Vlaamse Volkskunstgroep DOPHEI

The group is quit remarkable for its dancing but have also shown some expertise in a number of crafts. You can see some of the handwork in the caps, worn by the ladies. Dophei has different costumes, all traditional, created by studying old pictures and paintings. The group can be recognized by the beautiful shawls of the women worn with either a white lace cap for special occasions (on Sunday) or a red polka dot headscarf for everyday. The women also wear traditional black dresses and black wooden clogs.

 

The men wear blue smocks and red neck scarves, or white shirts and black waistcoats with black trousers, completed with a peaked cap and white clogs.

The dances, like the costumes, are well researched and are a mixture of social, fertility, harvest and martial dances from their own region of Flanders.

You can see the elements of daily life as they once were: moving-from farm to farm, visiting the market, and celebrating the harvest, a fair or a wedding.

 

 

 

 

The dances have a real dramatic quality with facial expression, gesture, hand-clapping and foot-stamping being as much part of them as the figures. They have a number of dance sets in the Quadrille and Mazurka traditions as well as couple dances.

One of the most dramatic is the "Trawantel", a dance that commemorates the rising of the Low Countries against Spanish oppression between 1567 and 1579. The dance is performed merely to the beat of a drum, by six men, armed with staves, and a hoop (representing the oppression). Look out also for the windmill dances and the fertility and harvest dances of the peasant tradition.