The HUB Ballroom became a potpourri of sounds, smells and color this weekend as more than 2,000 people explored the customs of Slavic American heritage during the 12th annual Penn State Slavic Folk Festival.

"This spring fun festival is mainly to showcase the achievements of the Slavic American population," said festival coordinator Lorraine Kapitanoff as festival spectators applauded a folk dance performed by the Czechoslavak-Moravian Club Dancers.

"We do it to have fun," said Agnes Shattuck, a member of the Czechoslavak-Moravian Club. "We want to pass on our culture and heritage to the children."

All Slavic costumes are colorful and detailed but each design is unique in some way to a specific village, said Shattuck, wearing her own authentic costume. Many of the older generation can tell where a dancer is from simply by the way a single ribbon lays or the symbols a beaded design uses, she added.

The traditional Slavic folk music the groups used in their performances could be heard almost non-stop during the three day festival as spectators sampled the aromatic ethnic foods available for purchase and browsed through the rows of display tables.

Kielbassi and holoupkis, stuffed cabbage with meat, rice and tomato sauce, gave the air a spicy aroma while pierogies and sour cream were constantly requested by those attending the festival.

After spectators sampled the available warm food, they could purchase dessert from piles of Slavic pastries displayed on several tables.

Kolaches, Czech pastries; rozhkis, nut rolls; and pashkas and kulitches, traditional Easter pastries, were only a few of the possible choices.

Money raised from the food sales will help fund next year's festival, said Dawn Boyer (senior-Russian) as she sold several pastries.

The annual festival is sponsored by the University's Department of Slavic Languages and Dobro Slovo, a national Slavic studies honor society.

At another table, Charlotte deLissovoy explained a private folk art display containing intricately carved Russian bears and toys, brightly detailed icon boxes and simply designed jewelry.

Much of the traditional Slavic craftwork and clothing is bright and detailed because the serfs had a lot of time to work on detail during the long, dark winter months, deLissovoy said.

Other display tables delighted young and old alike with such items as finely embroidered clothing, matrushka dolls and Monopoly in Russian, books printed in the Slavic languages and decorated Easter eggs.

The detail of the decorated eggs, called either pysanky or krashanka depending on the type of dye used, enthralled everyone.

Peggy Miskovsky, a State College resident who demonstrated Ukrainian Easter egg decorating throughout the festival, said the eggs are very important to Ukranian women.

If enough eggs are not decorated throughout the year, a chain encircling the earth breaks allowing evil to overpower good, she said.