The Polska: Featuring Swedish in Finland

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 99-105
Author(s):  
Petri Hoppu
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Folk Dance ◽  
Dance Culture ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Dance Groups ◽  
Special Case

The paper examines the Swedish polska as a special case of movementscape in Finnish folk dance. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork among Finnish folk dancers in 2013. Since the 1970s, the polska has been popular in Swedish folk dance, and this versatile dance form can be seen as emblematic to Swedish folk dance culture. During the last 30 years, Finnish folk dance groups have also eagerly adopted it: not only the dance itself, but a whole new style and embodiment of dancing with improvisation as an important element. Although there have been vernacular polska forms in Finland, as well, and folk dancers have danced them for decades, they have not been able to reach any higher status. Although Finnish folk dancers have adopted dances from other Nordic countries since the early twentieth century, the popularity of Swedish polska exceeds that of any earlier Nordic innovations in Finland.

Nordic Folk Dances as Imaginary Geographies

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 76-80
Author(s):  
Petri Hoppu
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Water Systems ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Folk Dance ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
Nordic Region ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Imaginative Geographies ◽  
The 1960S

Geography is a feature that typically belongs to the realm of folk dance. Folk dances are often defined as belonging to a certain region, and it is seldom they are considered a result of artistic creativity. In the Nordic countries, folk dancers have co-operated intensively since the early twentieth century, sharing dances with each other. In this presentation, I am arguing that this co-operation has created imaginative geographies of the Nordic region, filled not with landscapes, terrains, or water systems, but with movements, holds, and music. As an example, I will present two Nordic folk dance books from the 1960s. In these books, dances are attached to certain geographical areas, which is not merely contextual information but also entails stylistic features of a specific dance. Most dances are connected to a certain parish, and in some cases the province is mentioned, as well. In practice, for most folk dancers, the names of the areas do not have much significance as material domain, but they are elements of a map of a danced region, and as such the dances are a part of imaginative geographies, performed spaces. Following the British geographer Derek Gregory, I see folk dances as a continuation of performances that necessarily creates novelty, which allows one to experience spaces differently. The books are danced atlases presenting the Nordic region as a series of performed spaces. They address how the Nordic region has been represented in a danced form, emphasizing affiliation and unity, as well as distinction and disjointedness.

scholarly journals Scaramouche, Scaramouche: Sibelius on Stage

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-456
Author(s):  
LEAH BROAD
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Concert Hall ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Opera House ◽  
Theatrical Music

AbstractSibelius’s only balletic pantomime, Scaramouche, composed in 1913, remains one of his least-known works, even though it is one of his longest dramatic scores and belongs to his period of compositional re-evaluation. This article explores the pantomime in the context of its first production, performed in 1922 in Denmark and 1924 in Sweden. It argues that the pantomime’s reception both illuminates the importance of dance as a formative ‘modern’ genre within the Nordic countries during this period, and demonstrates that the score is defined by stylistic plurality, which was key to its theatrical success. The article calls for increased musicological attention to Nordic theatrical music, a genre that was extremely popular among early twentieth-century Nordic composers. It provided musicians with musical spaces that were more liberating than the concert hall or the opera house for the purposes of cultivating their musical language.

Zeybek, The

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Shay
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Physical Education ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Folk Dance ◽  
The West ◽  
Aegean Region ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

The zeybek is a genre of Turkish folk dance that is closely associated with the Aegean region on the west coast of Anatolian Turkey, although it is found in other regions as well. It can be seen as an early twentieth-century attempt to "modernize" folk dance in Turkey. There are many versions of this dance: Usually, the zeybek is performed by a solo male dancer, though it can also be performed by two or more males. Although less common, there are a few female zeybek dances. There is also a Greek form of the dance, as well as an urban form—the zeibekikos—brought to Greece by Greeks from Izmir (Smyrna). The Ottoman government sent Selim Sırrı Tarcan, one of the earliest researchers of Turkish folk dances, to Sweden in 1909 to study physical education, and there he was struck by the ways in which Swedish instructors choreographed folk dances in a "refined" way. In 1916, he choreographed the zeybek—which he called Tarcan zeybeği—to appeal to a sophisticated urban Turkish audience. However, the modernization of the zeybek dance was never fully embraced in Turkey because of the nationalistic and ethnic appeal that staged traditional folk dances had for Turkish audiences.

Authenticity and Ethnicity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Ray Herzogenrath
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Young Women ◽  
The Body ◽  
Folk Dance ◽  
Settlement House ◽  
Settlement Houses ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Settlement Movement

During the Progressive Era, settlement workers attempted to regulate dance both within and outside settlement house walls as a method to instill proper “American” body behaviors, particularly in immigrant bodies. This essay examines the paradoxes of folk dance as encouraged by settlement workers in early-twentieth-century Chicago and New York. Settlement workers aimed to assimilate immigrants to American ideals of health, refinement, and respectability through the body; in folk dance they found a satisfying mode of nonsexualized dance, which also acted out a romanticized desire for simplicity in the midst of rapid modernization. The evidence reveals that folk dance in settlement houses traveled two paths: ethnic clubs devoted to the practice of immigrant traditions and structured classes offered to girls and young women. These developments fulfilled the project of Americanization prescribed by the settlement movement and provided a means for immigrants to continue folk practices from their home countries.

scholarly journals Ruination and the William Jones Affair

Museum Worlds ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Michael Armand P. Canilao
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Archival Data ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

This article uses the early twentieth-century Ilongot ethnographic fieldwork and the death of anthropologist William Jones in the Philippines as a vista into what the scholar of colonialism, Ann Stoler, refers to as ruination (Stoler 2013). I argue that the case of William Jones provides an important glimpse into colonial projects in two ways. First, it illustrates the intersection of anthropological expeditions and colonialism. Second, it argues that the colonial project itself produces archives, and in turn, colonial subjects through the making and reading of these archives. I argue for the use of incidental intelligence (Scott 1982) in navigating archival regenerative debris fields. Using archival data including court documents, fieldwork notes, and diaries, the article shows how colonial relationships are shaped, contested, and racialized. At the center of this process for the making of archives and the shaping of colonial subjects is Jones’ fieldwork as well as “his people,” the Ilongots, who are romanticized headhunters.

Some Polish Composers of To-Day

Tempo ◽  
1948 ◽  
pp. 25-28
Author(s):  
Andrzej Panufnik
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fertile Soil ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Group ◽  
Karol Szymanowski

It is ten years since KAROL SZYMANOWSKI died at fifty-four. He was the most prominent representative of the “radical progressive” group of early twentieth century composers, which we call “Young Poland.” In their manysided and pioneering efforts they prepared the fertile soil on which Poland's present day's music thrives.

V1214: Edward Loughborough Keyes: An Early Twentieth Century Leader In Urology

2004 ◽  
Vol 171 (4S) ◽  
pp. 320-320
Author(s):  
Peter J. Stahl ◽  
E. Darracott Vaughan ◽  
Edward S. Belt ◽  
David A. Bloom ◽  
Ann Arbor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Twentieth Century
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