Dance
Preserving the Art
of Folk Dance
BY ANGELA MATUA
AMATUA@QNS.COM
On the second floor of a build-ing
populated by a driving
school, a clothing store, a
bar and a pharmacy, chil-dren
of all ages storm into a ballet studio
in Astoria to learn how to dance.
But the kind of dance they practice does
not resemble ballet. Instead, the students at
Kud Halaturko learn traditional folk dances
that originated in Balkan countries such as
Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia
and Bulgaria.
Led by choreographer Samir Handa-novic
the students, whose ages range from
5 to 18, practice every Friday and Saturday
night to participate in competitions and
perform at parties and other functions.
Handanovic, who emigrated to the
United States in 1998 from Bosnia, has
been teaching traditional folk dance for
37 years. After graduating from a per-forming
arts school and opening his own
dance studios in Croatia and Germany,
he moved to Idaho to escape a war-torn
34 MARCH 2018 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
region of Europe.
He’s been dancing for so long that “I
tell my friends I have to go to the hospital
to get the folk dance surgically removed
from me.”
He moved to New York in 2002 after
hearing about an opportunity to teach folk
dancing to students in Queens. For more
than seven years, Handanovic has been
the main choreographer at the studio at
31-04 Broadway.
He said he has taught six generations of
students dances ranging from Halaturko,
a popular Montenegro dance at weddings
and the Užičko. For each dance, perform-ers
hold hands and dance in a circle while
performing intricate footwork.
Each country’s version of folk dancing
requires differing footwork and melodies
but they also share similarities. The cos-tumes
or nosnja worn by the dancers range
greatly depending on the region. For Alba-nian
folk dances, performers wear black
costumes with gold embellishments. In
Montenegro, the costumes are white with
gold accents. The patterns are extremely
intricate and Handanovic enlists women
Photos courtesy of Facebook/KudHalaturko Photos courtesy of Facebook/KudHalaturko
Photos courtesy of Facebook/KudHalaturko
