site.btaBerlin-Based Nestinari Dance Club to Perform at Munich Festival

Nestinari Bulgarian Folk Dance Club from Berlin, Germany, will participate in the 11th Expats Join Hands in Worldwide Dance travelling festival, which will take place in Munich from May 15 to 17. 

"At this year’s edition, we will present an original narrative dance titled ‘Vina’ (Guilt), based on my concept and choreography. We interpret the theme ‘Libe Le, Libe Hubavo’ through a different lens, focusing on a number of universal human themes," Radoslav Yordanov, leader and choreographer of the Nestinari club, told BTA.

"The music is a compilation by Zhivko Zhelev and Bora Dugic, with part of it specially composed for our dance by Italian composer Federico Truzzi," he added.

According to him, preparations for the performance are progressing "at full speed, with the dancers eagerly anticipating the festival". "At the same time, our ‘fiery seamstresses’ are tirelessly sewing our new costumes for the performance," he said.

Yordanov also outlined the concept behind the dance:

"In ‘Vina’, we explore prejudice and its consequences through the theme of impossible love.

Two worlds collide. One is confident, orderly and at home. The other is an intruder, with a different rhythm and spirit. Its presence unsettles the familiar. The encounter is sharp, misunderstood and rejected. Rivalry quickly turns into confrontation.

In the first world is Rada, a spirit, energy, movement yet to find its path. In the second is Nikola, a bearer of change and the beginning of a new direction. Their eyes meet, their rhythm aligns, and somewhere within this ancestral opposition they find each other.

Their love is unexpected, unnatural… yet inevitable. Beautiful and pure… yet a threat to the order and beliefs of the worlds they come from.

Rada and Nikola choose not to submit. What are ancestral differences compared to the power of love, when youth understands, loves and strives forward?

But the guardians of the established order, the parents, oppose their union and lead people down the path of denial. Paradoxically, the two worlds merge, but not in love, in anger; not in understanding, in rejection. The individual disappears. The crowd remains.

The price paid by those who love is often too high, a sacrifice to those who follow blindly, without seeing or hearing, judging without feeling.

And when the irreversible happens, is there freedom from the judgment of the crowd? And where is it?

This is a story about the weight of words we repeat without thinking, about choices made without considering consequences, and about guilt we cannot escape."

The Nestinari Bulgarian Folk Dance Club in Berlin was founded in September 2020. "People of all ages dance in it, united by their love for Bulgarian culture, dance, music and traditions. Together we develop, grow and share both joys and challenges," Yordanov said.

The group has previously participated twice in the Expats Join Hands in Worldwide Dance travelling festival – in 2023 in Prague and in 2025 in Lyon.

The travelling festival Expats Join Hands in Worldwide Dance is organized by and for amateur folklore ensembles performing outside Bulgaria. The initiative was launched by the Ot Izvora group in Lyon, France, which hosted both the first edition in 2015 and the tenth edition in 2025. More than 100 dance ensembles and over 4,000 guests are expected at the 11th edition in Munich in May. The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) is the official media partner of the event and will present all participants.