony and tolerance that once prevailed between different nationalities. A combination of dances and songs of different character and origin provides a vivid picture of people of different nationalities brought closer together by music and dance, included in a common dance circle, and erased national and social differences. Music reconciles, dance unites, our past shows us this and calls us to return to our roots.