STEVE KOTANSKY

BALKAN DANCE

Steve Kotansky was raised in the San Francisco Bay area where he started international folk dancing as a high school student. Besides, regular folk dancing, he performed with the Westwind International Folk Ensemble (North), and the SF Russian Dance Ensemble. In 1970 he made his first research trip to Hungary and former Yugoslavia. He returned to study dance and Slavic Languages at UCLA. While living in Los Angeles, he performed with AMAN Folk Ensemble and Vincent Evanchuk’s Ukrainian dance troupe. He was also a regularly featured teacher at many of the folk dance “cafes” popular in the 1970’s.

In 1972, Steve received the “Rubi Vucheta” scholarship to study dance in former Yugoslavia, where he traveled with Robert Leibman recording and filming village dance throughout the country. He remained in Europe, living in Munich, Germany, where he worked with ethnic communities, taught regular classes, organized workshops, and co-founded the GAJDA Folklore Ensemble. He took advantage of his proximity to the Balkans and Eastern Europe, pursuing his study and research of their dance cultures. He taught dance all over Western Europe, choreographed for various groups, and began to organize folk dance workshops and tours to Hungary, Serbia, and Macedonia.

He returned to the U.S.A in 1980 to teach at SFDC as well as most major North America dance camps/weekend workshops. Steve lives in NY with his wife Susan and their two (grown) children. They co-founded the GUZSALY Hungarian Dance Ensemble and have choreographed for many Hungarian and International Dance Ensembles in North America. Steve is know for his passion for dance and extensive knowledge of dances and style of Eastern and South-Eastern European Dance. Currently, he has been teaching dances from Macedonia, Serbia, the Albanian diaspora, Bulgaria, Romania (Csángó), and the Roma populations from these areas.