Troika is a Russian performance dance based on Russian folk dances. The Russian word troika means three-horse team/gear, and the dancers imitate the prancing of horses pulling a sled or a carriage.
The first version was created by choreographer Nadezhda Nadezhdina for her folklore dance troupe Beroyzka in 1948.Кузнецов, Е. А., Влияние творческого наследия мастеров народного танца на формирование эстетического вкуса у студентов хореографических специализаций Since then this dance is included into repertoires of virtually all Russian ethnographic dance ensembles. Initially, it was a dance for a man and two women,тройка, Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary but later choreographies with other combinations were created, such as one woman and two men or three women.Русский народный танец "Тройка" ] [4dancing.ru/blogs/200914/1883/]
Other cultures Similar folk dances are known among other Slavic peoples, e.g., the Polish Trojak.
A Cajun dance of the same name, Troika, exists, similar to the Russian dance.Cajun Dancing, 1993, , p. 139 It has been suggested that the Cajun version of the dance originated at the times when Cossacks of the Russian tsar army were stationed in Paris.
There was a German contra dance triolet recorded in 1829 for groups of one man and two women.Контрдансы ХІХв./Контрдансы ХІХв. : Triolet, modern reconstruction based on the book, Eduard Helmke, Neue Tanz- und Bildungsschule, 1829
See also List of ethnic, regional, and folk dances by origin Outline of dance
References
External links Our Russian Folk Dance from the Kennedy Center's ArtsEdge program.