Monica Sandu '24
Co-Executive Editor
The term “hora,” along with its variants “horo” and “oro,” comes from the Greek “χορός” (khoros), meaning “dance.”[1] It is a category of folk dance found throughout the Balkans and in many Jewish communities. [2] While each culture has its own version, the hora is generally an up-tempo dance where the dancers link arms and dance in a circle. In Romanian, this is referred to as “playing the hora,” describing the dance’s joyful nature. Hora also refers to a large social gathering where, fittingly, the hora is danced. It was the heart of a village’s social life and became known as the occasion where young people would go to hopefully find their future spouse.[3]
A typical Romanian hora begins with a couple of beats of instrumental, allowing for all the participants to get a sense of the music and pace. The dancers form a circle and either join hands or put their hands on each other’s shoulders. They begin by moving counterclockwise, taking three alternating steps forward, starting with their left foot (left-right-left).[4] Some dances continue this pattern around continuously, while others have the dancers pause, stomp their feet, and go back the other way. Often, dancers will raise their arms and contract the circle, then lower their arms and enlarge the circle while spinning around. The pace and steps can be varied to land on the beat, in double time, or even quadruple time for the very adventurous. There can be an unofficial leader whose movements direct the changes in size and/or direction of the circle, but oftentimes, changes arise spontaneously out of the group feeling the music and improvising. Because everyone typically knows all the constituent steps, they can be combined in endless ways. Some toes may get stepped on and shoulders bumped together, but it’s all part of the fun!
Pictured: Children in Moldovan folk costume dancing the hora.
Credit: https://noi.md/md/news_id/220979.
While a hora can be danced to most any music, there are also many songs specifically composed to be a hora. For Romania, perhaps the most famous and historically significant of these is Hora Unirii (“The Hora of Unification”). It was composed to commemorate the 1859 unification of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldova, which together would form the start of modern-day Romania.[5] Its lyrics are taken from a poem published three years earlier, whose first stanza calls out: “Let us go hand in hand, those with a Romanian heart, to spin the hora of brotherhood, on Romanian soil.”[6] Music bolstered the rise of Romanian national identity in the 19th century by analogizing broad political changes to the hora, a symbol of community known in every village in the land.
The hora, in all its variants, continues to play a prominent role as a symbol of cultural identity. In the 1982 Eurovision Song Contest,[7] for example, Israel placed second with the song “Hora,” whose chorus proclaims: “And also the Hora, the one with the Hey, its voice still rises, its voice has not been silenced…Its song fills my heart forever!”[8] When Serbia hosted Eurovision in 2008, following its win the previous year (which coincided with its debut as an independent country[9]), it chose the song “Oro” to represent it as the host entry, singing of a mother’s lullaby.[10] And in 2009, when the contest was hosted in Moscow, Moldova sent the hyper-energetic “Hora Din Moldova,” which, despite being primarily in English in the studio version, was performed on stage entirely in Romanian.[11]
The hora is a staple at weddings and on New Years’ Eve. It is danced at festivals and whenever there is folk music playing. Its purpose is to get people moving, to make people feel good and to come together as a group. There is even a traditional Romanian embroidery pattern depicting hora dancers with joined hands.
If you’re interested, come to Caplin Auditorium on Thursday, November 10 at 6:00pm to learn the Romanian hora for yourself! We dance to celebrate. We dance to connect with our past, our present, and our future. Hai la hora![12]
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ms7mn@virginia.edu
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hora_(dance)#Romania_and_Moldova
[2] Id.
[3] https://folkdancefootnotes.org/begin/hora-romania/
[4] https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hora
[5] https://jurnalul.ro/special-jurnalul/cum-a-fost-hora-unirii-un-manifest-politic-muzical-602309.html
[6] https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hora_Unirii
[7] Eurovision is an international song contest that takes place every year in May. Countries who are members of the European Broadcast Union send artists to represent them in one of Europe’s biggest televised events. Think of it as a battle of the bands where countries, rather than just individual artists, compete for glory. The songs must not have been released prior to September of the previous year and must not have been previously performed outside of the Eurovision context.
[8] https://lyricstranslate.com/en/%D7%94%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94-hora.html
[9] Serbia had previously competed as part of both Yugoslavia and later Serbia and Montenegro.
[10] https://lyricstranslate.com/en/oro-oro.html
[11] This was seen by many as a rejection of Russian influence in Moldova in favor of celebrating Moldovan culture and identity.
[12] Romanian: “Come dance the hora!”