Petrunino horo [Philip Koutev Ensemble]

This version of Petrunino (horo) from the Philip Koutev Bulgarian Folk Ensemble is a prolific one on the YouTubes. Please see the main page for general info on Petrunino here.

The Bulgarian State Ensemble for Folk Song and Dance, also known as the Filip Kutev Ensemble, usually anglicized to the “Philip Koutev” Ensemble, was formed in 1951 by Bulgarian composer and arranger Filip Kutev (Bulgarian: Филип Кутев) with his wife Maria Kuteva (Bulgarian language gives gender to last names). The first such ensemble created to showcase the rich folk song and dance heritage of Bulgaria, now nearly every major city in Bulgaria has such an ensemble modeled on Koutev’s format and repertoire, including his choral arrangements. Since 1994, Philip Kutev’s daughter, Prof. Dr. Elena Kuteva, has been the chief artistic director of the Philip Kutev Ensemble.

You can read up on the Philip Kutev Ensemble on RE Classical and on the group’s website (only in Bulgarian). You can find dance videos in YouTube searches (usually the Romanized Bulgarian shows hits for Cyrillic Bulgarian) and you can find music recordings in the usual places. I have a love-hate relationship with their videos. I love the dancing and the dancers, but the videos are targeted for watcher of dance rather than dancers of dance. The camera usually cuts to faces and chest shots right when you are looking to see the footwork. Fortunately, the sometimes produce instructional videos as well on the Ivan Popov YouTube channel, as is the case for their choreography of Petrunino (see below). Of course, the instruction is in Bulgarian, but I don’t care much for words in dance instruction anyhow!