Meets First 8-weeks only.

Meets with ANTH-E300 and CEUS-U320.

Instructors:
Ágnes Fülemile – Hungarian Chair, Goodbody Hall 238,
T: 855-1102, fulemila@indiana.edu
László Diószegi – Choreographer, Visiting Scholar from
Hungary

The course will offer a unique combination of practical dance
instructions together with theory, history and ethnography of
European folk dance with a special focus on Hungary and her
neighbors in East Central Europe. Classes will be 2,5 hours each
time, spending 1 hour with lecture/discussion and 1,5 an hour with
dance instructions.

The course will discuss Hungarian folk dance in the context of
European dance-history from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.
Social and culture history, visual iconography of dance, ethno-
choreology, anthropologic and ethnographic material will be
presented alongside with field materials (photos, music, documentary
films) and video-recordings of stage performances. Dance on stage,
trends of choreographic interpretations will also be discussed.

The following regional dances will be taught or illustrated live:
-Moldavian Csángó circle dances - Balkan parallels
-Jumping-leaping dances from Somogy county (Southern Transdanubia) -
Sicilian sartarella
-Remnants of weapon-dances and led’s dances: Polish Goral men’s
dances from the Tatra Mountains, Transylvanian Romanian haidau -
Transylvanian Hungarian led’s dances
-Influence of the Renaissance couple dances: Hungarian and Romanian
couple dances from the Transylvanian Heath - couple dances from
Scandinavia
-New style Hungarian csardas and verbunk and its impact in Central
Europe - Slovakian, Romanian, Croatian parallels.

Assessment:
- Weekly assignments 	40%
- 8-10 pp Final term paper   40%
- Class attendance and effort to participate in learning  20%.

Weekly assignments will require work with selected articles from
various authors, web-sources and video materials (provided on DVD by
the instructors).

Preliminary dance background is not required only an interest, sense
and motivation to dance. Grades will be decided based on effort and
not on actual dancing skills.
(Please dress conveniently, have appropriate shoes.)

Introduction to the topic:
Hungary has an exceptionally rich tradition and regional varieties
in folk dance and music. To the present Hungarian dance tradition
preserves many types and historic layers of European dance culture
from circle dances, through the jumping, leaping and weapon dances
to the elaborated Renaissance couple and virtuoso solo men’s dances
or the fiery czardas and verbunk which inspired Romantic composers
such as Liszt or Brahms. Research into and analysis of Hungarian
folk dance and folk music had already begun in the late 19th century
and achieved spectacular results (Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály
being the founding fathers of ethnomusicology in Hungary). Hungarian
folk dance pedagogy has also achieved significant results in past
decades thanks to the so-called “dance house” movement (táncház), an
urban grassroots youth revival movement that first emerged in
Budapest in the period of late socialism. The movement reinvented
the institution of the village dance in urban settings and focused
on the process of learning freely varied, improvisational, yet rule-
bound dances for live musical accompaniment. Young people, who were
searching for a “true”, “authentic” tradition, started relearning
the technique and the style of dance and music from the “last”
remarkable personalities of peasant performers in the field within
Hungary and in the neighboring countries. In a way there is a unique
continuity in the transmission of knowledge from the “last
preservers” of traditional knowledge to the first generation of
dance house musicians and dancers. As a result there is a rich
repertoire and a very high standard of quality of dance and musical
knowledge in the consecutive dance house generations. A methodology
for teaching improvised folk dance has evolved and became widely
known. The fresh experience of improvisational dance that started as
an amateur movement soon revolutionized the concepts of
choreographed performances and created a new sensibility and
politics of staged dance as well. One of the strengths and successes
of the dance house lay in the improvisational character of dancing.
The face-to-face transmission of knowledge, the technique of playing
music, the rules of building up an improvisational performance, the
sensitive interaction between the dancers and the musicians or among
the dancers is very similar to the traditional circumstances of
dance in the original context. While improvised dancing requires
skill and effort to learn, it can be done on very different personal
level of knowledge and no one is excluded. On the other hand the
process of the active creation of dance gives exceptional joy in
comparison with the keenly memorized mechanical processes of fixed
choreography. With the growing popularity of the dance house
movement, its influence acquired international dimensions. There are
dance enthusiasts from Sweden to Holland to the USA to Japan who
appreciate Hungarian dances because of the technical complexity and
improvisative character of couple and solo men’s dances.

The instructors short bio:
Ŕgnes Fülemile is senior research fellow and the head of the
Historical Ethnography Department at the Institute of Ethnology of
Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She spends her third year as the
visiting Chair Professor of Hungarian Studies at Indiana University,
Bloomington. In Spring 2008 she was the organizer of the Hungarian
Chair Conference on Folk Music Revival and the Dance-House Movement
in Hungary.
http://www.indiana.edu/~ceus/events/HungarianSymposium.pdf
She was dancing in various folk dance groups for many years. She has
been regularly doing anthropologic fieldwork in Hungary and
Transylvania from the beginning of the 1980-s.
http://www.indiana.edu/~ceus/faculty/fulemile.shtml

László Diószegi is one of the most well acclaimed choreographers and
folk dance pedagogues of Hungary. He obtained his degree in
International Relations at the University of Economics, Budapest. He
was the executive director of Teleki László Foundation, 1991-2007.
He is the author, co-author and editor of several books on minority
issues. He was actively dancing since the first part of the 1970s.
He was a choreographer and leader of several dance groups.
Choreographed and directed eleven dance theatre performances and has
received numerous prestigious prizes and awards at Hungarian and
International Dance Festivals. He is the president of the György
Martin Folk Dance Association (since 1993). He teaches
choreographing at the Hungarian Dance Academy. He was awarded with
Zoltán Bezerédi Award in 2004 and Gyula Harangozó Award (the most
prestigious Hungarian state award in dance) in 2005.

Fulfills COLL Arts & Humanities, CSB