Petrunino horo [Moreau/Rizov]

Petrunino (horo) is a circle dance from the Šopluk region of Bulgarian danced to the folk love song about a girl named Petruna, “Petruno, pile šareno.” The dance and song are very popular in Bulgaria, and the dance variations are as prolific as the music recordings. The simple variations discussed here were taught by Yves Moreau, who learned them in 1969, as did Dick Crum in 1968, from Ilija Rizov, lead dancer of Kutev Bulgarian State Ensemble. This is a traditional version from Rizov’s hometown of Radomir near Sofia in western Bulgaria. More elaborate performance versions exist.

An unnecessary discussion about irregular/uneven/asymmetric rhythms and time signature (meter) in Bulgarian music

The meter is often listed with the time signature/meter 12/8, and it may be, but the song Petruno is most commonly played by bands as 13/8: SSQM, but the dance breaks up the second S into two Q’s and doesn’t worry that the last beat group is slightly shorter than the first. What’s more, it’s a feel of QqQqQM: (2+2)+(2+2)+2+3 in the music, where lower case q is emphasized less than Q (tertiary accent), so they act a a pulsating S: S = Qq. The song “Eleno mome” has a similar music rhythmic structure expressed as 13/8, 12/8, or 7/8, but the dance rhythm for Eleno mome is SSQS. Some recordings of Eleno mome are indeed SSQS, but many of the brass band recordings are SQQQS, which is the Petrunino rhythm.

As a dancer, you don’t care about any of this time signature nonsense. In fact, you aren’t going to count to 13, 12, or even 7. Those minor differences in beat bending don’t change the dance steps; just the music feel. For this dance, you count to five, if you do any counting (SQQQS). All you care is that the band or the DJ did the work to select an appropriate tune for the dance with the proper rhythm for the dance you are trying to do. (That concept is actually backwards, because the dancer is supposed to do the work to figure out a dance that fits the music being played. Sure, the dance has already been created, so now you are just looking to recreate the magical conjunction of music and dance interplay!) Finally, most Bulgarian/Balkan musicians who have grown up just playing music wouldn’t bother to think about the music time signature. This is a Western music tool to analyze and describe what is happening when the music is played and the record that on paper, aka sheet music. To the Bulgarian player, music is a feeling, not a science. They would just tell you the beat in terms of slows and quicks or tell you, “That’s Pajduško,” or “That’s Kopanica,” or, in this case, “That’s Petrunino!” If you are looking for some proper discussions on Bulgarian rhythms, here’s further reading: Fusion Magazine: Exploration of Bulgarian Rhythms; Wikipedia: Bulgarian folk dance; Folkdance Footnotes: Bulgarian Dance Rhythms.