Ethnic festivals in Ukraine

Ethnic festivals as a form of rest and relaxation and spreading national ukrainian culture are becoming more and more popular in Ukraine. The festival Pechenizke Pole was held last Saturday in the Kharkiv oblast. Traditionally, since 2002 this event has gathered masters of folk art and folklore bands from the region known as Slobozhanshchyna. This year the site of the event was the regional landscape park Pechenizke Pole near Lake Pechenizke on the southern stretch of the left-bank forest steppe. The Siverskiy Donetsk River was mentioned by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus as a border between the Scythian tribes, who lived in Europe, and the Sarmatians, who lived in Asia.

This historic locality gave the feast its unique character – a colony of ancient Pechenegs was built on the field and a military choreographic theater gave a live dance performance. Masters of historic reconstruction were dressed in costumes of warriors from the 1st century AD and gave a show of live action in the form of sword fights. The festival’s program also included live performances by folklore bands, a fair, master classes of decorative art, balloon flights other forms of entertainment.

A special postal envelope and stamp with the name Pechenizke Pole were prepared especially for this holiday. The form of participation of local officials in the event was unusual – they were dressed in embroidered shirts, decorated the exhibition tents and participated in contests and a number of different games. The visitors of the festival had a chance to try out dishes of Vietnamese, Uzbeki, Armenian, Azerbaijani and Ukrainian cuisine.

The festival closed with a grand concert: with the unique band from Kyiv called Ars-nova opening the show with percussive compositions. They were followed by Skhid Side and Rosava, who played a colorful mixture of ethnic music and jazz improvisations. Svyatoslav Vakarchuk and his band Okean Elzy closed the show.

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