traditional dances    /    nonstylized dances    /    trio dances

śpiuch

nonstylized dancesmap
The dance was a two-piece dance game performed by three dancers. The idea was to imitate a sleeping or a drunk man, which gave the dance an ironic and humorous character. It could have a ritual or magical meaning. The dance was reconstructed on the basis of 19th-century records.
> Read more


In the Podlasie region the dance was called śpiuch (a sleepyhead) or pijak (a drunk), and some sources mention the appearing of the dance also in the region of Lublin. It was reconstructed in the 1980s on the basis of 19th-century descriptions. In the reconstructed version the dance proceeds as follows: the dancers stand in threes in a circle, then start walking slowly in this formation "against the sun". Women (in the region of Lublin only men perform this dance) support the man who is pretending to be sleepy. Sometimes also the persons standing around try to support the staggering sleepyhead-drunk. In its second part, the dance resembles very much the Silesian trio dance called trojak. The boy hooks his elbows once with the partner on his left and once with the person on his right, or leads them by the hand under his raised arm. Some 19th-century sources mention the appearing of a similar dance in the region of Sieradz, where the "sleepy" person was a girl, led by two boys. In all the above mentioned regions the dance had a humorous and ironical character.

 

Januszczyk, Helena; Cieślińska, Emma. Folklor taneczny południowego Podlasia. Biała Podlaska: Podlaskie Towarzystwo Społeczno-Kulturalne, 1988.

Kolberg, Oskar. Dzieła wszystkie. T. 46. Kaliskie i Sieradzkie. Wrocław–Poznań: PAN, 1967.

Oleszczuk, Aleksander. Pieśni ludowe z Podlasia. Wrocław: Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze, 1965.

Pleszczyński, Adolf. Zabawy, gry i tańce ludowe z okolic Międzyrzecza Podlaskiego (w:) "Wisła", 1889, T. 3, s. 59–66.