The ancestral dance at the Justice Cross
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The Association of Young Soldiers has organized an ancestral custom "The ancestral dance at the Justice Cross", which has been sacredly preserved by the young people in Scheii Brasovului.
During the weeks before the dance, young girls and boys are rehearsing in the captain?s house and establish the order in which the pairs enter the dance. Back in the old days, young girls and boys from the region Pajistei, Valea Tei, Prund or the area of the Young Soldiers used to participate in this dance. Young soldiers were in charge with the decoration of the plateau from the Justice Cross. They bring a big fir-tree from the woods and they put into a hole made in the ground the day before the dance.
The decorated fir-tree
The fir-tree is decorated with wreaths from coloured paper made by the girls participating in the dance, and a flag and a bunch of flowers is placed on the top of the fir-tree. Tradition says that, on Sunday morning, around nine o?clock, all the pairs get together in the captain?s house where the fiddlers arrive, too. Young boys and girls are dressed in Sunday clothes, black trousers and white shirts, respectively black skirts and white shirts. A group of young boys and girls holding each other?s arms is formed at the captain?s house. From here they are going to Prundului Square. They are headed by the musicians and the pairs made up from the captain, the provost marshal and the standard bearer.
Young lads? suite
Before leaving Unirii Square, young people, accompanied by fiddlers, start dancing and they throw the mace up in the air. The girls attach cockade rosettes in the passers? lapel, thus inviting them to participate in this festivity. Young men also dance "braul" or "sarba" (Romanian traditional folk dances) and then they leave to the Justice Cross. After they get on the plateau, each pair is surrounding the fir-tree three times and then they start dancing in the lads? "hora". They create a real show and impress by the parade of their folk costumes. After this "ritual" ends, they go out on the plateau, as they arrived, in the sound of the march. The pairs go to their homes where young girls and boys change with the "Romanian clothes".
The party
The dance continues with other dances such as "breaza", "ardeleana", "brasoveanca", "sarba" and "braul". Each pair leaves the plateau where the dance is organized, the same way they arrived, by circling the fir-tree three times in the applauses of the crowd. The pairs change their ceremonial clothes with banquet or ball clothes: the boys with black trousers and white shirts, and the girls with modern ball dresses, with a silk ribbon on the back, also for the Romanian clothes. A party starts at this moment and it usually lasts till late at night when darkness comes.
