I just heard a segment on NPR about this. Of course I checked here, and there were posts on MAP 7 and 10 years ago about it. I had never heard of it. Anyways, in case you are curious - http://www.theworld.org/2013/05/combat-hopak-ukraine/ Short blurb from the above link: There are dozens of pictures of fighting hopak’s creator, Volodymyr Stepanovich Pilat, dressed in the shirt and belted baggy pants of a Cossack, a legendary Ukrainian soldier. “I am a Cossack. I am a warrior. For me, this is normal,” Pilat says. “A warrior is a clean person. A person with honor and pride.” Pilat is massive. With his shaved head and trimmed grey beard, he looks intimidating, and he means to. Pilat thinks of himself as a 21st century Cossack warrior. He used to be a successful Karate master in Lviv. But in 1985, as Pilat tells it, he made a discovery. He was watching a traditional Ukrainian dance called “the hopak,” the dance Americans probably think of as Russian, where men squat and kick their legs to the side.
I did the same thing with ballet, but no one made a big deal about it cause I looked kind of silly in the tutu.
