Bulgaria selects first 5 entries to live human treasures’ national representative list

Bnr.bg, Veneta Pavlova, Radostin Zhelev

On June 24th, Midsummer’s Day or Enyovden that celebrates the summer solstice, the Solar Hall of the National Museum of History hosted the inaugural ceremony for the first five Bulgarian entries that will be included in the Bulgarian Representative List of Live Human Treasures. These include fire dancing, singing in two voices in the town of Nedelino, the ‘kalusha’ ritual dancing from the village of Hurletz, Northwestern Bulgaria, the traditional Vassilishka wedding from the town of Momin prohod, Sofia region and one weaponry craftsman, Dyanko Dyankov, from the town of Apriltzi, Northern Bulgaria. They were selected out of a total of 165 applications from various parts of the country.

In the words of Prof. Mila Santova, director of the Institute for Folklore with the Bulgarian Academy of Science and Bulgaria’s representative at UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage, this was not a competition with winners and losers. Bulgaria’s representative list remains open for new entries in the years to come.

“The entire Bulgarian society is winner because Bulgaria’s intangible cultural heritage gets more visibility,” she told a Radio Bulgaria reporter. “This is one of the goals of the UNESCO Convention for the preservation of that type of heritage that Bulgaria too had ratified. In its work the Intergovernmental committee drafted the operational directives for the Convention’s implementation that the General Assembly of the member states under the Convention approved in Paris only a few days ago. Two lists will be drawn under these directives, a representative, and an emergency one. The latter will include all intangible heritage sites that need urgent assistance for their preservation. The former, however, is the carrier of mankind’s historical memory.”

Valentina Vassileva, Head of the Education and Culture Department in Tzarevo municipality, received the certificate and plaquette distinctions for the fire dancing ritual preserved in its authentic version in the village of Bulgari, Southeastern Bulgaria. Fire dancing is performed traditionally on June 3rd, the day when the Bulgarian Orthodox Church used to mark the Old Style (according to the Julian calendar) holiday of St. Constantine and Helen.

“On this day the people from the village take out the icons of the mother and son saints, sanctify them in the chapel, and then take them to a spring believed to be sacred, where they sprinkle them with water and then the whole procession returns to the village. After that the local people take the icons to the ritual fire and dance in ritual circles with the icons in hand. The fire dancer, usually a woman, falls into a trance-like state and steps onto the live coals barefooted. The ritual has its pagan and Christian roots and many legends have been told about it. The popular belief has it that Greek settlers had brought it to this part of Bulgaria.”
A museum collection of photographs and old films will add to the story of fire dancing that will be unveiled in the village of Bulgari and the town of Tzarevo.