Troika is a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n folk dance

Folk dance

The term folk dance describes dances that share some or all of the following attributes:*They are dances performed at social functions by people with little or no professional training, often to traditional music or music based on traditional music....

, where a man dances with two women. The Russian word troika

Troika (driving)

A troika is a traditional Russian harness driving combination, using three horses abreast, usually pulling a sleigh. It differs from most other three-horse combinations in that the horses are harnessed abreast. The middle horse is usually harnessed in a horse collar and shaft bow; the side horses...

means three-horse team/gear. In the Russian dance the dancers imitate the prancing of horses pulling a sled or a carriage.

This dance is included into repertoires of virtually all Russian ethnographic dance ensembles.

Similar folk dances are known among other Slavic peoples

Slavic peoples

The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...

, e.g., the Polish Trojak

Trojak

Trojak is a Silesian folk dance. It is a double partner dance and performed in groups of three: one male dancer and two female dancers. The music of the dance has two parts: a slow one in 3/4 metre and a fast one in 2/4 metre...

.

A Cajun dance of the same name, Troika, exists, and is very similar to the Russian dance. It has been suggested that the Cajun

Cajun

Cajuns are an ethnic group mainly living in the U.S. state of Louisiana, consisting of the descendants of Acadian exiles...

 version of the dance originated at the times when Cossack

Cossack

Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...

s of the Russian tsar army were stationed in Paris.

External links

• Our Russian Folk Dance from the Kennedy Center's ArtsEdge program.
• Troika from redfd.com.