коло

Kolo comes from the South Slavic word for wheel or circle, from Proto-Slavic kolo, related to Latin cyclus and Greek kyklos. The dance is exactly what the word describes: people in a circle, hands joined or on each other's shoulders, stepping in unison to the right or left. No partner is needed. No particular skill is required. The circle accepts whoever joins it. Kolo has been danced in the Balkans for as long as anyone can remember, and no one remembers when it started.

Every South Slavic nation dances kolo. Serbians call it kolo. Croats call it kolo. Bosnians, Montenegrins, and Macedonians each have their versions. The steps differ by region — a kolo from Vranje in southern Serbia has different footwork than a kolo from Slavonia in eastern Croatia. The music differs. The tempo differs. But the circle is always a circle. In a region where ethnic and national boundaries have been drawn, redrawn, and fought over for centuries, the kolo crosses every border.

During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, soldiers and civilians on all sides danced kolo. The same dance, the same word, the same circle — performed by people who were killing each other. The kolo did not prevent anything. It did not resolve anything. It simply existed on all sides simultaneously, a shared cultural form that the conflict could not divide even as it divided everything else.

UNESCO inscribed the Serbian kolo on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. The application was Serbian. The dance is not. The circle belongs to everyone who steps into it, and no national claim can close the perimeter.