Kochari Explained

Kochari
Native Name:	Քոչարի
Genre:	Folk dance Circle dance
Origin:	Armenia

Ich:	Kochari, traditional group dance
State Party:	Armenia
Domains:	Folk dance
Id:	01295
Region:	ENA
Year:	2017
Session:	12th
List:	Representative

Kochari (; ; ;) is a folk dance originating in the Armenian Highlands.^[1] It is performed today by Armenians,^{[2] [3] [4]} while variants are performed by Assyrians,^[5] Azerbaijanis,^[6] and Pontic Greeks.^[7] It is a form of circle dance.

Each region in the Armenian Highlands had its own Kochari, with its unique way of both dancing and music.^[8]

Etymology

• In Armenian, "Kochari" literally means "knee-come". Գուճ (gudj or goudj) means "knee" and արի (ari) means "come".^[9]
• In Azerbaijani Turkish, "köç" means "to move" used both as a verb and as a noun,^[10] with the latter used more in the context of nomads' travelling. "Köçəri" is also both an adjective and a noun, meaning a "nomad" and "nomadic" simultaneously.^[11]
• In Pontic Greek, from the Greek "κότσι" (in Pontic Greek "κοτς") meaning "heel" (from Medieval Greek "κόττιον" meaning the same) and "αίρω" meaning "raise", all together "raising the heel", since the Greeks consider the heel to be the main part of the foot which the dancer uses.

Versions

John Blacking describes Kochari as follows:

Armenian

Armenians have been dancing Kochari for over a thousand years.^[12] The dance is danced by both men and women and is intended to be intimidating. More modern forms of Kochari have added a "tremolo step", which involves shaking the whole body. It spread to the eastern part of Armenia after the Armenian genocide. The Armenian Kochari has been included to the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding of UNESCO in 2017.^[13]

Azerbaijani

Today this dancing is played in the Nakhchivan land of which Sharur, Sadarak, Kangarli, Julfa and Shahbuz regions' folklore collectives and it is performed at weddings.^[14] Kochari along with tenzere has been included to the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding of UNESCO in November 2018 as versions of Yalli dance.^{[15] [16]}

Pontic Greek Kόtsari

The Pontic Greeks and Armenians have many vigorous warlike dances such as the Kochari.^[17]

Unlike most Pontic dances, the Kotsari is in an even rhythm, originally danced in a closed circle.^[18]

External links

• Kochari music - Armenian sample; Assyrian sample; Pontic sample;Turkish sample
• Kochari dance - UNESCO video

Notes and References

1. Web site: Kochari. Bennet Pilgrimages. 11 December 2023. 11 April 2014.
2. Elia. Anthony J.. Kochari (Old Armenian Folk Tune) for Solo Piano. Center for Digital Research and Scholarship at Columbia University. 6 November 2013. 2013. 10.7916/D8S75QNP .
3. Book: Great Soviet Encyclopedia. 1953. Soviet Encyclopedia. Moscow. 170. Second. Vvedensky, Boris. 23. ru. КОЧАРИ — армянский народный мужской танец..
4. Book: Yuzefovich, Victor. Aram Khachaturyan. 1985. Sphinx Press. New York. 9780823686582. 217. ..and in the sixth scene one of the dances of the gladiators is very reminiscent of Kochari, the Armenian folk dance..
5. Web site: BetBasoo. Peter Pnuel. Thirty Assyrian Folk Dances. Assyrian International News Agency. 6 November 2013. 30 April 2003.
6. News: Gottlieb. Robert. Astaire to Zopy-Zopy. https://web.archive.org/web/20130921213703/https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/26/books/astaire-to-zopy-zopy.html. 21 September 2013. 6 November 2013. New York Times. 26 July 1998. Robert Gottlieb. I find it difficult to imagine someone without a predisposition to read about such matters as Azerbaijani folk dance (One type of yally has various forms known as kochari, uchayag, tello, and galadangalaya; another type is a dance mixed with games called gazy-gazy, zopy-zopy, and chopu-chopu) browsing profitably through Oxford's many hundreds of pages of such information..
7. Web site: Kotsari . Pontian.info . 6 November 2013 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20121016041345/http://www.pontian.info/dance/kotsari.htm . 16 October 2012 .
8. Book: Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia Volume 4. 1978. Armenian Encyclopedia Publishing. Yerevan. hy. 476.
9. Book: Cholakean, Hakob . 2016. Ավանդական ուղղագրություն . Yerevan.
10. https://obastan.com/k%C3%B6%C3%A7/22210/?l=az KÖÇ
11. https://obastan.com/k%C3%B6%C3%A7%C9%99ri/22216/?l=az KÖÇƏRİ
12. Kochari // Music encyclopedic dictionary / Yu.V. Keldysh, M.G. Aranovsky, L.Z. Korabelnikova — Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1990. — p. 275.
13. Web site: Kochari, traditional group dance. UNESCO. 5 December 2020.
14. Web site: The National Dancings. Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. 6 November 2013.
15. Web site: Intangible Heritage: Seven elements inscribed on the List in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. UNESCO. en. 2018-11-29.
16. Web site: Yalli (Kochari, Tenzere), traditional group dances of Nakhchivan - intangible heritage - Culture Sector - UNESCO. ich.unesco.org. en. 2018-11-29.
17. Greece - Page 67 by Paul Hellander, Kate Armstrong, Michael Clark, Des Hannigan, Victoria Kyriakopoulos, Miriam Raphael, Andrew Ston
18. Web site: Kotchari . Pontos World. 10 November 2019 .