The Day of the Serbs and the Orawa Highlanders / main concert

What is it like to grow up in the shade of a big mountain? After all, in Poland only the Tatra Mountains are higher than the Old Witches’ Mountain... The beautiful, majestic and dangerous massif towers over the childhood of MAŁOLIPNICANIE, i.e. children from the village of Lipnica Mała in Orawa.

Today is Tuesday, a very important day, an unusual day because it is not just any ordinary day in the week, but one especially dedicated to friendship. And so the emcees proclaim the day of friendship. What is friendship?, Hanka Rybka ponders. It is about being on close terms with the other person as well as taking care of friendship. One of the most important gestures of friendship, says Patryk Rutkowski, is a hug. Aunt Hanka and Uncle Patryk hug in an exemplary, heart-to-heart manner, encouraging this gesture, which is not so obvious at all - and it is a shame - which is becoming less and less obvious - and that is a great shame - which is becoming an unwanted, rejected, sometimes even condemned gesture - and that is already a deplorable shame.

Today, the distinguished audience includes special guests: Stanisław Kasprzak, the head of the Jabłonka Commune; Artur Górka, the commune secretary; Dominika Wachałowicz-Kiersztyn, the director of the Orawa Ethnographic Park Museum in Zubrzyca Górna; Father Piotr Grotowski, the parish priest of St Stephen’s Church in Lipnica Mała.


There is a truth about the olden days whereby children would learn resourcefulness, knowledge, skills from their next of kin: grandparents, grandmothers, parents, uncles, or... older siblings... well... that source was not that common, and not really preferable, but there is something profound in the statement that it takes a whole village to raise a child. For instance, elderly women would teach girls to “medicinate,” i.e. to treat ailments.

Silly Antek calls for his grandmother, because a girl told him to look for broadleaf plaintain [Polish word “babka” is a homonym, denoting both ‘a grandmother’ and ‘broadleaf plaintain’]. And so he goes looking for her. Just like the donkey in Shrek was looking for a blue flower with red thorns. Babka, not the one called by Antek, but a green, leafy one, is needed to help Marysia, who has suffered some misfortune.

They medicinate, which means they treat ailments. But does the girl really know how to medicinate. Of course! She knows, for example, what needs to be brewed when that sudden bout comes over you, but it’s not love. That sudden bout of... you know what.

They are playing the game of red mother hen, which had a drink of warm water, and - because apparently there was no one to treat it - it has left this hen’s vale of tears. Then a short counting-out game: dog, hare, wolf, and whoever is pointed to as “wolf” must run away. If they do not escape, they become another red mother hen; if they do escape, the chaser becomes a stinking egg. Here we witness some opposition, which is understandable, for who would want to play the stinking egg?

Blind man's buff - but girls only, while the boys jump over the whip. But only for a while, because already in the middle of the circle an old baron is sleeping soundly, and when he wakes up, he will eat us (what?) or gore us (well, that's more like it!).

There are also musicians. A song about a girl who has not danced yet, but is prepared to, if the musicians are willing to play. And so they do. And so she dances. But not just her. They all dance, and so do the boys.

A mill wheel, then two mill wheels. This game teaches a bit of economics. Everyone knows the price, and so they realise that four ryńskie per wheel is definitely not much. The lesson: that which is cheap is expensive, and it will break, bringing a painful consequence expressed bluntly as: plonk!

However, there are some ailments that young women physicians cannot cure. You need to consult the experienced ones. One girl's fear is diagnosed as such an ailment, so everyone escorts her to the family emergency room.


Today, the siskin did know how friendship grows. And now is the time to stop and think: do I have a friend?


The Serbian ensemble DOM KULTURE IZVOR has come from Belgrade. The girls begin, as usual in a semicircle, with clasped hands, just a moment of dancing and singing, and they are shortly joined by the boys. More singing together, dancing together, and again the girls alone, and again with the boys. Some slowing down. For just a while the boys break out of the beautiful arrangement, dancing alone, slightly behind. But now the girls separate again, as if inviting the boys: “you can come back.” They do come back. A joint dance, faster and faster. And when the music makes them slow down again, they move closer, intertwining their hands... the dance breaks the space. Just the girls again... the boys are waiting... And now a tad slowly, but then faster and faster, the boys join in, a pace of small steps and jumps.

And the oldest couple in the middle: a boy takes out a beautiful red heart from his bosom, gives it to a lady, and she gives him a handkerchief. They are dancing, because dance teaches love.

All together. To the accompaniment of an accordion, a violin and a guitar. A moment for music only: the accordion, the violin, the guitar in a mini-concert.

A girl with a basket, and a second one, and a third one; the basket full of flowers, and then: do the flowers from the baskets match the hair? More dancing: in a row, in a semicircle, in a circle...

A wreath appears on stage, and through this wreath an egg is passed from one girl’s hand to another’s. A symbol of friendship, a symbol of life reborn. This part of the performance ends with a dance with this connecting wreath, which is like a portal between friendship and friendship.


MAŁOLIPNICANIE are back, now to sing and dance even more. Circles, hand in hand, the girls wearing garlands, all of them; the boys wearing black hats with red string, all of them. The dances are: jelyniosek, polecka, polka krzyzowo, tyrcipolka, ciardaś, kotecka, wrona, posłała mnie babka. The songs are: w Babiej Górze bywom, nuty moje nuty, jescek nie tańcyła, starała sie moja mać. And to conclude, sung is - like an anthem - Orawa, Orawa...

The second part of the Belgrade ensemble’s performance begins with a little Serb dressed in a bizarre way: a fur hat with ram’s horns, a curved staff, a garland of... flowers? garlic? mushrooms? Yes, I think it’s garlic hanging from the shoulder, and a bag that Majster Bieda would not be ashamed of. He is singing that he is not afraid of something. Of what? Although it’s hard to understand, but when you see him act so freely on stage, apparently he is afraid of nothing. Further on, he turns out to be some kind of master of wedding ceremonies, or perhaps a witch doctor, as the bride walking over the stick he has placed on the ground seems to be some witchcraft. 

However, the highlight of the performance is not the horned boy, but the dance. It is a wedding dance, because the bride and groom - the tallest boy and a girl with a tall, beautiful wreath on her head - have their special place in the routines that follow.

We are bid farewell by the white short strings twirling in the girls’ hands, so characteristic of Balkan dance...