Polka
Though generally associated with Czech and Central European culture, polka is popular throughout Europe and the Americas.
[1] The term polka referring to the dance is believed to derive from the Czech words "půlka", meaning "half-step".
[2] This name has been changed to "Polka" as an expression of honour and sympathy for Poland and the Poles after the November Uprising 1830-1831.
As told by Čeněk Zíbrt, the music teacher Josef Neruda noticed her dancing in an unusual way to accompany a local folk song called "Strýček Nimra koupil šimla", or "Uncle Nimra Bought a White Horse" in 1830.
[2] Some versions of this origin story placed the first polka as being danced in Hradec Kralove, while others claimed it occurred in the village of Labska Tynica.
From there, it spread to classical music hub Vienna by 1839,[7] and in 1840 was introduced in Paris by Johaan Raab, a Prague dance instructor.
[4] It remained a popular ballroom dance in America, especially with growing Central, Northern, and Eastern European immigrant groups until the late 19th century.
[15] Most often in Belarus, the polka is performed in pairs, moving half a step with turns in a circle.
Belarusian polkas are extremely rich in their choreographic and musical patterns, and are distinguished by great modal and intonation diversity.
[15] Polka demands both skill and physical endurance from the dancers.Like the square dance, the polka also has many local variants: "Віцебчанка, Viciebčanka", "Барысаўская, Barysaŭskaja", "Ганкоўская, Hankoŭskaja", and the names were also given according to the peculiarities of the choreography: "Through the leg", "With a podkindes", "With squats", "On the heel", "Screw" and others.
The first award went to Frankie Yankovic, known as "America's Polka King", for his 70 Years of Hits album on Cleveland International Records.
[22]) Beginning with its inception in 2001, the RFD-TV Network aired The Big Joe Show, a television program that included polka music and dancing.
The polka was very popular in South and Southwest of Brazil, where it was mixed with other European and African styles to create the Choro.
The polka (polca in the Irish language) is also one of the most popular traditional folk dances in Ireland, particularly in Sliabh Luachra, a district that spans the borders of counties Kerry, Cork and Limerick.
Introduced to Ireland in the late 19th century, there are today hundreds of Irish polka tunes, which are most frequently played on the fiddle or button accordion.
The beats are not as heavy as those from Central Europe and the dance steps and holds also have variations not found further south.
Bedřich Smetana incorporated the polka in his opera The Bartered Bride (Czech: Prodaná nevěsta) and in particular, Act 1.
[32][33] While the polka is Bohemian in origin, most dance music composers in Vienna (the capital of the vast Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was the cultural centre for music from all over the empire) composed polkas and included the dance in their repertoire at some point in their careers.
The Strauss family in Vienna, for example, while better-known for their waltzes, also composed polkas that have survived.
Other composers who wrote music in the style of the polka were Jaromír Weinberger, Dmitri Shostakovich and Igor Stravinsky.
