Each region in the Armenian Highlands had its own Kochari, with its unique way of both dancing and music.[9]
Etymology
In Armenian, "Kochari" literally means "knee-come". Գուճ (gudj or goudj) means "knee" and արի (ari) means "come".[10][page needed]
In Azerbaijani Turkish, "köç" means "to move" used both as a verb and as a noun,[11] with the latter used more in the context of nomads' travelling. "Köçəri" is also both an adjective and a noun, meaning a "nomad" and "nomadic" simultaneously.[12]
In Pontic Greek, from the Greek "κότσι" (in Pontic Greek "κοτς") meaning "heel" (from Medieval Greek "κόττιον" meaning the same) and "αίρω" meaning "raise", all together "raising the heel", since the Greeks consider the heel to be the main part of the foot which the dancer uses.[citation needed]
Group dancing, when dancers imitate jumping goats, is known as kochari. Dancers stand abreast, holding each other's hands, The tempo of the dance ranges from moderate to fast. Squatting and butting an imagined opponent are followed by high jumps.[13]
Armenian
A part of Armenian kochari
Armenians have been dancing Kochari for over a thousand years.[14] The dance is danced by both men and women and is intended to be intimidating. More modern forms of Kochari have added a "tremolo step", which involves shaking the whole body. It spread to the eastern part of Armenia after the Armenian genocide. The Armenian Kochari has been included to the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding of UNESCO in 2017.[15]
Azerbaijani
Today this dancing is played in the Nakhchivan land of which Sharur, Sadarak, Kangarli, Julfa and Shahbuz regions' folklore collectives and it is performed at weddings.[16] Kochari along with tenzere has been included to the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding of UNESCO in November 2018 as versions of Yalli dance.[17][7]
^Vvedensky, Boris, ed. (1953). Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian). Vol. 23 (Second ed.). Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia. p. 170. КОЧАРИ — армянский народный мужской танец.
^Yuzefovich, Victor (1985). Aram Khachaturyan. New York: Sphinx Press. p. 217. ISBN9780823686582. ..and in the sixth scene one of the dances of the gladiators is very reminiscent of Kochari, the Armenian folk dance.
^BetBasoo, Peter Pnuel (30 April 2003). "Thirty Assyrian Folk Dances"(PDF). Assyrian International News Agency. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
^Gottlieb, Robert (26 July 1998). "Astaire to Zopy-Zopy". New York Times. Archived from the original on 21 September 2013. Retrieved 6 November 2013. I find it difficult to imagine someone without a predisposition to read about such matters as Azerbaijani folk dance (One type of yally has various forms known as kochari, uchayag, tello, and galadangalaya; another type is a dance mixed with games called gazy-gazy, zopy-zopy, and chopu-chopu) browsing profitably through Oxford's many hundreds of pages of such information.
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