Every year on the 24th of June you are invited to the Village and Folk Art Museum where you can see young people (from all the regions of Romania) performing folk dances and songs related to different Romanian customs and traditions :

All the above mentioned folk dances were performed by the pupils from the following schools: Izvoarele, Tiganesti, Zimnicele (Teleorman county), Salva (Transylvania), Oporelu (Olt county) and School No.8 (Giurgiu). They also provided us with information about them. Thanks to them we could create this section with special events.

Dragaica (or Sanzienele) is an important Midsummer Day festival and fair which takes place on the 24th of June, when a specific Romanian lively folk dance is performed.

When the harvest is almost ripe, the girls from the village gather together to choose Dragaica. This is the name given to the most beautiful and hard-working peasant girl who is selected to lead the dance. A procession is formed, sweeping through the fields. A wreath is plaited of grain stalks and put on Dragaica's head. The practice has auspicious and benefic functions.

To the tune of a lad playing the flute or the bagpipe, the girls dance a jig from house to house, while singing ironic verse:" Jig, Dragaica, jig,/For in winter you will spin/Till your fingers will grow thin."

Dragaica or the procession of lasses is an agrarian midsummer custom in preparation for reaping.

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"Cununa"(The Wreath)

This is an augural agrarian custom practised at the end of harvesting, designed to ensure the perpetuation of the vegetative process. It's fairly widespread especially in Muntenia, Oltenia, Transylvania and Dobrogea. The harvesters sing apposite verse: "Whence the wreath comes,/Stately corn staks shall grow./Whence the wreath goes/Many loaded carts shall follow."....

"Calusarii" (a Romanian folk dance performed by young men)

"Alunelu' "

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