Karikázó, 1986. július - 1987. április (12. évfolyam, 1-4. szám, 13. évfolyam, 1. szám)
1986-07-01 / 1-2. szám
5 Continued from p.4 actual arangement of children's games. It should be meaningful for the children to dance and play, and to know why they are doing it. Hungarian folklore is full of such material for young children and for the bit older ones too. The beginner or the intermediate groups have two major problems to face: 1. You kind of have to set two courses at the same time. First, the kids have to learn the dances and in the meantime, in most cases, have to perform them. This is a dual duty. It would be beneficial for these groups to arrange Tanchaz-es or informal learning experiences for the acquisition of choreographies. As children learn how to dance they also learn how to enjoy dancing for the sake of dancing, to exchange and share that experience with each other. That's what folk dance is. It has a meaning and is very personal. It has a kind of communication, either through a couple, group or solo performance. It is a more advanced approach when somebody is using this learned material to perform it - to make someone else enjoy watching it. If you are not aware of this duality, you will run into problems. A great deal of responsibility here lies with the local leaders or choreographers. Once a local leader has the knowledge, sensibility and capability to maintain the material taught to the group by an outside choreographer, to keep it alive or revive it, things can begin to happen. These local leaders can be found one way or another and they have to be trained. Very few of us run down, out of the blue sky and are fantastic leaders, teachers, psychiatrists or whatever. One of the things I think is a problem, not just here, but around the world too, is to choose local leaders who will later take care of things. In that case, you can take advantage of choreographers, outside teachers or those instructors and dancers who go to workshops and pick up material, take it back and can work with it. What I see now in the intermediate and beginner groups is that there's no problem with material. You have so much material floating around that you don't know what to do with it. You are learning 'Dunántúl' and 'Délalföld', 'Palóc' and 'Mezőse'gi', everything. But there are very few good directors that I can see, who know what to do with this abundance of material. I remember how many problems we had years ago with the Száki cycle... nobody could make a good arrangement of it for stage. This was a problem here and in Hungary too. Those dances have to be danced instead of watched. In most cases, again, folk dances have to be darned for a social use, not as an instrument for watching. Interpretation - making these dances took good - is a different approach. We also saw a couple of so-called "well established" choreographies performed. I think it is absolutely necessary for choreographers and groups who are learning, to do these. In a literary sense, kids in school are learning poems or quotations from artists,forming and sharpening their skills. In dance it is also very important. Choreographers cannot learn either, the trade of choreographing on their own. They have to study Continued on p .6 . Guzsaly Ensemble of New York in "Dunántúli Táncok" (Photo: ?)