When and where were you born?
I was born in 1938 in a village called Levareka in the Shop region, west of Pernik. My father worked first as a mason, and then, after the communists took power, as an aide to the doctor – the doctor was responsible for five villages, which meant often being on the road. My mother was a housewife – we were four children – and helped with farm work. I remember her being terribly worried at the sight of American planes going to bomb Sofia during the war because one of my brothers was working in the city. But he came out unhurt.

How did you come to dance?
Both my parents liked folk music and dancing very much. And I was a restless child, I just loved dancing. In the province, there was a dance festival and I won the competition. Then in 1953, I competed in Sofia to enter the ensemble Philip Koutev. There were 200 candidates, three got selected, and I was one of them.

Tell me a little about the Philip Koutev ensemble.
It was founded in 1951. Dancers, singers and musicians were selected from all over the country to form a Bulgarian folklore group. The idea was to bring different regional traditions together and to perform in a truly professional way. Nowadays there is a dance academy, but at that time we were all naturals. I had to rehearse hard, four hours every single day of the week, while completing school. And in 1955 the ensemble went on its first tour to the West, in France and England.

What memories do you have from those tours?
Well, lots of them. We traveled together very often, 100 people or more, be it in Bulgaria, in other Eastern European countries, in the West, in Asia… We were like a big family. People back home were a little envious that we could travel but they were also proud of us because we represented Bulgaria abroad and we had so much success. We visited lots of places and monuments – always in a group of course, there was no possibility to visit alone.

Were there any defections or defection attempts when you were in Western countries?
There were two of them on our first tour: in Paris, some Bulgarian emigrants gathered in the theatre at the beginning of the performance and started singing Shumi Maritsa, the tsarist anthem, before the police came to oust them. They waited for us outside the theatre and tried to persuade us to stay in France. One of us actually stayed but came back to Bulgaria after a few months. He was sent to the military ensemble. Another one stayed at the hotel in England, pretending to be ill, while the whole group went out sighseeing. Bulgarian emigrants had arranged for his defection and had it publiciced by the local press. But on the very same night he came back to take part in the performance. He got fired from the ensemble back in Bulgaria.

Other memories from those tours?
In 1963 we went on a two-months tour to the US and Canada. We performed in 40 cities. Everytime there were lots of Bulgarian and Macedonian immigrants in the audience and they always wanted to meet us and invite us at their place. But they were not interested in politics, they were just so happy to hear Bulgarian folk music and see the dances. In one American city, whose name I cannot remember, there was only one Bulgarian in the whole city. After the show, he came to see us and invited the whole group, 95 of us, to a restaurant. Fate has it that on that same year, he travelled to Bulgaria to bury his mother. He came to see us in Varna, where we were performing, and this time we invited him for dinner. It was very moving. From that tour, I also remember that while we were on the bus, shortly before crossing the border to Canada, we heard about Kennedy’s assassination on the radio. It made a strong impression on us.

How about family life, was it difficult, given the fact that you were often on the road?
Not really. I got married in 1963, and my wife stayed in Sofia, where she was working in a television factory. We have two sons, both of them live in Sofia, one as a security guard, the other one has his own building materials business. We live in an apartment in Krasna Polyana. It was given to us by the Interior Ministry as a compensation for our house, which was demolished to make room for the new building 14 years ago.

Now you don’t dance anymore: what happened afterwards?
There was no previous experience of “afterwards” with Philip Koutev. So at the beginning of the 80s, together with my comrades who were becoming older, we wrote a letter to the culture committee (something like a ministry of culture), which was then passed on to the national assembly, and they voted a law giving us the right to retire. I was 45 when I stopped dancing. I took a job as a security guard at DSK, which was a state bank, and worked there for 12 years. Of course I missed the tours, the dancing, the atmosphere of the group… Every year I organise a get-together party for those of us who retired more or less at the same time, and it is so wonderful being together again.

Were you surprised at the changes? (promenite, i.e., the fall of communism)
Yes I was. I had a good life under communism. There was security and predictability. Every year we went on vacation to the sea. Now I have to go on working as a doorman because my pension is not enough (230 leva a month). I watched the events on television on November 10 but did not take part. We had a good relationship with Bai Tosho (the familiar name for Todor Zhivkov, the former communist dictator). He loved Bulgarian folk music and dances and often asked us to come to his residences, most notably in Boyana (today the Museum of History), to perform for his guests – either the whole group or just a few of us. He was very simple and warm to us. But I was not a member of the communist party either.

How do you see the situation in Bulgaria today? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
Today there is a lot of corruption. Everybody is linked : the politicians, the businessmen, the prosecutors… I think things will improve, but slowly, and I don’t see that entering the EU will make much of a difference.