India and Expressions - see you soon!

We are a folk dance group UPSIJAD in Estonia, a small country in the Baltics.  Our history contains good days as well as bad ones, joy and grief. But in spite of everything Estonians have kept their culture pure.

Estonia can be characterized by the Singing Revolution in 1988 were we sang our country free as well as Song and Dance Festivals that started in 1869 already, the last festival held in 2009 drew over 37000 performers.

Population of Estonia is only approx.1,4 million. We represent the second biggest town Tartu, called also “The City of Good Thoughts” that has only 100.000 inhabitants. You may judge Tartu to be a really tiny municipality, but for us it is the best and beloved place on earth.

Our folk dance group was found in 1982 and named UPSIJAD (meaning hoppers in English). So we will celebrate our 30^th anniversary in 2013. Since 2011 we are the members of CIOFF (International Council of Organizers of Folklore Festivals).

We try to dance, sing and play in the way our grandmothers and grandfathers enjoyed themselves. But in addition to old folk dance our programs also contain authors’ dances spiced with contemporary music. 

But all dances performed by us no matter if folklore or authors’ ones are  based on evergreen topic – relation between two sex: friendship, teasing and love.

 

Currently the group has 22 active members (by the way: quite a number of them being couples) of many different professions starting from wageworkers up to scientists who all gather for pleasant company and agreeable activity - dancing. Self-achievement and joy of performance is an award to tough trainings improved by the possibility to learn more about the culture of different countries as well as to introduce Estonian folk dance in our turn. Dancing trips have taken us to various countries last of them being Russia, South-Korea, Azores Islands. We really enjoy making friends to Estonia and to our folk culture. In 2010 in South Korea we were awarded special prize for introducing our country.  

 

What to say something characteristic about UPSIJAD? A little hint: in addition to dancing and travelling abroad we have one more hobby: “discovering” the islands of Estonia. Our homeland has totally 1521 islands, we have visited approximately 10 of them – so there is a long-long way to goJ!