Fuchs Lívia: A tánc forradalmárai. Vendégszereplők 1898 és 1948 között. Bajor Gizi Színészmúzeum, Budapest 2004. március 19 - május 2. (Budapest, 2004)
Kísérlet a szintézisre
From the 1910’s on, the representatives of modern dance were not artistic defectors from popular theatres any more, but belonged to a new generation of dancers who cultivated a novel physical culture, and at the same time propagated a new-found - anti-metropolitan, more nature-centred — ideal of life. At the birth of this movement could be found Emil Jacques-Dalcroze, who and whose pupils first appeared at the Music Academy in 1912, popularising his innovative musical teaching technique, gymnastique rhytmique. He was received unenthusiastically — at least by those who had expected a proper dance performance -, and there were some who regarded Dalcroze’s innovation as an ephemeral fad. The new methodology was, however, soon embraced by representatives of traditionbound Hungarian music pedagogy, such as Ernő Freund-Ferand, who published a description of the method in Hungarian only two years later, and many of whose first pupils based their own dance systems on Dalcrozean rhythms. Ferand later became a teacher in the Institute, which in the meantime removed to Laxenburg, so he regularly brought the pupils of the Austrian school to perform in Budapest. After World War I, the representatives of the new dance arrived exclusively from German-speaking countries. This period, lasting until 1948, saw the flowering of dance recitals, even if once in a while an artist performed in a theatre instead of a concert hall. The contemporary press in Budapest often published reports on the Austrian brothers Wiesenthal, whose famed waltzes electrified the whole population of Vienna. Lajos Bálint described them as ones who did not “dance a typical waltz, with its rigid pattern of three-step hopping about, but appropriated these motifs of the old waltz, and joined them up into a novel rhythmic sequence fitting their personalities, imagination and poetic feel.” It was in 1916 that Berta and Elsa, and in 1917 that Grete - all three emblematic figures of the an nouveau of the period - debuted in Budapest. Grete’s long-awaited first appearance, supported by dancers of the Opera, proved to be a disappointment, since it was the first dance recital which had taken place in a concert hall, namely the Vigadó (Redoute), instead of a theatrical venue, which was still a novelty at the time. “We need scenery, and we need lighting. We need a stage,” declares one critic, “so that we can see not only separate movements, but a whole image.” In 1921 was Budapest first visited by Valeska Gert, whose sketches caricaturing insignificant but typical moments and characters taken from everyday life were appreciated in the press more as an actor’s than a dancer’s accomplishments. At the same ZT!‘"'' "I B
