Magyar Hírek, 1984 (37. évfolyam, 2-26. szám)
1984-04-14 / 8. szám
I PHOTO: VIKTOR GABOR Three months folk-dancing Ten young dancers are going through their paces, doubled by the mirror of the rehearsal room. They came from all quarters of the globe to Budapest, and by the time these lines will be published, it is hoped that all of them will have the result of three month’s hard work, their paper qualifications as novice folkdance teachers in their pocket. At the time of writing the final examinations still appear to be a long time off. “I used to be a gym teacher in Sydney, giving dancing lessons as well. I had to resign from my job to attend this course, but I have no regrets, it was worth it..Ilona Walker, from Australia says. The teachers are: Zoltán Varga, who knows all there is to be known about the dances of the Marosszék region; teaches of movement analysis; Edit Kaposi ethnography and Imre Olsvai folk-instrument and folk-music. “I used to assemble steps I remembered, teaching them as Hungarian dances," Ilona continues “and I had the nagging feeling, that this was not satisfactory. When I return, I shall teach groups of children.” Ildikó Antal also travelled all the way from Australia. She has been studying ethnography at the Debrecen university since January, helped by a scholarship given by the board of patrons of the native language movement. She maintains that one can really understand and appreciate folkdancing only given a knowledge of ethnography. “The Bocskay Calvinist Alliance of Melbourne asked me to teach the children to dance. I accepted the job. Since I should like to teach pure Hungarian staff, I came here, and brought with me my ten years old daughter as well to let her attend a Hungarian school for at least one year.” One of the two youngest students, Edit Borsos came from Calgary in Alberta, and the other Zsuzsanna Németh from Manchester, in Lancashire. Edit is studying English literature in Canada, but now she dropped out for a year for the sake of this course, and will perhaps also teach when she returns home: “because we have had only visiting teachers so far, on some week-ends.” Zsuzsa is the holder of a scholarship given by the board of patrons of the native language movement (PNLM), and follows the footsteps of her mother, who is an executive of the Manchester Kossuth Association: “We dance at home on every weekend. I came here also to learns dances, dancing, and the more the better.” The group frequently attends the performances of popular dance ensembles, rehearsals of noted groups, even their dressing rooms, besides studying hard. On the occasion when they visited the costume stores of the Bartók Dance Ensemble, Jolán Borbély talked about the historical development of costumes, and on how they should be used on the stage. Linda Pavelka from Canada, who wants to become an opera singer, in her folk-costume looks like a young married woman off to have a ball somewhere in a village in Transdanubia. Oscar Wolfman a curly-mustachioed lad, stands besides her. “I am a professional choreographer in Montreal, in charge of the Magor dancing group for adults, and the Százszorszép group for children. Like the others, all I can say is also that this course is giving me inestimable help in my future work.” Oscar, one of whose parents is Hungarian and the other Polish prefers to speak English, and, naturally, English is also used to speak to communicate with three other young people from the United States, who have not even a Hungarian relative in their families. On the other hand, they are admirers of Hungarian folk music and folk-dancing, and this brought them here. David Dulin, a chemist, and Carolyn Bildstein, a biochemist, are members of the Eszterlánc Hungarian Dance Ensemble in San Francisco. They told us that interest in Hungarian folk-dancing has greatly increased in the United States in recent years. They speak admiringly about the folk-dance lessons given by Sándor Tímár, who regularly visits them. This is Rebecca Caines’ “story” who comes from Portland: “Folk-dancing brought me here also, first to learn the language, then to get familiar with folk-art. Lajos Éltető the head fo the language department of Portland State University, regularly sends his students to the József Attila University in Szeged, for one year. I stayed longer, and first danced in the ensemble of the department of medicine, Szeged, then I also attended a course at Gödöllő last summer. In the meantime I travelled the country from Nyírbátor to Drávaivány. I made lots of friends, indeed, I even acquired a god-son and a god-daughter. I came here with the ambition of becoming the expert on Hungarian folk-art and folk-dancing in the North-Western United States. I study hard to make this come true.” Zsuzsa Simay, fellow of the Institute of Adult Education, who has conducted summer folk-dance courses for many years said this about the three-month course: “The desirability of this intensive, three-month course emerged in the wake of the increasing popularity of the two-week summer refreshercourses for folk-dance teachers, and the one-week meetings of dance ensembles. This is the first of our courses that offers novice-teacher qualifications. The board of patrons (PNLM) bears the full cost of the course, and the students pay only the cost of their board and lodging. In some cases even that is contributed to by the PNLM scholarship. The course is intensive, from 8 a.m. to late afternoon, and the study period culminates in ten theoretical and practical examinations. We aim to impart knowledge of ethnography, of the folklore of dancing, history of dancing, and methodology. Subjects of practical work range from original children’s plays to arranging play-activities and to teaching plenty of choreography to adults and include practically all of the important questions. Besides complete material, we also teach how to compose authentic choreographies for ensembles of varying numbers and composition. We secured the best teachers in each of these subjects. The curriculum is not just basic. It offers much more. By teaching them how to write and read dancing we want to help them to continue learning at home from books we provide.” “Another course? Well, of course, there will be one if the dancers request it”, adds György Bartos, secretary of PNLM. “We are already making preparations for the Festival of Hungarian Folk-Art planned for the summer of 1985 to coincide with the Fifth Conference of the Native Language. We will welcome Hungarian groups and soloists, and hope that the participants of our first teacher-training course will also visit us together with their dancing companions.” ADRIENNE PATONAI 29
