Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power (review)

2003 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 564-565
Author(s):  
Shannon M. Payne
Keyword(s):  
Folk Dance ◽  
Dance Companies

Staging the Folk: Choreographic Issues of National Representation

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-246
Author(s):  
Anthony Shay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Folk Dance ◽  
Ethnic Representation ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Classical Ballet ◽  
Dance Companies

This article looks at the multiple ways that folk dance has been staged in both the nineteenth century when character or national (the two terms were used interchangeably) dance was widely used in classical ballet, and the twentieth in which Igor Moiseyev created a new genre of dance related to it. The ballet masters that created character dance for ballet often created ballroom dances based on folk origin, but that would be suitable for the urban population. This popularity of national dance was the result of the burgeoning of romantic nationalism that swept Europe after the French Revolution. Beginning in the 1930s with Igor Moiseyev founding the first professional ‘folk dance’ company for the Soviet Union, nation states across the world established large, state-supported folk dance companies for purposes of national and ethnic representation that dominated the stages of the world for the second half of the twentieth century. These staged versions of folk dance, were, I argue an extension of nineteenth century national/character dance because their founding directors, like Igor Moiseyev, came from the era when ballet dancers were trained in that genre.

Raqs-e melli

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Shay
Keyword(s):  
Fine Arts ◽  
Folk Dance ◽  
Persian Literature ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Invented Tradition ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Classical Ballet ◽  
Dance Companies ◽  
Village Life

Iranian-Armenians Madame Cornelli, Madame Yelena Avakian, and Sarkis Djanbazian, all of whom had learned ballet in Russia or Europe, came to Iran where they opened private dance studios. They began the process of modernizing Iranian dance for performance on proscenium arch stages. To accomplish this task, in a choreophobic environment like that of Iran of the late 1920s to the 1950s, they engaged in two important activities. First, they created a new dance genre, an invented tradition that the Ministry of Fine Arts designated as raqs-e melli, national dance. This new dance form borrowed from classical ballet, Armenian and Iranian solo improvised dance, Armenian and Iranian folk dances, and other Western sources. Second, in order to appeal to the educated class of Iranian Muslims who were familiar with the West, they adopted themes that were taken from Persian literature and pre-Islamic history, as well as bucolic scenes from village life. Their studios were the first sites of dance recitals and concerts using Western-style stages and techniques. In the 1950s, the Iranian government founded the first professional dance companies—a ballet company and a folk dance company—based on the techniques and work begun by these teachers.

ANTHONY SHAY, Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2002). Pp. 290. $65.00 cloth; $19.95 paper.

2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 642-644
Author(s):  
ARZU ÖZTÜRKMEN
Keyword(s):  
Folk Dance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dance Companies ◽  
Post War ◽  
Folk Dancing

Anthony Shay's Choreographic Politics fills an important gap in the research of the history of folk dancing, a gap opened by the controversial status of “state folk dance ensembles,” whose performances have often been neglected or despised by folklorists and dance scholars. Staged folk dances have always charmed audiences with the energy they embed in their performances but they have also puzzled them, because it is clear that they are more of a “representation” than a true reflection of a locality's reality. The analysis of “state folk dance ensembles,” then, moves on the edges of folklore and “fake lore,” the art of dance and the ethnography of dance. Choreographic Politics touches on this very sense of illusion and disillusion, focusing on the politics of state folk dance ensembles, a cultural product of the post-war era.

Serge Lifar and the Question of Collaboration with the German Authorities under the Occupation of Paris (1940–1949)

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-257
Author(s):  
Mark Franko
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Dance Companies

This article examines the political and artistic activities of dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar at the Paris Opéra during and immediately after the occupation of Paris. Although Lifar was cleared of charges of collaborationism with the German authorities after the war, the question of collaborationism has arisen again in light of the rehabilitation of his aesthetic by the Paris Opéra and other dance companies. Using archival materials usually ignored by dance scholars, this article examines Lifar's political activities, his political convictions, and his political ambitions. His theory of ballet as set forth in La Danse: les grands courants de la danse académique (1938) and two of his successful ballets of this period – Joan de Zarissa (1942) and Suite en blanc (1943) – are discussed in light of his politics.

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