The Sardana

The Sardana is a Catalan folk dance is the national dance of Catalunya. They dance in circles to the music played by a couplet. The name may refer to both the dance and music.

An unspecified number of dancers form a circle holding hands and looking at the center, dancing in rotllana right and left with a fairly steady tempo, with an air often slow and concentrated. The components have to be preferably pairs formed by men and women but only requires a minimum of two people caught by the hands to see who have created a rotllana. The Sardana dance is not exclusive, so that anyone can be added singly or in pairs to rotllana at any time the ball (unless it is a contest or exhibition). Still, there sardana colla organized as a stable group, similar to esbart Dansaire.

Sardana music is played by a couplet, which generally consists of 12 instruments played by 11 musicians. Four of the instruments (tenor, the pump, flute and tamborí) are instruments typically Catalan, the other four are more conventional (bass, trumpet, trombone and flugelhorn). Sardana music (part of which is generically known song music) is almost always duple, 2 / 4 time or 6 / 8, and can be heard in concert form. Some compositions add a choral accompaniment. There are over 25,000 scores by Sardana but only the instrumental versions are used for dancing.

Although the name appears as dancing Sardana and in the sixteenth century, there is no information on how this dance was not only the documents so that the quote until the nineteenth century. So it is from the nineteenth century is considered establishing the Sardana, with Contrapàs, it was a liturgical dance danced semi-chain, mainly by men, representing the hierarchical social organization of a community. The dancers dance in a semi circle and the first dancer to the left side dominates the group, urging them to take steps more or less long, with the goal of ending the same place where you started. If we achieve this milestone, the dancers said they had managed to get the Contrapàs. The day of dance and figures contained several sections, one of which was a round dance choreography: the Sardana.

Foto: Wamito

A sardana represented in four ceramic tiles

Foto: Mac9

Dancing Sardanas in front of Barcelona City Council

Foto: Amy

Example of contrapàs

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