Lado

LADO is a professional folk dance and song ensemble from Zagreb, described as the most prominent ensemble of Croatian folklore. It was founded on 11 November 1949 as the Državni zbor narodnih plesova i pjesama, with the task of researching, collecting, arranging and staging the finest Croatian music and dance traditions. Its name is an old Slavic refrain from the ritual songs of north-western Croatia, meaning roughly "good" or "dear".

One of the founders, Zvonimir Ljevaković, was its first artistic director, and the ensemble first performed on 4 February 1950 at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, with six songs and nine dances. Later artistic directors include Ivan Ivančan from 1974, Hanibal Dundović, Ivan Ivančan the younger and Krunoslav Šokac, and the music was led by Emil Cossetto, Božo Potočnik, Dinko Fio, Tomislav Uhlik and Bojan Pogrmilović.

Today LADO has 37 dancers and singers and 14 musicians, who play about fifty traditional and classical instruments, from diple, gajde, gusle and lijerica to the tamburica, violin, cello and clarinet. Its repertoire has more than 100 choreographies from the Mediterranean, Alpine, Pannonian and Dinaric regions, and its costume collection more than 1,200 sets, some over a century old. The women's group Ladarice and the Vokalisti LADA sing within the ensemble.

LADO has given more than 5,000 performances in Croatia and 48 other countries. It won first prize at the Llangollen festival in Wales in 1954 and represented Europe at the World Symposium on Choral Music in Minneapolis in 2002. It holds 22 Porin awards, among them the lifetime award in 2002 and best folk album for Na moru i kraju, Na zelenom travniki, Teta Liza i LADO and Iz kajkavskih krajeva vol. 3 i 4.

Its recordings run from Narodne pjesme i plesovi sjeverne Hrvatske (1987) to LADO Electro 2.0 Memorabilium (2018). The playlist is the album Kolo igra, tamburica svira, Vol. 1, with "Šokačko kolo", "Žensko bunjevačko kolo" and "Svatovac".