Dancing Bears

AUTHOR: Witold Szablowski PUBLISHER: Text

RRP: $32.99

REVIEWER: Mary Ann Elliott

AWARD-WINNING Polish journalist Witold Szablowski’s story charts the extreme social and economic changes throughout Eastern Europe in the past few years.

It is a brilliant portrait of people whose lives haven’t quite caught up with their countries’ political turns, with many longing for the old authoritarian rule in the Soviet bloc.

Such is the case with Bulgaria’s Gypsies. Following age-old tradition, they trained bears to dance, taking them into their families and touring with them at fairs, weddings and tourist resorts.

These families mourn the days when they raised bears alongside their children.

Szablowski deftly weaves the stories of the bears, who today are housed in a bear park in Belitsa, where they try to get used to a life of freedom in which they have to care for themselves.

But when they see people, they get up and start to dance.

A bear that has been captive for most of its life has little chance of coping with freedom, and it’s the same for thousands of people whose old lives have been uprooted.

For both bears and people, freedom has brought not just new opportunities but also huge challenges; the emergence from Communism has seen unemployment, homelessness and capitalism.

Spiced with trenchant wit, Szablowki’s story is about the tragic disorientation of bears and people alike and the after-effects of authoritarian rule. He weaves poignancy, humour and clever metaphor into his fascinating history of bears.