Troika is a Russian performance dance based on Russian folk dances. The Russian word troika means three-horse team/gear, and the dancers imitate the prancing of horses pulling a sled or a carriage.[1]
The first version was created by choreographer Nadezhda Nadezhdina for her folklore dance troupe Beroyzka in 1948.[2] Since then this dance is included into repertoires of virtually all Russian ethnographic dance ensembles. Initially, it was a dance for a man and two women,[3] but later choreographies with other combinations were created, such as one woman and two men or three women.[4]
Other cultures
Similar folk dances are known among other Slavic peoples, e.g., the Polish Trojak.
A Cajun dance of the same name, Troika, exists, similar to the Russian dance.[5] It has been suggested[citation needed] that the Cajun version of the dance originated at the times when Cossacks of the Russian tsar army were stationed in Paris.
There was a German contra dancetriolet recorded in 1829 for groups of one man and two women.[6]
