A touch of Southern Dalmatia across the Atlantic in the Big Apple.
When you think of traditional Croatian folk costumes and folklore, you very likely imagine it to be a bit of a fishbowl world, where each region or county has its own finely tuned traditions and nobody else really knows about it. Wrong.
Although folklore and the wearing of traditional costumes from various areas in Croatia is done by Americans and Canadians who have Croatian parents for cultural displays isn’t something new, it isn’t something we hear a great deal about here in Croatia. Thanks to Ane Mljećka, New York has now got to know the wider Dubrovnik region a little bit better!
As DuList writes on the 4th of December, 2017, owing to Ane Mljećka, a beautiful exhibition of traditional folk costumes typical to areas in the extreme south of Dalmatia, including Konavle, the island of Mljet and Dubrovnik Primorje, has crossed the Atlantic and is currently being enjoyed in New York.
On Sunday at the Croatian Center in New York, USA, Ane Mljećka opened a wonderful exhibition entitled ”Croatian Cultural Heritage – Traditional Embroideries and Folk Costumes of the Dubrovnik Region: Mljet, Konavle and Dubrovačko (Dubrovnik) Primorje”.
For a more than perfect ambience, the exhibition was opened with no other than the sound of Dubrovnik’s own Ivan Gundulić‘s famous Hymn of Freedom (Himna Slobode), allowing visitors to the exhibition to not only experience Southern Dalmatia’s traditions and culture visually, but also with the sound of one the Pearl of the Adriatic’s most iconic pieces of music.
It’s ore than fair to say that this event was a celebration of Southern Dalmatian culture and the deeply woven cultural and historical traditions of the wider Dubrovnik region. Aside from Gundulić’s iconic music, visitors enjoyed Dalmatian and traditional klapa music as well as Dalmatian wine.
