Hennie Konings and Radboud Koop

DISCUSSION

Hennie Konings

As the son of a Russian mother and a Dutch father, Hennie Konings grew up with Russian music and dance. As a ten-year-old, he accompanied the songs his mother sang on the balalaika. As a teenager he discovered his great love for Russian dance. In 1968 he graduated from the Rotterdam Dance Academy with a degree as dance performer as well as in dance pedagogy. As part of a cultural exchange program between the Netherlands and the then Soviet Union, he received a scholarship which enabled him to complete further dance studies in Moscow. There he received lessons at the folk dance school of the "Pyatnitsky" folk choir by Tatyana Ustinova and Olga Zolotova. During many study trips to Russia between 1969 and 1987, he got to know a wide variety of Russian dance styles - both stage folk dance and the living folklore in Russian villages. In 1986 he ended his career as an active dancer. Since then, he has devoted himself exclusively to teaching Russian folklore as a dance teacher of international reputation. In many European countries as well as in the USA and Asia he regularly holds seminars on Russian folklore as well as lectures on its background, development and history. Participants in these courses include amateurs as well as professional dancers and dance teachers. Over the years Hennie Konings has made many choreographies and choreographic arrangements for folklore ensembles, but above all for recreational dance. In 1987 he founded the "Nadezhda" foundation, the aim of which is to arouse general interest in Russian folklore. The range of activities offered by this foundation is broad. It ranges from lessons in Russian dance and singing to the production of CDs, organizing trips to Russia and the Ukraine and personal contacts with Russian folklore groups, dance teachers and ethnomusicologists.

Radboud Koop

Radboud Koop, born in and resident of The Netherlands, started international folk dancing at the age of eleven, started teaching at recreational folk dance groups in the Netherlands already some five years later, and has been dancing and teaching international folk dance ever since. He was admitted to the Rotterdam Dance Academy to the professional dance teacher program, but, after one year, switched to an education in Earth and space science at the Delft University of Technology. Some thirty years ago he became involved in Russian folk dances while working with Hennie Konings, a well-known Russian folk dance teacher from the Netherlands. Together with Hennie, Radboud attended classes, both in the Netherlands as well as in Russia, with Olga Zolotova, the director of the “Pyatnitsky Ensemble” folk dance school. Since they met, Radboud regularly replaces Hennie at Russian folk dance workshops. Until 2018, Radboud taught Hennie’s Russian folk dance program in the Netherlands and has also been teaching this program in Belgium, Germany, the United States, England, Italy and Canada.