GYÖRGY MARTIN’S PLACE IN APPLIED ETHNOCHOREOLOGY

Folk dance production at the stage in Croatia has never been considered as a revival. At this point this discussion should not be a part of this panel but as the participants are always invoking past dancing through the paradigm of showing old, domestic and local tradition, discussion fits into proposed cross- cultural comparison. The concept of revival got some other connotations in our social and political context after the last war 1991/92. From time when it started in 1920s and 1930s public practice of folk music and dance was a part of political program of the Croatian Peasant Party. Political ("national") orientation focused on local, regional, and ethnic/national identity in dance was always important especially when social and ideological circumstances changed. Following these changes up until today the author analyses and puts together emic and etic dimensions and views of participants in processes and interpret them from the other proposed discourses – "recr...

Dance Research Journal, 1995

. as earlier theories based on socioeconomic or cultural arrogance disappear, musicians and scholars have been left with a terminology and structure of labels (serious, popular, art, primitive, classical, folk, etc.) but without any consistent theoretical basis on which to assign such labels to musical repertoire. (Booth and Kuhn 1990, 411, cf. Blacking 1973, 4) These complaints by ethnomusicologists may well have been uttered by dance scholars. Indeed, they often have been (Kealiinohomoku 1969; Hanna 1987, 54-55; Williams 1991, 204). The continuing need for unambiguous and analytically useful labels is clear. In the present paper, I propose that the categories "participatory dance" and "presentational dance" have significant potential for ethnochoreologists. These conceptual categories have not yet been the specific subject of discussion in dance literature, though we will see that various authors have made use of related notions in a more or less explicit way (1). The categories are illustrated in the latter part of this article with a comparison of two dance performances. Both dances are performed in the Ukrainian diaspora, both are called "kolomyika," and both are performed by four dancers (2). One of the dances is performed in a participatory context, however, while the other is presentational. Each dance example is rendered two times in Labanotation (3), at the end of this article. The first notation of each dance is "prescriptive"-presenting the formula of the idealized dance, as it exists in the mind of the dancer. The participatory kolomyika, as seen in example 1, has a very simple prescription. It serves as a basic framework to facilitate the dancers' interactions. The prescription for the presentational kolomyika, on the other hand, is very detailed and specific. In contrast to the first two prescriptive notations, examples 3 and 4 are "descriptive" notations. They document the observed movements in space and time as captured on video or film. These notations show that the participatory dance is complex and rich with communicative material in its "microscopic" movement elements (eye contact, variations in touch, etc.), while the presentational dance is quite standardized and regular at this level. This is often desirable in presentational dances, as the main focus there lies in its "macroscopic" structures (phrases, formations, etc.).

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research, 2008

The Choreography of Traditional Dance on Stage: Crises, Perspectives and Global Dialogues, 2024

This paper investigates the history of Romanian ethno-choreography and its proponents by drawing from documentary sources and the author's long-term fieldwork. It explores multi-layered notions of local cultural norms, choreographic authority and knowledge, presentational performances, and 'modes of representation'. The first section outlines the history of Romanian ethno-choreography from the early twentieth century, when Romanian dances were included within staged art productions. It outlines the framework of the network of folk ensembles established after the Second World War that contracted between 1990 and 2005, then expanded following a renewed enthusiasm for local culture. The second section follows the choreographers and dance instructors placing these individuals according to their generations and investigates available options for choreographic training both past and present. The third section examines the evolution of the structure of Romanian ensemble performances, and ethno-choreography styling, the role of the choreographer as mediators between the dance moves and the creation of their dance performances and various strategies used to construct choreographies. Finally, this paper looks forward at the notion of continuity and ethno-choreography in relation to evolving performance in Romania, the future of the gene, its mediators and their pupils, audiences, and funding bodies. CITATION: Mellish, Liz (2024). Romanian dance ethno-choreography: past trajectories and evolving approaches. In Dunja Njaradi, Miloš Rašić, & Krešimir Dabo (Eds.), The Choreography of Traditional Dance on Stage: Crises, Perspectives and Global Dialogues (pp. 109-133.). Belgrade, Serbia: Institute of Ethnography SASA and Ensemble of Traditional Dances and Songs of Serbia "Kolo". ISBN-978-86-7587-121-7.

2021

This Epilogue discusses the new directions in the field of the anthropology of dance since 2002, and includes a bibliography of the field.

Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 2009

This paper explores two interrelated themes found in the anthropology of ethnic dance ensembles in Kamchatka, Russia: authenticity and the place of individual in society. I use two elite dance troupes (one professional, the other semi-professional) to analyse local categories of cultural authenticity. People in Kamchatka were vocal about representations of indigenous dance on the stage and critiqued dance performances on the basis of whether or not they lived up to their expectations for a proper representation of traditional forms. These critiques are consistently made with respect to the representations themselves and are wholly detached from ethnic (or other) identities of the performers. They provide insight into the nature of authorised knowledge of cultural traditions in Kamchatka. The second part of the paper explores the role of children's dance ensembles in cultural revival movements in small villages. Performing traditional indigenous Kamchatkan dance is not a case of memorising a set stock of moves and positions but entails finding oneself through an individually creative engagement with a style modelled by elders. In both cases, I argue that a semiotics of dance focuses our attention on what symbols do (as opposed to simply what they mean) within a cultural field.

Traditiones, 2015

This paper describes the deliberate process of applying, modifying and adapting the research methods of ethnochoreology-a sub-discipline of ethnology, folklore research and cultural anthropology-in an attempt to determine a sufficiently flexible method for dealing with data that only recently has become the focus of Croatian ethnochoreology. The author finds that the selection and adoption of such methods-such as interviews or participant observation-must take into account the specific nature of the research objects.

The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, 2010

Please cite the published version which can be found in The Routledge Dance Studies Reader second edition, edited by Alexandra Carter and Janet O'Shea, London and New York: Routledge, 2010, pp. 335-343. (Full references to texts cited below can be found in the composite bibliography of that collection) Since the 1990s, there has been a plethora of publications on dance that use ethnographic methodology. This literature and its associated research are often grouped under the rubric of 'dance ethnography', whether emanating from long established disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, ethnology and folklore, or from the newer fields of dance studies, performance studies and cultural studies. According to the research aims of dance ethnography, all movement systems are viewed as socially produced by people in specific temporal-cultural circumstances; the people's conceptualisations, values and practices, which may, or more often may not, coincide with those of the researcher, form the principal focus of inquiry. Distinguished by intensive fieldwork, dance ethnography in the early twenty-first century admits no restriction on the kind of dancing to be investigated or on its participants, whether performers, observers or both. 1 Key to the approach of dance ethnography is the quest to understand and communicate the emic, that is, the insider, perspective of the participants. Fundamental questions of who,

Yearbook for traditional music 47, 27-44., 2015

Although ethnochoreology maintained continuity as a methodologically and theoretically grounded discipline for last several decades, there is an ongoing need among scholars to reevaluate its traits and achievements and (re)position it within both social sciences and/or the humanities. This is even more evident in scholarly traditions in Southeastern Europe within which ethnochoreology as independent academic discipline was mostly developed from the field of (ethno)musicology. Based on the triad field research-transcription-analyses of primarily local rural practice i.e. folk dance/music material, epistemological basis of ethnochoreological research was rooted in the concept of dance as a syncretic unity of dance movement and dance music. This paper historically traces main methodological orientations in scholarly traditions of Southeastern Europe, particularly Serbia with emphasize on determination of the fluctuating boundaries between etnochoreological and ethnomusicological research. The questions which will be raised are directed toward discussing some of the heuristic traits of ethnochoreology as independent scholarly discipline. Keywords: ethnochoreology, Serbia and Southeastern Europe, methodology, scholarly discipline