Esther Willems - choreographer from The Hague who believes that the Bulgarian soul is encoded in the dances

The Hague, a city in the south of the Netherlands, the administrative centre and the place where the Queen lives and works...

Hardly anyone associates this city with Bulgarian folklore and traditions. But the fact is that the interest in Bulgarian folklore, and the horo and rachenitsa dances in The Hague dates back to the 1970s and 1980s. This was a time of heightened interest in folklore and especially in the dances and music of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. A whole generation of choreography teachers emerged in the Netherlands who studied the dances of the Balkans, especially Bulgarian dances, and taught them to their students.

Unfortunately, little was known or talked about this in Bulgaria in the years before the fall of the Iron Curtain. However, it is a fact that choreographers from the Netherlands participated in the Fourth National Festival of Bulgarian Folk Art in Koprivshtitsa in 1981. Esther Willems, a choreographer and teacher of Bulgarian folk dances in The Hague, also remembers her first visit to Bulgaria.

Today, Esther Willems has been traveling to Bulgaria for more than 25 years and has been a guest at the Koprivshtitsa festival many times. Her Bulgarian adventure began with the ensemble she founded in 1988, a children's ensemble with 12 girls and 12 boys called "Zarove" (Dice). With this ensemble, she began inviting Bulgarian ensembles to the Netherlands and traveling to Bulgaria for performances, making contacts with Bulgarian dancers and choreographers.

Esther Willems with the dancers from Zora Folk Dance Club in The Hague.

Around the same time, a Bulgarian dance company called Praznik (Celebration) was founded in The Hague, and Esther joined it. Its choreographers came to Bulgaria to study the dances of Thrace and Dobrudzha, and the Bulgarian costumes for the dancers were sent from the Shopluka region.

This experience cemented her lifelong connection with Bulgarian rhythms and her colleagues from all over Bulgaria.

Esther was only 19 when she first encountered Bulgarian folk dances. She tells us that at the time, dances from the Balkans, Armenia, Israel and other countries were a big hit in the Netherlands. But music from Bulgaria always felt different to her. "It felt like a big and dramatic story expressed in music. Especially when the bagpipes played, I found something mysterious in the sound," says Esther Willems.

"In your dancing you use a lot of different movements with your feet and hands. It is difficult. When you're young, you're looking for an adventure, to learn something new and unfamiliar, and Bulgarian folklore was more difficult compared to the dances of Greece and Romania, so I decided to take up the challenge. I became a teacher of Bulgarian folk dance.

I would like to thank prof. Nikolay Tsvetkov and Assoc. Prof. Georgi Garov, both from the South-West University "Neofit Rilski" in Blagoevgrad. They gave me the opportunity to study with state support. I enrolled in 2017 and graduated in September 2021. It was a great adventure for me - to be a student in Bulgaria at the age of 65. I studied part-time because choreography is my profession and I had to earn my living in The Hague. Besides teaching Bulgarian migrants here, I now work as an official choreographer at the Bulgarian school "Sts Cyril and Methodius" in The Hague. I also work with a lot of foreigners who are interested, and together we have formed an amateur group just for Bulgarian horo dances.

Sometimes Bulgarian immigrants come to our group and we try to dance together, but the Dutch dances are different. Because of the existing arrangements of Bulgarian folk dances, they think that these are authentic Bulgarian folk dances, but in fact they are dancing an updated version. Now many of the dancers have the opportunity to come to Bulgaria to see the authentic horo, they are keen to see what I show them - the original versions. The dance, the steps, the rhythm - they are part of the truth of the Bulgarian soul, they are the history of Bulgaria.

Esther Williams has devoted many hours of her life to learning and teaching the steps and choreographing the dances of Bulgaria. Every visit to Bulgaria is a great experience for her and she loves to come back, especially for the people:

"It is easy to say what I love most about Bulgaria - I love the smell of the air in your country, I love the nature and above all I love the people! When you come here as a foreigner, walk into a café, say who you are, where you come from and show that you speak a little Bulgarian, the faces of the Bulgarians light up and a whole wave of hospitality goes out to you. They greet me like a relative. You never find that in Holland and I miss it very much in my country."

Photos: personal archive of Esther Willems, facebook.com/zoradenhaag

Translated and posted by Elizabeth Radkova

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Esther Willems - choreographer from The Hague who believes that the Bulgarian soul is encoded in the dances

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