The fifteenth Surva International Festival of Masquerade Games will be held in the town of Pernik for three days starting on January 23.

The event, full of dance, songs, rituals and customs, has become a tradition in the past 35 years and aims to preserve, develop and popularise the authentic masquerade rituals, the Bulgarian game-playing and customs involving masks, as unique, original variants of the European tradition of masked carnivals. In Bulgarian folklore tradition, masked games serve as ritual blessings for good health, fertility and well-being.

The festival has a competitive element and represents a meeting place of the bearers of the traditions of the traditional bachelor masquerade rituals, most popularly known as survakari or koukeri. These are the people whose symbolism targets driving away evil forces, and making good wishes for a plentiful harvest, health and fertility of people and livestock.

Kouker's dances are performed by the so called kuks, old men, old women and camel drivers. Some of them dress in furs or in traditional women's costumes. Clusters of bells hang down from the waist of each dancer.

The tradition dates back to distant pagan times and the culture of the ancient Thracian population of the Balkans. All the kouker dances also have Slavic features and are bound to the transition from one year to another. Their names in separate regions of Bulgaria are different - "survakare", "nevesta" (maid), "vasilchare", "mechkare", "starzi". The animal masks are characteristic of the survakar's customs.

They are connected to the eternal circle of nature - birth, flourishing, death and resurrection, as well as to the daily routine and social life, and the approaching awakening of Nature, sets the time of the koukeri and survakari.

The pre-spring customs have a Thracian basis and are connected with seeing the New Year in the first Sunday before Lent or the first week of Lent. The so-called "gugli" (hoods) are typical for the mummer's masks. They are usually decorated with beads, ribbons, woolen braids, pieces of mirror and flowers. These practices are found mostly in Thrace, Southeast and Northeast Bulgaria.

The central square in Pernik will be filled with survakari and koukeri's dances and varied personages, wearing unique masks, costumes, and bells of multiple tones will all combine dancing and music in a show of original theatre. These are an illustration of the most vital and deep-rooted traditions in bachelor fancy-dress rites, which were started in the remote past and have been preserved to the present day. The event is an original performance of winter and early spring fancy-dress rites, which are still popular.

With their fur clothes, mixture of national costumes and animal masks and horrifying masks, and the bells, the masquerade games and customs - with their lively dancing ritual steps - reflect the eternal fight between light and darkness, good and evil.

These traditions exist and are preserved in almost all regions of Bulgaria.

On Friday January 23 the festival starts with a scientific conference called Masquerade Between Village And Town, a Children's Carnival at 12am and then the day ends with a procession at 8pm on the town square. The weekend opens with a festival procession at 10am. The final day of the festival is dedicated to the foreign guests from Greece, Ukraine, Turkey, Italy, Ireland and Macedonia.

The festival has been held since 1965, under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, and since 1985 it has had the status of an international festival. Since 1995 Pernik has been a member of the Foundation of European Carnival Cities, seated in Amsterdam.