Igre plesnih struktura / Interweaving dance structures (original) (raw)

INTERWEAVING DANCE STRUCTURES Traditional dance and dance music of the Banat Serbs in the light of their mutual relationships The dance practice of the Serbs from all over the Banat can be surveyed throughout the entire 20th century. Beside the ethnographic details pertaining to certain dance events, one can find data about the dance repertoire, as well as descriptions of particular dance structures and the ways of their performance in several ethnochoreological writings about the dance practice of the Serbs from this region (Janković 1949; Crum 1974, 1976, 1993; Ilijin 1971, 1978; Putnik 1991; Felföldi 2003). In addition, there are many video recordings of traditional village dancing made, since the early 1980’s. The video clips have been recorded by Dimitrije Golemović and Olivera Vasić during the 1980’s and within the field research of the Northern Banat (Serbian and Romanian) as part of the summer "Ethno Camps" for ethnomusicology students from Belgrade, Novi Sad and Banja Luka, which have been organized by the Academic Society for Music Cherishing "Gusle" from Kikinda since 2002. Beside the engagement as the field research leader of the students’ "Ethno Camps", my personal fieldwork on the dance and musical practice of the Serbs from Banat started in 1994. With the aim of a systematically-based assessment of the traditional dance practice of this region, which encompasses its choreological as well as semantic traits, the (re)construction of Banat dance genres during twentieth century implies an emic-etic conceptualization of two basic dance genres: the kolo and couple dances. The conceptualization of kolo and couple dances as basic genres in Banat dance practice of the twentieth century enables us to perceive them as separate dance systems. The interpretation of dance genres as distinct systems also implies the possibility of their segmentation into certain subsystems, that is, subgenres, which can then be examined as independent phenomena of traditional dance practice. Structural and formal analysis of „dance texts“ has been developed in ethnochoreology over the last fifty years mostly among European scholars. The basic analytical tool within that method is Labanotation. Because of the fact that this method is directed only at the movement structures and forms, I have slightly modifed it in the direction of developing comparative analysis of dance and dance music and applied it to Labanotation and musical transcriptions of traditional dances and dance music of the Banat Serbs. My basic intention was not to make an universal system of analysis, but to understand what exactly is going on during the performance of complex traditional dance and dance music I was observing. I was also interested in understanding and defining general structural and formal charactersitices of the traditional practice of the Banat Serbs on the level of the dance genres and subgenres, which facilitate their analysis within the historical perspective. Further on, one of my main interests was focused on the understanding of the mutual relations between dance and music during the performance itself. That is the reason why I conceptualized the traditional dance genres holistically, as a coherent and syncretic unity of movement and sound, i.e. dance and dance music structures. The analysis of the dance and music structures is applied to the dance and music transcriptions – Labanotation and musical notations which have been mostly made from the video and audio recordings (approx. 90% of analyzed material). Some of the examples have been made according to the written descriptions of the dances done by the Janković sisters and Duck Crum and some of the examples have been taken from other published sources. All notations which have been made from video and audio recordings are made in total, meaning that the whole performance or at least the bigger part of it is written and analysed. Because of the limited scope of this book the Labanotation and musical transcriptions are cut, but the extended notations could be consulted in the original text. The analytical procedure included two main shrifts: 1. Analysis of particular dances (for example veliko kolo or mađarac) on the level of movements, music, movements and music analysis and, 2. Generalization of the paradigmatic features of particular subgenres and genres. By developing a system for the comparative analysis of dance and dance music structures and forms, I tried to overcome essential differences in the immediate physical manifestations of the two basically different phenomena of human expressive behavior – dance and music. Structural units of dance and music have been ordered in the way which enabled making analogies between them. Those analogies are not and cannot be absolute. The aim of each structural method is to enable the understanding of different systems and their representation as homologous, parallel units whose order can be changeable. It has basically operational character, and its aim is focused toward finding conclusions on the general level of observation. According to my comparative method of analysis, movements and music within one particular dance can be observed on several, hierarchically and comparably established levels. On the highest level of investigation, they are treated as systems of the complex parameters utilizing a synthesis of the universal components: kinetics-space-time/sound-space-time. The next level of comparative analysis is the level of comparing the movement and melorhythmical patterns. In the case of the traditional dance practice of the Banat Serbs, the dance process is made mostly by limited number of weight transference i.e. supports, and "free" leg movements i.e. gestures. That is why the movement pattern consists mostly of leg movements. The interior structures of leg movement and melorhythmical patterns are treated in the holistic way as the triads: (leg)movement-space-time/music-space-time. The morphology of the musical and dance patterns as a third level of investigation is determined through the analysis of comparative units of dance and dance music: element, cell, motive, phrase, part and totus (macro form of the dance/dance music). The results of the separate dance and dance music analysis (third and fourth chapters) revealed many interesting conclusions about structural and formal characteristics of the individual dance and dance music pieces, but also a lot of paradigmatic conclusions about characteristics of the particular dance subgenres and genres. This time I shall not write about all that, but will concentrate on explaining the main results of the comparative dance and dance music approach.