Choreology

In questa nuova lettura anticlassica del magistero di Aurel M. Milloss, danzatore e coreografo ungherese, i cui scritti sono qui per la prima volta raccolti e commentati in una ricca antologia, le competenze tecniche (coreografia) e la valutazione dei materiali (coreologia), si producono grazie alle «ricerche metafisiche», la coreosofia. Questa scienza consente finalmente un esame etico di tutti i fenomeni della danza, e di programmare i «nuovi indirizzi al futuro sviluppo di questa cultura».

In this new reading, the anticlassic style of Aurel M. Milloss, hungarian dancer and choreographer, is available from his own writings. In this antology, the first entirely annotated, the technical competences (the choreography) and the study of the hidden rules in movement (the choreology), are produced from the metafisical researches of the choreosophy. This wisdom lead to an ethic knowledge of all dance rules, and lead to «a new program for the future development of this culture».

Sequenza di diapositive presentate in occasione dei Seminari di primavera in memoria di Febo Guizzi, Università di Torino,  16 marzo 2016. Messe qui a disposizione degli studenti e del pubblico allora presente. Rappresentano un'introduzione alle problematiche dello studio della relazione tra musica e danza, musica e movimento in etnomusicologia ed etnomusicologia applicata.

Nieprzypadkowy, znaczący jest sam moment, gdy pojawia się podręcznik, gdy sytuacja dojrzewa do propozycji całościowego ujęcia historii dyscypliny. Od dwóch dekad (mniej więcej od połowy lat 90.) polskie zespoły budują coraz bardziej dojrzałą i różnorodną scenę taneczną i pokazują swoje prace na całym świecie, występując na tych samych scenach, ucząc się od najlepszych i poruszając się we wspólnych obszarach artystycznych. Tymczasem za dialogiem prowadzonym narzędziami sztuki zbyt rzadko podążał dialog w obszarach krytyki czy nauki. Ogromny obszar światowej kultury pozostawał w polskim języku rzeczywistością niedopowiedzianą, nie licząc paru najważniejszych, pomnikowych jego przedstawicieli. Nie dokonało się również wpisanie w odpowiedni sposób polskiego tańca w kontekst światowy, i w drugą stronę - wskazanie, co dokładnie polski taniec zawdzięcza zagranicy. Sytuacja niezbyt komfortowa i mało rozwojowa, sprzyjająca mitotwórcom, przeróżnej maści hochsztaplerom, utrwalająca gettyzację. I w końcu język badawczy “dogonił” w Polsce aktualną praktykę artystyczną.

Martha Graham’s Lamentation (1930) is one of her early works. Graham herself and, subsequently, several writers have commented on and discussed Lamentation. The present article intends:
firstly, to analyze the “strands of the medium” and their interrelations in Lamentation, with special emphasis on movement and music, in order to thoroughly and systematically examine the most significant aspects of the work; secondly, to explore the range of grief in Lamentation by applying the psychologist Kübler-Ross’s model (1997) known as the “Five Stages of Grief”. Furthermore,
a discussion of the symbolic and anthropological reference of the costume is undertaken. The analysis is based on action research focusing on the revival of Lamentation in its 2005 performance by Denise Vale in Athens, Greece.

Из поредицата интервюта, провеждани в периода 2000-2002 г. във връзка с етнохореоложко проучване.  Части от интервюто с Тончо Тончев са включени в книгата “Съставът за народни танци като културно явление в България”, София, Издателство „Марс 09“, 2011.
https://www.academia.edu/35433400/Bulgarian_Folk_Dance_Ensemble_as_a_Cultural_Phenomenon_book.pdf

13 - 15 Eylül 2019 tarihleri arasında Ankara Üniversitesi Güzel Sanatlar Fakültesi akademik ve Ankara Üniversitesi Sağlık, Kültür ve Spor Daire Başkanlığı Kültür Sanat Merkezi'nin organizasyonel destekleriyle gerçekleştirilmiş; Blm. Uzm. H.Öyküm LUMALI, Yunus Emre KILIÇ, İbrahim TAŞÇIOĞLU ve Tuğberk AYKARA tarafından düzenlenmiş olan "AKADEMİK HALK DANSLARI ÇALIŞTAYI 2019"un Sonuç Bildirgesidir.

"«Shakespeare on Pointe Shoes: Dramaturgy of A Midsummer Night's Dream by George Balanchine».
[English abstract at the end of the article]
A reading of Shakespearean comedy and a technical and dramaturgic analysis of the ballet (La Scala Theatre, Milan, 2003) may lead to the conclusion that Dream by Balanchine is a new creation of the drama (as desired by the choreographer), although at the same time it is extremely faithful to its source."

«A Vedic Glance at La Bayadère».
[English abstract at the end of the article]
The paper analyses a philological reconstruction of the ballet (La Scala Theatre, Milan, 2006) and through a theorical and technical knowledge of Indian classical dance it supposes and tries to demonstrate that the choregrapher Marius Petipa was inspired by original Indian dance and movements in drawing his choreographies for La Bayadère (1877).

The Zeybek dance is one of the symbolic elements of Zeybek Society, which culturally continues its existence in the Aegean region of Turkey. Zeybek dances are performed in most areas, although they have been categorized for each region by personal or institutional research. The dance has not been categorized to the conclusion of anatomical and structural analysis of movement which was defined and adopted by the original settlers.

Бях на 16, когато за първи път прекрачих прага на репетиционната зала на танцовия състав при Студентския дом на културата в София (днес Академичен фолклорен ансамбъл). Ученичка в гимназия с разширено изучаване на немски език (19 СУ „Елин Пелин“) със сериозен танцов опит от „Росна китка“, но  нито риба, нито рак по отношение на вписването ми в дадена танцова формация. Нито дете с децата, нито голяма с  „големите“. Именно тогава попаднах на репетиция на „студентите“. Иван Тодоров – „Шефа“, „Попето“ седеше на  стол зад правоъгълна маса с гръб към прозорците „досами опашката на коня“ и преглеждаше дневника на състава. В списъка – юристи, инженери, философи, филолози, още следващи или вече завършили. Ученичките бяхме три. Новодошли. Точно в осем „Шефа“ натисна звънеца за начало на репетицията и с този звънец сложи началото на едно цяло житейско приключение. Моето.  Със сигурност не  единствено.
...

toMasz noWak the teChnique of Mazurka danCes in the gentry-bourgeois and peasant environMents P oland during the Baroque and Classical eras was one of many European countries in which prototypes of peasant dances were adopted and interpreted by the nobility and townsfolk, thus helping to create an ideologically marked set of dances known as 'national dances'. During the nineteenth century, despite the rapid changes in dance fashions, the specific geopolitical situation of Poland meant that dances of peasant origin were not eradicated among the higher strata of society. On the contrary: because of the lack of statehood from the end of the eighteenth century for over one hundred years, forms of these dances were diligently fostered and developed, and even supplemented emblems of Polish culture, constituting evidence of the existence of cultural differences among the inhabitants of the country on the Vistula and Warta rivers. There still exists in the public consciousness a kind of stereotype of an historically formed set of five national dances (polonaise, mazurek, krakowiak, kujawiak and oberek), but, as we now know, initially only the polonez and mazurek (Eng. polonaise, mazurka) were considered national. Periodically, there appeared dances from outside the contemporary set (kozachok, zbojnicki, trojak), and today only one (polonaise) is commonly performed. However, these highly emblematic dance forms, especially those in mazurka rhythm, were the elements of Polish dance culture outside Poland, including in Scandinavia, that were most often perceived and imitated, and often modified as well. Dance anthropologists are invariably fascinated by the sheer fact that rather abstract social functions are assigned to dances deriving from recreational or ceremonial situations, allowing them to enjoy a long life and a privileged position. But it is this long life and continuous 1 However, it was only the krakowiak that played a major role in the relations between Poles and communities inhabiting the territories of today's Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine. 2 Józef Reiss, Najpiękniejsza ze wszystkich jest muzyka polska [Polish music is the most beautiful of all] (Cracow, 1958), p. 92.

A study of Rudolf Laban's notion of choreosophy in relation to Laban's use of space harmonic models (solids), and the choreological notion of human movement architecture. The essay also touches on a practice-based exploration of Laban's ideas about relations between human spatial architectures and natural spatial designs, for instance in terms of a crossover between Laban's model of the icosahedron (a model for the understanding of human harmonic movement) and icosahedral viruses.

The oberek and the kujawiak are two dances now considered as part of the Polish national dance canon. What they have in common is: triple time, mazurka rhythms, whirling motion and the improvised character of the movement composition. Elements of mazurka rhythms can be found in 16th-century music sources, but they were fully formed only in the 17th century, while the oberek and the kujawiak emerged as separate genres between 1750 and 1830. These two genres were combined into one whole and, toward the end of this period, began to be performed in salons, first as music for listening, and in the 1840s also as dance. From the 2nd half of the 19th century, we have descriptions of this dance by Kolberg (in crudo), Karol mestenhauser, and Arkadiusz Kleczewski (the key elements and the dance figures). Comprehensive descriptions of the salon forms only come from the 1930s (those by Józef Waxman, Jan Ostrowski-Naumoff, Czesław Kwiatkowski and Zofia Kwaśnicowa), when those dances became a major component of music education and stage spectacles.

Dans cet article je pose l'hypothèse que l’article d’Alf Ross intitulé « Tû-tû » , hapax dans son œuvre vise à le poser comme chef de file de l'école du réalisme juridique européen. J'envisage sa construction et les fonctions de la fable à clé par laquelle il débute,  fonctions individuelles pour Ross et collectives pour l’école. En énonçant les règles de l’école sous  cette forme chorégraphique, Alf Ross se pose en leader du paradigme réaliste .Il s’affiche comme le maître de danse et le chorégraphe du « ballet »
et de la « troupe » des réalistes scandinaves, qu'il convoque et fait danser avec lui sur la scène juridique internationale.
Après avoir rappelé rapidement les modèles d’analyse et les critères de définition d’une école de pensée en droit ainsi que la façon dont je les étudie (I), je décris ensuite la machinerie du manifeste, en explicitant son propos, sa construction en trois temps et son leitmotiv (II) avant d’analyser la fonction de la fable liminaire, d’examiner les différents tableaux du ballet et du paratexte (notes et incipits) (III).

The work National dance in the Polish cultural canon. Sources, genesis, transformations attempts to present the historical panorama of the canon of Polish national dances. The goal of this work is to define the sources and history of the canon, the transformations of its functions, its constituting elements and their forms. Another important aspect was to define the attitudes of the community towards national dances, manifested by their opinions and actions, as well as the impact of external factors on the canon. This is because the existence of „complex and changing interaction between ideology and form, which takes place in response to the changing social, economic and political factors of the organization of the dance world” is a fact. In effect, dance form may be perceived as “subject to various changes in time and space and as deceivingly shifting from one context to another” .
In this work the author uses the concept of cultural canon as defined by Andrzej Szpociński, especially in the part which is related to cultural canons of national groups. In order to define better the phenomena tackled by the study, the author uses the classification of images functioning in popular awareness by Maria Janion. Therefore, the images are classified as close to „myth”, close to “stereotype” and close to “phantasms” .
The point of departure for the whole work is the finding of a rule on which the canon was founded. Andrzej Szpociński assumed that such rule for the national community is familiarity, which ensures homogeneity of the dimension of own past regardless of chronological sequence of events . For this reason, the first chapter of the work includes a review of sources on dance – from the earliest ones to the period of the decline of Saxon rule in Poland – in order to present Polish phenomena that could be the sources of later national dances, as well as highlighting moments in which special attention was paid to dances considered familiar or Polish. The most important was the presentation of a situation where familiar (Polish) dances were included in a situation of a special social, especially political, significance. The form of polonez and mazur (both in terms of music and dance) is outlined as the first dances included in the national dances canon in the character of autostereotype of national character. Also social mechanisms impacting the improvement of the forms of national dances and their popularization are outlined. 
The second chapter of the work (years 1764 to 1815) shows the period of significant changes in the canon of national dances, caused – on one side – by the shift of interest of the upper classes towards the folk culture in the last decades of the 18th century, on the other hand – by the loss of sovereignty by the Polish Republic. Thus, kozak and krakowiak made it into the canon as a kind of phantasm, and their fates went two different way as a result of political changes. Kozak, as a stereotype of a national character of nationalities excluded from the community of the territories of the former Polish Republic, and even used to subdue the inhabitants of Poland to Russian domination, have gradually lost importance and was excluded from the canon of national dances. The resulting void was gradually filled by krakowiak, which in the meantime gained high recognition due to the myth of Tadeusz Kościuszko and his army. By the way, the canon also changed its role in relation to the Poland’s loss of former political standing. The dances belonging to the canon were complemented with symbolical character which at the same time bore the features of an autostereotype and were an expression of essentialist thinking. As a carrier of significant cultural meaning, the national dances became an important bulwark of defence of the national identity and a means of promoting cultural distinctiveness in the world.
This phenomenon increased in intensity during the next period – the early and middle Romanticism (1815-1867), which saw the first theoretical works (Kazimierz Brodziński, Karol Czerniawski) devoted to the ideas related to the dances comprising the national canon, as well as the first Polish instruction books (Jan and Ignacy Staczyński, Mieczysław Hłasko) describing these dances. At the same time the romantic turn towards folklore, also in the field of understanding the national community, caused the canon to be gradually complemented with oberek and kujawiak. A special role of folk culture during this period is visible also in one more tendency – searching for common-folk roots of also the dances which took shape in courts and manors, i.e. polonez and mazur.
The fourth chapter refers to the period between the end of the national mourning in the Russian-occupied territory and regaining of independence by Polish Galicia, to the relative liberalization in the Russian-occupied lands as a result of the Russian Revolution of 1905. This period is worthy of attention due to the peak development of the forms of national dances, which at the same time marks the beginning of a decline in popularity for the majority of genres of the national canon. A very significant role was played by the musical compositions of the period, including ballet works, pieces for “café-théâtres” and folk theatres, open air concerts and public dancehalls. Also the ethnographic activities were of immense importance, delivering information on the dances that could be tied to national dances, both for the needs of the Polish society of the time and for today’s researchers of dances. The discussion on all these issues as well as their mutual interconnections define the content and order of the whole chapter.
The fifth and final chapter discusses the transformation of function of the canon in the 20th century, with references to contemporary situation. Above all, the changes in functions were forced by the disappearance of national dances from tea dances and an increase in popularity of genres related to new forms and phenomena of partner dances. The chapter describes the development of these phenomena. Moreover, the initiative of inclusion of national dances in popular education, also considered significant, is described in detail on the example of the interwar period. Thirdly, the book covers the sources of the stage trend of the presentation of national dances (cabaret, folk theatre troupes, school bands, folk song and dance ensembles of the 1940s and 1950s) as well as the direction of transformations of dance forms under the pressure of the demand for spectacularity. An important place is occupied by the discussion on the shaping of contemporary image of national dances and the initiative of new ways of using national dances (ballroom forms, competitions).
The whole work concludes with a short review of the main ways of shaping and transforming of the national dance canon, and a description of their contemporary situation.

demonstrates that definition for "sword dance" has an ideological connotation, is based on poor analytical instruments and gives rise to ambiguous interpretations.  Distinction is made between the blunt swords used by thespadonari, the symbolic swords of the lacché and mattaccini, or those evoked only by gestures, in ruggeri and in rota.  The paper also reports upon a new function given to sword dance in Italy by the fascist ideology and the change of meanings and connections.  Finally there is an attempt to clarify the semantic use of the word moresca, followed by linking dance practice and dance motives to establish what is a "sword dance," a "moresca" or a "fight dance."

The most ancient pieces of evidence about dance belong to an extensive corpus of images produced by our ancestors on a variety of objects (shelters, cave walls, rock outcrops, items made in baked clay and metal, pottery), with most diversified techniques (carving, painting, graffito, pecking), and going back to at least the late Paleolithic age. Since 1959, the year when French ethnologist Maurice Louis published in Les origines préhistoriques de la danse the earliest research about a limited group of dance scenes, the study of prehistoric visual sources has made a great progress. 1 In the course of over fifty years of research, post-Paleolithic rock paintings and carvings, found mostly in the sites distributed in the Alpine area (Valcamonica, Valtellina, Valais, Valle d'Aosta, Mt. Bego), have been subjected to a methodical and comparative analysis. The in-depth studies on some types of representations-such as the tools used in daily activities (ploughs, wagons, weapons, huts), the animal figures, or the symbolic concepts (cupmarks, labyrinths, solar symbols, shovels, geometrical figures, topographic "maps")-have outlined interpretative hypotheses of great interest. On the contrary, in spite of the elaboration of an effective interdisciplinary method, the study of the gesture and dance has not advanced in the same way. It is sufficient to leaf through some recent manual of the dance history to notice that the space devoted to manifestations of the art of dancing in pre/proto-historic Europe is limited to only a few lines of text and some images. The reason for such a situation-certainly not attributable to lack of data-has to do with issues of research logic. First of all, the analysis of the oldest documents concerning dance requires a competence in study of images rather than in the art of dancing. At least initially, the analytical method of dance representations and representations from prehistoric period do coincide. It is also indispensable to put aside the aesthetic issue: prehistoric depictions are not a product of the mentality searching for beauty and harmony as images have been codified in the Western culture. Nor does it suffice to explain, as many studies of history of ancient art have done, that the decoration of whole surfaces on an object came from the need to fill all its available space with images (horror vacui). Finally, a difficulty concerning the approach to the topic of prehistoric dance is, on the one hand, the issue of the meaning in "repre-sented" gestures and dance; on the other, once a theory of prehistoric dance is drawn up, a question arises regarding the cognitive value and the level of "scientific nature" attributable to the scholarly interpretations. 2 If we consider the role of dance in the archaic world, we also discover the need to underline two essential elements: the social function and the magic-symbolic function, which we could define as "cosmic interaction". 3 An extremely relevant event occurs at the very moment when a community member joins others in dancing: as the rhythmical movement prevails and each dancer refines the coordination of his/her movements with those of the partners, the perception of the self is gradually reduced to the point that each participant feels a transformation of his/her own individuality into the role of "cogwheel" within a perfect human mechanism of dancing ensemble. This process, induced by the rhythmical element is accompanied also at the most elementary level by the intense feeling of harmony, which comes to exist among all dancers. 311

How can a dance performance function as a condensed cultural event? Is there such a role in the educational system? Does music “embody” the dancing movement?
Nowadays, the art of Terpsichore is being developed through a generous number of new professional Greek dance groups in the international stage, as well as other relevant schools of dance in Greece. One of the main causes for the upgrade of dance is the removal of the boundaries between theatre and dance, especially during the last decades.
On the one hand, dance and music curricula in Universities and Schools of Dance in Greece (with the exception of the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport Science, which focuses on folk dances), consider music and dance mostly as coexisting and –in a superficial way- collaborating arts. They rarely refer to the “embodiment” of music nor they examine the relation between dance and the other involving arts of a performance through an anthropological and/ or ideological approach. On the other hand, it is to be noticed that interdisciplinary creative collaboration between music and dance (and also other arts) was achieved in ’50s at the performances of the Greek Chorodrama.

The mainstream interest of Polish dance researchers was set out in 1818-1847 by Józef Elsner, Kazimierz Brodziński, Łukasz Gołębiowski and Karol Czerniawski, who characterized broadly some elements of the dances considered as the national dances (polonaise, mazur, krakowiak and kozak). Oskar Kolberg knew very well the works of all these authors and related to them many times, however, he was unique even in broad documentation of dance melodies, information about their geographic origin, and local terminology. He also characterized the dance relating the passage of the contextual situation and described the dance technique in an instructive manner.
The documentation of Oskar Kolberg for quite a long time remained outside of the mainstream research and writings about dances in Poland. In the 1930s Polish representatives of the ethnochoreology were the first to include examples from Kolberg in their works on the rite dances, regional dances and characteristic dance behaviours and forms. Kolberg’s works increased in popularity after the 2nd World War. Today the materials left by Oskar Kolberg allows us to establish to a large extent the geographic reach and certain perspective on the changes of dance repertoire both in the choreographic technique and whole dance types, or a more detailed and critical perspective on the issue of folk naming of dance phenomena. It may also make for a pretext to perform a wider retrogressive or comparative studies – which may not be very fashionable today, but which have never been adequately done in Poland.

Propomos uma reflexão crítica a respeito das possibilidades e desafios epistemológicos identificados no desenvolvimento de um pensamento Arqueocoreológico, através de uma pesquisa transdisciplinar entre os campos da Dança e Arqueologia. Buscamos desenvolver um discurso que, em sua forma de produção de conhecimento, sejam respeitadas e aproveitadas as teorias e  metodologias de ambas as áreas, estabelecendo uma sinergia entre os saberes, sem fracionamento metodológico ou hierarquização do conhecimento. Abordaremos quatro conceitos: arquivo, repertório, preservação e recuperação/reconstrução. Temos a fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty como ancoragem investigativa, bem como o pensamento teórico da arqueocoreologia desenvolvido pela pesquisadora Valerie Preston-Dunlop, dialogando com o reenactment de Mark Franko e a arqueologia pós-processualista proposta por Ian Hodder, Scott Hutson, Michael Shanks e outros.

L'ultima Settimana della Moda dello scorso febbraio a Milano si è conclusa con il motto «Valorizziamo il Made in Italy», estremizzato da case italianissime come Fendi con il recupero della tradizione nazionale di conceria e pellicceria. Se il Made in Italy appare per le aziende la pista migliore da seguire per risollevare la posizione della cultura della moda e dello stile italiani nel mondo, perché la stessa riflessione non viene estesa a tutti gli ambiti della cultura italiana? per esempio, alla danza?