Art in three dimensions
Ana Borisova is a folk singer, a teacher and a researcher. Not one after the other, but all three together, every day.
She sings so that she knows what she is teaching. She teaches so that she understands what exactly she does when she sings. She does research to check whether what she teaches really works. Each of the three feeds the other two.
Singer
Twenty years on stage and seventeen countries. The album “Dryanovki murafetliyki”: the songs nobody had ever recorded.
Teacher
Senior assistant professor at the university since 2016. A folk singing class in Dryanovo in its thirteenth year, taught since 2025 with the “Singing Mirror” model.
Researcher
A doctor of the methodology of music education. Twenty publications. A Fulbright grant. A joint project with Northumbria University.
St Cyril and St Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo
In February 2009 she was appointed assistant professor of folk singing at the University of Veliko Tarnovo, Faculty of Education, Department of Music. On 20 February 2016, after an examination, she was given the academic post of senior assistant professor in the methodology of teaching folk singing.
She leads the folk singing class for students of Music Education. Every year the class gives a graduation concert in which each student performs solo folk songs with piano accompaniment and part-song arrangements.
In 2025 and 2026 she is running a research experiment in three kindergartens in the Gabrovo and Veliko Tarnovo regions, on which she is preparing her habilitation thesis.
Before that
In September 2009 she took over the newly formed folk singing class at the St Kliment Ohridski school in Suhindol, set up with the help of the mayor of Suhindol, Plamen Chernev, and the head teacher, Ivaylo Otchev.
International
On 6 July 2016 she was awarded a grant by the Bulgarian-American Commission for Educational Exchange (Fulbright) to teach and do research during the 2017/2018 academic year in Seattle, USA. There she also took part in the World Musical Cultures seminar led by Professor Patricia Campbell, an ethnomusicologist and music educator at the University of Washington.
The class in Dryanovo
The Anna-FolkArt Association was founded on 23 January 2013 in Veliko Tarnovo; in 2018 it moved to Dryanovo, where it works together with the municipality.
The children of the class take part regularly in national folklore competitions such as “Orfeevo izvorche”, “Pesenna daga nad Kutev”, “Zableyalo mi agantse” and “Shiroka laka sings, plays and dances”.
From 2013 to 2025 the folk singing class was taught one to one; since 2025 it has followed the model of folk singing teaching that Borisova created in 2024, the “Singing Mirror”. From 2013 to 2025 the class was open to children and adults; since 2025 it takes children from the second to the seventh grade. Teaching runs from October to June, with sessions twice a month.
The class and the students
“Singing Mirror”
Folk singing is usually taught in one direction: from the teacher to the pupil. The “Singing Mirror” puts two learners face to face. Each of them hears themselves in the other. What the ear misses in one’s own singing is heard at once in the voice opposite.
The idea appeared at the beginning of 2024. In June of the same year a pilot was run with eight pairs of children. The model was later used with master’s students at the university, in a control and an experimental group, assessed against five criteria agreed in advance.
The model is described in two research papers, one in Bulgarian and one in English. Both can be read here.
If you would like your child to sing with her
The first meeting is a conversation and a short audition, with no obligation.