The story
Ulan-Ude Night of Yokhor in Ulan-Ude
Night of Yokhor is a republic-wide festival of Buryat national circle dance held annually in July at the Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of Transbaikalia near Ulan-Ude. Running since 2008 and organized by the Baikal Buryat National Theatre of Song and Dance, it gathers around five thousand participants for competitive and community yokhor dancing.
The yokhor holds a place in Buryat culture comparable to what national dances hold in other steppe and Siberian traditions: a circle dance historically performed around a bonfire, linking participants hand to hand or shoulder to shoulder in coordinated steps set to call-and-response singing, traditionally danced at seasonal gatherings and celebrations across the Buryat lands surrounding Lake Baikal.