BALLET EASTERN DANCE
A Brief History of National Folk Music and Dance Ensembles
The first national folk ensemble was directed by Igor Moiseyev. It began in the 1930s in the USSR. During this time, the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) had existed for around 10 years. Moiseyev was sponsored by the Soviet government to create dances that depicted essentialized Soviet people. Because of communism, the government had to approve everything before it was published or produced.
Under Joseph Stalin, there was strong censorship and all art had to be both national and socialist. Dancers wore traditional costumes to stir nationalistic feelings. They representents peasants from pre-industrial times, when life was simpler and the folklore man (or woman) held the key to natural wisdom. The socialist message embedded in the ensembles was evident in the uniformity of the costumes and movement. Dancers represented the Soviet people: happy and hard-working communists, interested in the overall welfare of the society. Communism was about the group, not the individual.
Ensembles following Moiseyev’s model became popular around the world and not only in communist countries. However, in the USSR and Eastern bloc countries, governments gave substantial funding to these ensembles to promote national awareness among the citizens of their country, and to advertise how great the country was when the ensembles toured internationally.
In the 1950s, after Moiseyev’s ensemble came to the U.S. and Americans saw “real Russians.” This was during the Cold War, so anything communist or Russian was considered taboo. Since the U.S. was competing with the USSR in many other ways, the U.S. also wanted to have a folk dance ensemble. A national committee of dancers and choreographers was organized to select a folk ensemble to send abroad to represent the US, just like the Moiseyev ensemble was doing for the USSR. The problem was that the professional dancers and choreographers could not look beyond ballet and modern dance as true American art forms, and decided that these dance forms would best represent the U.S. So, the U.S. has never had a true national folk ensemble.
About the Author
Erica Nielsen is a dance ethnologist and published author. Her most recent research on Bulgarian dance culture appears in the book Balkan Dance, edited by Anthony Shay.
Egyptian Wedding – Sisters Shahrazad – أخوات شهرازاد – Eastern Oriental Dance
|
|
Colonial Diversions $5.44 … |
|
|
Grainger Edition, Vol.6: Orchestral Works $10.04 … |
|
|
Down Under-Music From Australia $18.98 … |
|
|
1987-05 $1.99 … |
|
|
The Human Alphabet $8.00 The company’s dancers join limbs, twist, and grip to form 26 letters– an alphabet made of the human body, captured in glorious color photographs. Alongside each letter, they’ve also composed a picture: Ants for A; Butterfly for B; Circus for C–and so on through Z, a human Zipper. Can you guess what each one shows? Pilobolus brings their creativity and hallmark visual style to a unique picture bo… |
|
|
After Socialism: Land Reform and Social Change in Eastern Europe (New Directions in Anthropology) $15.20 The collapse of Soviet influence and the disillusionment with socialism in the early 1990s led to ambitious programs of economic reform throughout Eastern Europe. The papers in this volume, written by anthropologists and sociologists with detailed first-hand knowledge of the rural areas concerned, explore the situation in several countries; account is also taken of the differences between them. No… |
|
|
The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War $71.50 The cultural Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West was without precedent. At the outset of this original and wide-ranging historical survey, David Caute establishes the nature of the extraordinary cultural competition set up post-1945 between Moscow, New York, London and Paris, with the most intimate frontier war staged in the city of Berlin. Using sources in four languages, Caute explore… |