Călușari

What it is

The Călușari are the men who perform the căluș, an old Romanian dance whose name means 'horse' in a fond form. They make up a closed society of male dancers tied to a spring rite, which some researchers treat as a survival of tribal warrior bands. Each year the groups move from village to village for about a fortnight, a few fiddlers going with them, and join the weekend horae, the local round dances. Dancers dress in white, with bells at the ankles. People said the Călușari could cure those whom the fairies had harmed.

Where it comes from

The earliest written trace is a set of musical notations made in the 17th century by Ioan Căianu. Mircea Eliade, a Romanian historian of religion, observed that even though members swear in God's name, the story the ritual enacts has nothing to do with Christianity. In the 19th century some clergy opposed the groups, and in certain regions members were kept from communion for three years. On the name, most accept the Latin pair collusium, collusii, which covered both a dance company and a secret society, though rival explanations exist and Kligman judged the long search for a purely Roman root unconvincing.

How it is done

An older man, usually, gathers the group. He picks young, unmarried men for their strength, has them swear secrecy, puts them through an initiation and then teaches them the dance. The dance opens with a walking step, plimbări, taken around a circle anticlockwise. Between these steps the men perform harder figures, mișcare, on the spot. Each figure is built from smaller elements and tends to have a beginning, a middle and an end. The movement is athletic, with long limbs and high jumps. A stick may be held upright or angled at the ground. One dancer plays the fool, the nebun.

Tools and materials

White trousers and white tunics are the base of the dress, and bright ribbons hang from the hats. Bells sit at the ankles and sound as the men move. Ornate sticks serve as props during the dance. The group also carries clubs and a sword, a flag and a wooden horse head. Members swear on the flag to treat one another as brothers, to keep the customs and to stay chaste for nine days. Back home, the flag is set in the ground and a dancer climbs it and calls out that war has come.

What it is for

The căluș belongs to spring. Its main work is public, at the weekend dances of the villages the group visits. Curing is the other side of it: the Călușari were believed to help people struck by fairies, and this is the power most often attributed to them. In each village the dancers chose a 'bride' on the strength of her dancing and bound her by oath to dance with them for three years running. The rite has also been read as a possible remnant of warrior societies, and the horse in it carried old links to fertility.

Who does it

The leader is normally an older man who recruits the dancers himself. His acolytes are always young and single, picked for physical ability rather than inherited right, and they are taught the forms after swearing an oath. Membership is male. Records from Oltenia show that one or two young girls once took part, but that practice is gone. During the season the men swore to keep chaste for nine days and to treat each other as brothers. The chosen village 'bride' was bound by oath too, for three seasons.

Peoples and places

The tradition belongs to Romania and is found across its regions, with Oltenia and Transylvania named in records of the dance and its relatives. Related male group dances of ritual origin run along the Carpathians. Dancers have also performed abroad: in 1997 a Canadian group, the Regina Călușari, danced with the Vancouver Morris Men.

What people believe

The Călușari move inside a world of fairies, the zâne. Their patron is Doamna Zânelor, the Queen of the Fairies, also called Irodiada and Arada; Eliade linked her to the folkloric Diana. Eliade held that the dance gave an impression of flight, which he read as both a galloping horse and the dancing of fairies. The horse itself carried old mythical links to fertility and war, and some steps copy its movement, though today those steps are not central. The men's power over fairy harm follows from this patronage.

When it is done

The season opens three weeks after Easter and closes at Pentecost, called Rusalii in Romanian. That allows roughly two weeks of travel, with dancing at weekends in the villages on the route. The oath carries a nine-day rule of chastity. Village 'brides' served for three consecutive years. The custom therefore sits in spring, in the stretch between two major feasts of the church year, and the round of visits ends when the Pentecost period comes.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Scholarship on the Călușari has been busy and divided. Kligman, writing in 1977, noted how much work had gone into claiming a pure Roman descent for the ritual and called the results weak. A Roman link has been sought in the Salii Collini, priests of Mars named by Livy. Eliade treated the rite as pre-Christian in content and stressed the fairies. Comparisons with English Morris dancing have led some to ask whether the two simply share a wider European folk dance background. Liz Mellish has followed how the tradition's meaning shifts as it travels from villages to international stages.

Compare and confuse

The English Morris dance is the closest cousin named in the accounts: similar steps, similar meaning in the ritual sword dance, similar costume, and in both a fool among the dancers. Some take the likeness to mean only that both are European folk dances, which would explain why both sit near fairy beliefs. Within Transylvania, the De bâtă, Haidău and Fecioreasca are very close to the căluș, with later, more elaborate additions, while simpler Carpathian variants keep only its basic features. The acrobatics have also been likened to the Ceili dance.

Law and persecution

Christian authority and the Călușari have not always agreed. Eliade reports clerical hostility in the 19th century: in some regions members were barred from communion for three years, though their oath invoked God. In 2008 the Căluș ritual was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, at the third session, under Romania. The listing gives the practice international recognition and a measure of protection.

Today

The Căluș ritual entered UNESCO's Representative List in 2008, at the third session, with Romania as the state party, and the listing brought the dance wider attention. Researchers now follow its shift from village performance to national and international stages; Liz Mellish has written about how its symbolism changes along that route. Links abroad exist: in 1997 the Vancouver Morris Men recorded dancing with Canada's Regina Călușari. Fiddlers, white dress and the spring round of visits remain the visible markers of the custom.

Questions people ask about Călușari

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle

• Călușari on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data