This year's Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Kaštela was presented to Tonće Tadin for his exceptional contribution to the preservation and nurturing of Kaštela and Croatian folklore. The 68-year-old Tonće graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Naval Architecture, and in parallel with his business and family ties, he began his artistic journey very early in preserving and nurturing traditional dance heritage.
For 25 years, he has been the artistic director and choreographer of the KUD "Ante Zaninović", which was awarded the collective award of the city of Kaštela for 2024. In addition to working in the KUD "Ante Zaninović", he stages his choreographies for other companies (HKUD "Matija Gubec", KUD "Punat"), and assists in the work of companies that do not have directors (KUD "Sv. Roko", KUD "Jadro", KUDŽ "Filip Dević", KUD "Kvadrilja").
The Cultural and Artistic Association "Ante Zaninović" was founded in September 2000 with the aim of preserving the traditional intangible heritage of Kaštela. The preservation, protection and promotion of the intangible song, dance and cultural heritage of our county, especially Kaštela, is the basic multi-year program that the association implements with the support of the local community, local government bodies and the Ministry of Culture. The Cultural and Artistic Association "Ante Zaninović" has won numerous awards and recognitions: for the stage performance "Kaštela Folk Four", for the choreography "The Red Rose Has Grew", at the international festival in Filderstadt in Germany, and has participated in many festivals and cultural exchanges throughout Europe and the world. In the past two years, the association has participated in the State Festival "Vinkovačke jeseni", at the events of the Kaštela Tourist Board: Kaštela promenade, Flower Festival, Nostalgia, Miljenko and Dobrila, and at the International Folklore Festival in Kaštela "Za jubav tance igraše" which has been organized for the 22nd year in a row.
On the occasion of the awards we received, we spoke with Tonći and his wife Marica, president of the KUD "Ante Zaninović", about their love for folklore, which they have passed on to their children, but also to the members of the KUD, the founding and activities of the KUD, the research of dances, and the promotion of song, dance and cultural heritage at various festivals and reviews.
You received the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Cultural and Artistic Association "Ante Zaninović" received the City's collective award. What do the awards you received mean to you?
- Receiving an award means a lot of joy. It means that you have been working for 45 years, and for me it is a joy to work and to share that joy with others. The joy is not divided then, but multiplied. I think the greatest happiness and joy is when you can share your knowledge with others. This is also a double feeling. The first feeling is great, I received an award and it means that I am worth something, that I have given something, and then I remember that the award is for a lifetime achievement, which means that I am many years old. It is nice for a person to live to see the years, it means that you are healthy, that you are alive – Tonći told us proudly.
How did it all start, where did your love for folklore come from?
- It all started back in 1976. At that time, there were no youth activities in Kambelovac, there was no sports club, and young people wanted to do something to have fun. When I was a child, there was a folklore, music, drama section, and as a child I acted in plays. I always said that I would be an actor, but life took me to electrical engineering. In 1976, we created a folklore section where we brought people from Trogir to teach us how to dance. I was more for rock and roll and I said, wherever I go, but if you want to be an example for others to learn something, then you had to set an example. And so I started dancing and I did well. However, there were no finances, you couldn't pay the leader, you couldn't buy costumes, and it only lasted a year, after which the five of us, at the leader's urging, went to dance in Trogir. Little by little, traveling, parties, dancing, company, and that's how I stayed until 1979, when a company was founded in Donji Kaštela, which was to be led by my first leader, šjor Branko Šegović, who suggested me as the leader. So after two years of dancing, I became the leader until 1983 and my enlistment in the army – Tonći told us.
Tell us how you met your wife and how you passed on your love of folklore to her.
- In the Donja Kaštela group, I met my current wife, Mara, whom I brought to the folklore group and that's how we dated. When I returned from the army, the group was gone. Then I returned to Trogir where I led a children's group, and two years later my wife and I got married - Tonći tells us.
- At that time, I was going to high school and music school at the same time. I graduated from high school music school, and after that, I went to college, and we acquired the knowledge we had together and built on each other, me in music, him in dance, and so on, all these years - adds Marica.
You danced and led groups in Solin and the Adriachem Cultural and Artistic Association, and then founded the Ante Zaninović Cultural and Artistic Association. How did that come about?
- I got a job in Solin and couldn't make it to Trogir for rehearsals. Šjor Branko was also leading rehearsals in Solin at the time, so the two of us moved there. The fact that I was at rehearsals from 8:30 to 9:45 p.m. and then went to work the third shift shows how much desire and love I had for folklore. We led a children's group there, and later a preparatory group. After Salona, we went to KUD Adriachem and did an action in five schools in Kaštela. We gathered 20-30 dancers in each school and held folklore sections in each school. We gathered over a hundred children. After a certain number of years, we no longer had the same goals. We wanted to encourage young people as much as possible, we asked for our own orchestra to be founded, but the older ones weren't very understanding, so we left the company. We thought that after that we wouldn't be involved in folklore anymore. Then the late Marin Bedalov suggested that we create a new society, the "Ante Zaninović" cultural and artistic society, which we founded in 2000. We didn't even have costumes, but all the young people who were in the society joined us - Tonći recalls.
What were the first years of the KUD like?
- We started from scratch. We realized that everything we invested from the membership fee we received, because in the first year you are not entitled to a grant from the City, we should invest in costumes. In May 2001, on the first tour we organized in Kranj, we went with borrowed costumes. At that time, I gathered the mothers and grandmothers of the members at the time who knew how to sew and embroider, we had pictures of the originals and original costumes from which we bought material and sewed ourselves. Over time, we made new costumes for each choreography. Today we have excellent costumes that look like the originals on stage, we are just missing some parts. In the beginning, we also had a children's choir that sang at various events in Kaštela, and we also went to children's festivals. We released three CDs with them, one of which contained Christmas songs. In our first year, we also had a group of folk singers. To go to the first festival, the International Folklore Festival in Kranj, we were supposed to take a klapa, and since we sang in the church choir in Kambelovac, we invited older singers from whom we learned old Kaštela songs to sing with us in Kranj. We sang a church folk song, and on the bus on the way to Kranj, we learned to sing traditionally in three voices: first, second and bass. We learned a lot of songs and that's how the group came to life until 2012 - Marica tells us.
When you founded the KUD, your primary focus was on researching Kaštela dances, and so you brought the Kaštela folk foursome back from oblivion. What was the process of researching and setting up the foursome like?
- We worked in a way that we first researched our own. From the šjor Branko Šegović, we learned only 3-4 Kaštela dances that he researched and taught about at the Croatian School of Folklore. When we started researching, we started with the people of Kaštela who danced or watched these dances because these are dances that were performed until World War II. One of the first narrators was Ivo Cvitić, who wrote the lyrics "Since the seventh century" and he often came to our house. He kept talking about the Kaštela folk quartet that he had seen before his eyes, but because of his age he could not dance it. We recorded his commands, words, and even the opening melody, and all of that was in a drawer until the moment our son ended up in the hospital in Zagreb. The hospital regime was such that I could only be with him during the afternoons, so I spent the mornings at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies, where my colleague Joško Čaleta works. I asked him to come and look at the materials they kept on the musical culture of Kaštela. There I found a lot of material, including audio recordings of people interviewed by Dr. Ivan Ivanča, and I was able to read them differently because I understood that speech. He wrote short lines and wrote down the verses that were sung in some of the dances. Šjor Branko got the musical notation, and Ivanča got the verses and melody from the people, and that's how we started to put the pieces together. We also found a pile of notebooks of the late Ivan Tsar and a small part of what people, while researching Kaštela, sent by mail to the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore. All of this would not have borne fruit and Tonći would not have created the choreography for the quadrille if we had not also researched at home. We visited dozens of families in Kaštela, and we spent five years putting it together. A great help was my colleague Vladan Vuletin from Štafilić, who called me because while researching Bijaćka Vila he found a lot of musical notations of dances. He gave me the Kaštela folk quadrille for piano performance. Barba Ivo Cvitić told me the first command, how the quadrille begins, and explained that it was danced as the finale of the evening because not everyone could dance it. It was led by the ball capo who shouted out the commands. When I played the opening melody, I discovered that this was exactly what he was singing, and that's how we started putting together the story. We staged the foursome in 2003 and Zaninović danced it at his festival that summer, and in the winter of 2004 we performed it at the 1st Festival of Croatian New Choreographies organized by the Croatian Society of Folklore Leaders and Choreographers – recalls Marica.
In addition to the Kaštela folk foursome, you have also researched other dances and compiled all the materials into a book. Given that you are still researching dances, do you plan to publish another book?
- In parallel with the research on the Kaštela folk quadrille, I studied the Trogir quadrille, the French quadrille, where they came from, how they became established, why they are called quadrilles, and this is called the folk quadrille. I have shaped all this material into a book that was printed for me by the Bijaći Homeland Society, and a second expanded edition should be published soon, which also lists other Kaštela dances that we have discovered so far. But the research does not end there, it is a continuous search and digging, and you always learn something new from the musical history of Kaštela - points out Marica.
You improved your knowledge at seminars, and in the meantime you have become a professor. What seminars are you currently teaching?
- We studied at Croatian folklore seminars held by the Croatian Education Council in Yugoslavia at the time. There I received an offer to come and dance for Lado. However, going to Zagreb and leaving my Kaštela made no sense. Throughout all this time, we went to folklore schools and for many years we were assistants to Branko Šegović for parts of Trogir, Kaštela, Split, Makarska, Podgora, Šolta, Brač, Hvar and Dubrovnik. The folklore school was taken over by the Croatian Emigrants' Association during the Homeland War. Andrija Ivančan, who was the head of the school, told us that we should take over the course from Branko Šegović. We continue to hold seminars organized by the Croatian Culture Council, as well as seminars organized by the KUD "Kvadrilja" - Tonći tells us.
- Tonći is a licensed leader through FOKA. According to their criteria, there are categories, who is what and not everyone can be everything. You have to have certain knowledge, a completed school, you have to set six choreographies that are registered with ZAMP and someone had to evaluate them, you can't just set a choreography. In this way, they introduced new people who do new choreographies, but they have to be evaluated stylistically, musically and in other elements - adds Marica.
You have participated in numerous festivals and reviews across Croatia and the world. Which ones are the most memorable for you and why?
- We have been to Vinkovačke jeseni as representatives of the coastal region with the first group four times, with the children's group three times, and in Čakovec at the State Festival organized by the Croatian Cultural Council. We have participated in dozens of folklore festivals through CIOF in Macedonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Sweden... We have also been to the Croatian Rose festival organized by Croatian emigrants in Stuttgart. We have sent our girls in folk costumes twice to the Most Beautiful Girls in Folk Costume Brodsko kolo competition. The first time was in 2003 and our girl won second place dressed in her grandmother's original costume. The second time was at the Brodsko kolo in 2014 when our girl won first place. We were then in Zaprešić at a performance where we represented Kaštela. They told us that we needed to send one girl for the folk costume competition. We got her ready at the last minute. She was declared the most beautiful and they entered her for the Brodsko kolo. It was a surprise for us, so on the way from Kaštela to there we explained to her what each part of the costume was called. She came out, and the host Mirko Fodor was speechless when he saw her. All the girls came in gold embroidery, with crowns on their heads, with hats, swords, and she came with a razor and bulletproof vests in the Kaštela costume. She was so beautiful, she had a beautiful hairstyle, all the details on it and a beautiful smile. She received so many gifts, and she even had to come and open the Brodsko kolo the following year. When we appeared at the Festival of Croatian New Choreographies, everyone expected it to be very similar to the Split dances or the Trogir quadrille, but this was something completely new both musically and stage-wise. Tonći managed to condense a 20-minute dance into 6-7 minutes of dance. We won the first prize for stage appearance and that was the only year in which they gave out a set of men's and women's costumes from the Croatian National Costume Loan in Zagreb. In that category, the prize was a set of Posavska women's and men's costumes, which we received. With choreography A rose rose bloomed we performed in 2008. It is a song that Franjo Kuhač wrote down during his walks around Dalmatia in the books Zapisi iz Dalmacija, in which he says that it was written in Kaštel Kambelovac. It is a typical female song that tells the story of how a girl is alone, watering a rose, life passes by and a young hero returns who is not nine years old and they do not recognize each other. During the dance, he asks her if she would recognize him, to which she replies ... she would say in everything that it is you ... and then the livelier gallop polka dances begin where everyone sings "There dear ones met and for love dances were played". That is exactly the name of the International Festival organized by the KUD "Ante Zaninović" - explains Marica to us.
You have organized an International Folklore Festival, which brings together groups from different parts of the world every year. How did you come up with the idea?
– We are the first in Dalmatia to organize an International Festival, this year will be the 23rd in a row in 25 years. The Czechs, who came on an exchange basis, came to us in 2002. In 2003, we decided to connect with a world organization in order to bring some content that was perhaps a little more attractive than ours. The following year, we participated in the IOV (World Organization of Folklore Festivals), which was just starting to take off in Croatia. That year, we hosted the French, and the following year, the Romanians. However, we also invited colleagues from neighboring municipalities and towns to our evenings. We invited the KUD "Pleter" from Dugopolje, who saw that it was a very good idea and decided to invite a foreign group. So the festival will have more days, and the groups will come to Kaštela, and then to Dugopolje. The following year, Muć joined us, who has the festival "The Old Chest is Opened", and then Dugi rat also joined us. Then we included Zaninović in CIOF Croatia, which has contacts with CIOF from all over the world, and through them we have the right to advertise our festival in the CIOF calendar. This winter we received a lot of inquiries from all over the world. Intercontinental societies that come will not come to Kaštela for five days only, but will contact the president of CIOF, who combines all CIOF festivals. In this way, we are networked with Karlovac, Varaždin, Zagreb. Last year we had a group from Indonesia, Brazil, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania. Before that, we regularly had groups from Macedonia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, France and other countries. This year they are coming to us from Costa Rica, Greece and France – Marica told us.
Over the past 25 years, little by little, you have built the KUD. What is the situation now and what are the working conditions?
- We still have people who have been in the veteran group from the very beginning. We have the first group, which includes high school students and students, two children's groups, a mandolin-tambura orchestra - a group of 8 musicians. We currently have ten mandolins, two double basses, two guitars, and for the tamburica band we have two bisernicas, a berda and two bugarijas, as well as three bračas. This means that we have complete equipment for the tamburica orchestra, including a lijerica for possible performances, but first we need to have players, so if someone signs up, we may use a lijerica. We have twenty-something sets of costumes for Kaštela. We have twenty sets of costumes for adults and twenty-five for children. Although these children's sets are not very representative, we will make new ones so that children can perform in renovated costumes in the summer, considering that some have been worn for 25 years, and we also have a large number of children so we have to dress them all. We currently have a total of 150 sets of costumes. The society did not have its own premises, but shared the space of the Town Hall with other associations. Two years ago we moved to the floor of the old school, above the kindergarten, where we now have a part for dancing and a smaller part for socializing after rehearsals. We have had excellent cooperation with all the heads of culture during these 25 years, as well as with the Tourist Board and the mayors who supported our projects and helped us financially, both for going to performances and for decorating the space. The space we are in now was quite dilapidated, and the City helped us with the renovation, while we cleaned and decorated ourselves. We have had good support for all 25 years and of course, I would like to thank our members who are willing to work as volunteers. We have an annual concert where we present what we have done that year with all our members. The concert is usually held on the hill in Kambelovac at the beginning of summer and is called Ispod balature – Marica tells us.
You have passed on your love of folklore to your children and grandchildren, as well as to the members of the KUD. How have you managed to ensure that people see the KUD as a place of creative development and positive personal and social change?
- All of this together would not have happened without the immense love between us and the love we have passed on to our children and grandchildren and to our members. My daughter and son-in-law met in the KUD where they danced for years. My daughter now leads the younger group. We have five grandchildren and all five of them dance. Our son also danced, but he hasn't been coming lately. He lost his team, the generations have changed a bit, but he is constantly interested in where we are going, what we are doing. When this slightly older team returns, we hope that he will return too. Our members have gained valuable life experience through dancing in the KUD, they have interacted with other cultures and people. They help us when foreign groups come. Some of them are translators and guides and they do this on a volunteer basis - said Tonći.
- I would like to see those first dancers from the KUD come back to me. Currently, we have their children in the children's group who will be in the first group in a few years, but I expect them in the veteran group. We continue to send our members to singing and dancing seminars because we want our younger groups to be led by young people from our society. We are working to further educate the people who learned from us, to share ideas with them and for them to continue this work. I am proud that each of them has their own jobs, that they are quality people who live in this city, who work in other associations and that they think that the time spent in Zaninovići was very nice, that they spent their youth very well and that from the two of us, in addition to dancing, they also learned how to lead a family life because some of them got married in the society, we have several married couples in the society, like our daughter and son-in-law. They are all family people and that is an additional quality of what we promote in society. The new generation brings their children to us with great trust, and around 2,000 people have passed through the Cultural Center in the past 25 years – points out Marica.
How interested are children in folklore today in this digital age?
- We started in Trogir 2 years ago and at the beginning we had six children in the children's group. Now there are about a hundred of them and we no longer have one but three groups. We appointed a young leader for them who was our member and lives in Trogir. Our smallest group is the one with young people and students. They have other obligations and exams. Obviously, priorities have changed, but we still combine the veteran group and them - Tonći told us.
- We lead the oldest group, and Tonči leads the first. The number of children in the Zaninović Cultural Center has also increased, so we had to divide one group into two, and currently we have 45 children in Zaninović – adds Marica.
You have marked each fifth anniversary differently. What are you preparing for this year's 25th anniversary of the KUD and what are your plans for the future?
- We celebrated every five years differently. We recorded the first DVD in 2005 and every choreography on it was recorded in an authentic space. For ten years, we made a calendar where we took pictures of all our dancers in different places around Kaštela. We were on tour in Italy in 2015 and did not celebrate it in particular because we were filming Miljenko and Dobrila, and in 2020 there was a lockdown. For this year, we recorded a show that will be on TV Dalmacija, and in addition, we are digging out old pictures and videos that we have. We want to record a film, so we will record interviews with older members. We are planning more activities this year. At our summer concert in July, we will host a group from Županja. Ozara from Kranj will perform at the 23rd International Festival. This is the company that organized our first tour. We plan to make an exhibition of photographs, gifts, and awards, of which there are many. The late Marin Bedalov took care of all of this. A large part of the photos are his, he was a photography enthusiast. In his memory, we should make a presentation of all those photos. We are waiting for his children to become active again because they danced and played, and his wife was in the workshop. This year we have three seminars in preparation. One seminar is in Trogir and we will hold it to teach those who dance the Trogir quadrille in their companies how to dance it correctly, and they will be taught by Trogir dancers. I am leading the second seminar in Zaninovića, and it started as an incentive of the ZORA cluster, of which we are a member. We have been working on the Cultural Olympiad for two years, and as part of the Olympiad, seminars were started for educators, teachers and young leaders of children's folklore to come and learn about children's games with singing, movements and stories. The third seminar that we recently learned about is a seminar in Frankfurt through the Matica iseljenika, to which we were invited. Our emigrants are organizing a seminar for company leaders working in Germany that will cover all four dance zones: Alpine, Pannonian, Dinaric and Adriatic. We have five hours available for the Adriatic zone, and we will present the costumes, dances, and customs of Kaštela and Trogir – Marica told us.
Photo: Marica and Tonći Tadin archive / Ivana Topić
This text was co-financed by the Split-Dalmatia County within the framework of the Program for the Promotion and Development of Cultural Content in the Split-Dalmatia County via Electronic Media in 2025.
