William Penn Life, 2000 (35. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2000-01-01 / 1. szám
The Hungarian ‘Riverdance’ ‘Csarddsl-The Tango of the East’ begins North American tour TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO, a new dance took Central Europe by storm. Unlike the innumerable gentle court dances for the nobility-waltzes, quadrilles and polkas-this dance was by and for the common people. It was based on traditions a thousand years old and was accompanied by the fiery music of gypsy musicians. It was called the csárdás. The excitement, majesty, grace and complexity of the csárdás (pronounced char'-dasch) has been captured in a new stage production by the Budapest Ensemble. "Csárdás!The Tango of the East" opens its North American tour on Jan. 14 in New Brunswick, N.J., and includes scheduled performances in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Toronto and 23 other cities (see schedule). "Csárdás!" was created by the Ensemble's intense and passionate director Zoltán Zsuráfszki. His goal is dear: to bring Hungarian dancing into the public's consciousness the same way "Riverdance" won wider appeal for Irish dancing. "There were three great schools of folkdance in Europe: the Russian school, the Bulgarian and Flamenco. Irish or Gaelic dancing has only most recently won acclaim," Zsuráfszki said. "I want to make the Hungarian School the newest great power." The tool Zsuráfszki and his ensemble will use to build a new cultural phenomenon is the csárdás. The csárdás is a free spirited dance which starts out slow—sometimes with a men's solo dance—then gradually increases to an exhilarating speed. It has few boundaries. It is danced alone or with one or more partners. It may be danced in a circle or in a line. It includes an seemingly endless variety of turns for both men and women. "Csárdás!-The Tango of the East" is a journey through the ancient folk tunes and dances which were used as building blocks by the "folk" to reinvent their dance culture. While the show celebrates what has become identified as the national dance of the Hungarians, it also demonstrates the Csárdás by Kálmán Dreisziger Preachers denounced it Aristocrats disowned it. Yet it captured the hearts of the common people. Fueled by the fiery music of gypsy violins, the csárdás also captivated and inspired romantic composers like Brahms and Liszt who made it famous throughout the musical world. In Hungary and Slovakia the csárdás rose to become the symbolic expression of the “national” soul. That’s a triumphant procession for a relative upstart among central Europe’s dances. After all, the csárdás is hardly 200 years old. But while it’s certain that the dance didn’t ride into Central Europe with the conquering Magyar horsemen a thousand years ago, it’s also safe to say that it has real roots that spread deep and wide into older, perhaps ancient layers of music and dance. Musicologists agree that csárdás music is a mutation of earlier folk music. And, while this new music was born in central Hungary, it incorporated influences from as far away as the Polish Krakowiak. The csárdás is an improvised dance. The man leads his partner as he would in most “modern” couple dances. However, unlike the polka and waltz—two dance fashions born around the same time—the csárdás has a far richer repertoire of steps. The roots of the csárdás go back in time and spread out geographically. Flemish peasant of the 16th century, freeze-framed in Brueghel’s art-seem to be performing dances that still come to like on the feet of old Transylvanian villagers. One of the striking characteristics of the csárdás is that it has a slow and a fast part. And in the fast csárdás, the partners often separate to dance apart, teasing each other in a romantic dance relationship that bring possibilities for playfulness and enticement to the dance. The man’s part in this love play often changes into a virtuoso performance that can include spectacular boot-slapping sequences. These male solos are not merely about showing off; they are the remnants of much older men’s dance traditions. The most ancient of these men’s dances were victory 8 Killian Penn Lilt. January 2000
