Kukeri
The kukeri are the masked dancers of the Bulgarian winter, men dressed from head to foot in sheepskin and goat-hide, crowned with tall carved wooden masks and hung about the waist with heavy bronze and copper bells, who process through villages around New Year and before Lent. Their dance - a hopping, swaying, bell-shaking performance - is meant to drive out evil spirits, ill luck and sickness and to bring health, fertility and a good harvest in the season to come. Masks differ from region to region: Pernik favours towering feathered and horned figures, while the Rhodope makers carve flatter,