Troika

Troika is a Russian performance dance based on Russian folk dances. The Russian word troika means three-horse team/gear, and the dancers imitate the prancing of horses pulling a sled or a carriage.

The first version was created by choreographer Nadezhda Nadezhdina for her folklore dance troupe Beroyzka in 1948. Since then this dance is included into repertoires of virtually all Russian ethnographic dance ensembles. Initially, it was a dance for a man and two women, but later choreographies with other combinations were created, such as one woman and two men or three women.