CHILDREN FOLK DANCE GROUP

KREMIENOK

The group's hometown is Bratislava, their ages are from 6 to 15 years. Kremienok has about 100 members split into two groups of younger and older children. They practice twice a week under the artistic direction of Miroslav Kapasny from Vazec, now living in Bratislava. He is a former dancer of Lucnica folk dance ensemble and I met him during Lucnica's visit to Vancouver during EXPO 86. They perform dances and songs from Vazec, including one of my favored: "I've got a red apple in my little window, cervene jablcko v oblocku mam" and many others. Vazec is a small village in the foothills of High Tatra Mountains directly under mount Krivan, one of the best known mounts in the whole Tatra's. Vazec is also located close to Vychodna where the 40 year of Vychodna festival will be held July 1-3,1994.

I have met the children of Kremienok for the first time in Vazec, during their summer training camp in 1989. This was the Summer I have taken for the first time a choreography course given by Matica Slovenska section for the foreign Slovaks, in Kezmarok and Repiste.

They were staying and practicing at the local school. I have seen them working on their repertoire really hard. In summer of 1990 the camp was held in Sucany's school. Sucany is a small village close to Martin in the Turiec region. One day we went to the open-air museum, Skanzen in Martin. This skanzen is known as the Museum of Slovak Village. In its first phase that is finished now, many buildings and structures that were moved and recreated here, are from Orava. We toured the skanzen and later on I have made a short movie of their performance in, this natural setting. They sang the "Cervené Jablcko" accompanied by the musicians in the court yard of one of the restored old settlements and later on, up on the hill above on the grass, they sang a shepherds song and performed beautiful girls dance. The atmosphere and the village setting added to the excitement and the enjoyment of this performance. Kremienok performed with great success for the first time at the folk festival in Vychodna 1991 and they repeated their successful performance again last summer in Vychodna. Many of the members of Kremienok have moved to different folk dance groups because of their age, where they continue their training, getting better and thus making sure that the folk dance and folk singing traditions will be preserved for the next generations.