"In your dancing you use a lot of different movements with your feet and hands. It is difficult. When you're young, you're looking for an adventure, to learn something new and unfamiliar, and Bulgarian folklore was more difficult compared to the dances of Greece and Romania, so I decided to take up the challenge. I became a teacher of Bulgarian folk dance. 

I would like to thank prof. Nikolay Tsvetkov and Assoc. Prof. Georgi Garov, both from the South-West University "Neofit Rilski" in Blagoevgrad. They gave me the opportunity to study with state support. I enrolled in 2017 and graduated in September 2021. It was a great adventure for me - to be a student in Bulgaria at the age of 65. I studied part-time because choreography is my profession and I had to earn my living in The Hague. Besides teaching Bulgarian migrants here, I now work as an official choreographer at the Bulgarian school "Sts Cyril and Methodius" in The Hague. I also work with a lot of foreigners who are interested, and together we have formed an amateur group just for Bulgarian horo dances. 

Sometimes Bulgarian immigrants come to our group and we try to dance together, but the Dutch dances are different. Because of the existing arrangements of Bulgarian folk dances, they think that these are authentic Bulgarian folk dances, but in fact they are dancing an updated version. Now many of the dancers have the opportunity to come to Bulgaria to see the authentic horo, they are keen to see what I show them - the original versions. The dance, the steps, the rhythm - they are part of the truth of the Bulgarian soul, they are the history of Bulgaria.

Esther Williams has devoted many hours of her life to learning and teaching the steps and choreographing the dances of Bulgaria. Every visit to Bulgaria is a great experience for her and she loves to come back, especially for the people:

"It is easy to say what I love most about Bulgaria - I love the smell of the air in your country, I love the nature and above all I love the people! When you come here as a foreigner, walk into a café, say who you are, where you come from and show that you speak a little Bulgarian, the faces of the Bulgarians light up and a whole wave of hospitality goes out to you. They greet me like a relative. You never find that in Holland and I miss it very much in my country."