Bulgarian folk dances are intimately related to the music of Bulgaria. This distinctive feature of Balkan folk music is the asymmetrical meter, built up around various combinations of 'quick' and 'slow' beats. The music, in Western musical notation, is often described using compound meter notation, where the notational meter accents, i.e., the heard beats, can be of different lengths, usually 1, 2, 3, or 4. Many Bulgarian dances are line dances, in which the dancers dance in a straight or curved line, holding hands.
Overview
Many Bulgarian dances are line dances, with the dancers holding hands in a straight or curved line, facing in toward the center of the dance space. Originally men and women danced in separate lines, or in a gender-segregated line in which the last woman and first man held opposite ends of a handkerchief, to avoid gender contact but today men and women often dance in mixed lines. Several different handholds are used in the different dances" Holding hands down at waist level, the arms of adjacent dancers in the shape of a "V", right hand facing forward, left hand facing back Holding hands at shoulder level, with the arms of adjacent dancers in the shape of a "W", right hand palm up, left hand palm down "Teacup hold", in which each dancer places his left hand on his stomach making a "handle" with his left arm, and loops his right hand loosely through the arm of the right-hand dancer Shoulder hold, with the arms held out straight horizontally to the sides, the hands resting on the near shoulders of the adjacent dancers. This was originally a men's hold, used only in the men's line. Belt hold (na lesa), with each dancer holding the front of the belt or sash of the two adjacent dancers, left arm over right
Bulgarian dances are distinctive for their subtle rhythms and intricate footwork. In some dances, the dancers repeat the same pattern of steps throughout the dance, while others are "called" dances with several different steps in which the leader calls out changes in the steps at his discretion. Still, others have a basic step which individual dancers may embellish at specific points with variations like stamps and foot slaps.
In dances in which the line moves to the right or left, the dancer at the head of the line is the "leader". It is his responsibility to lead the line so it doesn't collide with other lines, and in "called" dances to call the variations. New dancers joining a dancing line join at the end; it is bad manners to join at the head of the line, in front of the leader.
Regional differences
Bulgaria is divided into seven ethnographic regions: Northern Bulgaria, Dobruja, Shopluk, Thrace, Strandzha, Macedonia and Rhodopes. Each region has its own distinctive style of dance, to the extent that a knowledgeable observer can often tell which region a group of Bulgarians comes from by how they perform a popular dance like the pravo. In addition, due to the intricate ethnic mix in the Balkans, each locality and even each village may have its own variation of a dance, different enough that it amounts to a distinct dance. In Bulgarian folkdance literature, local variations are often differentiated by adding the geographical origin to the dance name: for example pravo plovdivsko horo means "the pravo dance from the town of Plovdiv".
Rhythm and meter
The proportions of the beats do not follow any exact rational proportions. For example, the well-known tune "Eleno Mome" (Елено Моме) exists written in three forms: (1) , (2) , and (3) times. Here, the latter two forms exist both as a musicologist's way to attempt to indicate the tendency of speeding up the last and first beats, as well in formal version, where the musician plays 3 or 4 about equal length notes on the beat. In music band playing, the meter seems favored, thus skipping some of the time-bending subtleties. Given this fact, though, some meters are more common or popular, but there is a wide variation of less frequent combinations, as well.
There is also disagreement about whether one should use or as meter denominator, but this is just a notational convenience. In the list below, the denominator follows in part notational practice of the region, and in part the speed of the type of tune, giving the note a reasonable number of beats per minute (as on a metronome).