Krakowiak

The Krakowiak or Cracovienne is a fast, syncopated Polish folk dance in duple time from the region of Kraków and Lesser Poland. The folk outfit worn for the dance has become the national costume of Poland, most notably, the rogatywka peaked hat with peacock feathers.

It became a popular ballroom dance in Vienna ("Krakauer") and Paris ("Cracovienne") where, with the polonaise and the mazurka, it signalled a Romantic sensibility of sympathy towards a picturesque, distant and oppressed nation. In Russia a krakowiak was featured in Mikhail Glinka's A Life for the Tsar (1836) and, ever since, became an identifiable symbol of Poles and Polish culture in the Russian Empire, especially due to the rogatywka hat.