Historical
As Boerke Naas dances, building on the foundations of our traditions.
A modern, powerful testimony of a lifestyle.
Founded in 1949, Boerke Naas remains unaffected an infectious-vital folk art group with a whole range of activities: folk dance, community singing, traditional craft, sword dance, traditional music and flag waving.
Boerke Naas is more than a folk art group. It represents a lifestyle, a contemporary way of working on our inalienable cultural heritage, which can be lived through folk dance, traditional music, flag waving and traditional crafts. Folklore is working on our living patrimonial estate, together with friends at Boerke Naas. Folklore is doing it yourself.
Celebrating as a form of real-live culture. Spontaneous stylized. Warm, but still refined. Experience in community the rotation of the seasons: spring festival, May tree planting, autumn festival. Go back together to the sources of nature: finding our rhythm.
The essence of a culture is its symbolism. Give sense to a gesture. A gift becomes a bond between friends. A sign of relationship: the same source, the same history, the same dream. Take for example the sword dance: the symbol for strength and fidelity becomes a Pleiades, symbol for the sun, source of all live. There is nothing artificial about the way that Boerke Naas revives the symbols. It is first of all a complete experience, intense, spontaneous, totally. As real as the people with whom you experience it.
People’s solidarity is a real source for Boerke Naas. Not a theoretical concept, but a constantly lived reality. Precisely this deep respect for our own characteristics calls a great appreciation for the characteristics of other nations. In this spirit, international solidarity and friendship become an obvious and spontaneous mutual enrichment. Thus is the traditional, but still sprightly flag waving a for all people understandable and enjoyable greeting from Boerke Naas across all borders.
Home and traditional crafts. Words for handling artistically natural materials: wool, lace, rope … Old familiar acts: spinning, weaving, knotting, working with bobbins … Almost forgotten, now again passionately loved and practiced by young and old. A typical initiative from Boerke Naas: save the valuable and bring it back alive. Not artificial, not occasional, but a contemporary element of our culture: enriching, joyful and lasting.
Music is the soul of a nation. Boerke Naas has always passionately practiced the traditional music, defended it against ignorance and underestimation, made it loved by the many thousands who listened attentively and who enjoyed it. A wide range of own songs and compositions offer Boerke Naas an inexhaustible source to add in an incomparable, praising, moving and charming way luster to their festivities and performances. Music is the soul of the live of Boerke Naas.
Folk dance is more than a hop on an old melody. It is experiencing together stylized and physically the music. It is controlling your body and limbs in harmony, with the music, with yourself, with the others. Boerke Naas consciously chose the costume: modern, beautiful and comfortable.
