The Significance of György Martin's Historical and Comparative Studies in Hungarian and International Ethnochoreology (original) (raw)
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GYÖRGY MARTIN’S PLACE IN APPLIED ETHNOCHOREOLOGY
PRE-PUBLICATION VERSION see http://www.akademiai.com/toc/022/60/1 Abstract: Apart from a few key works on dance structure, improvisation and Central European traditional dance, the breadth and depth of Martin’s work remains inaccessible to the English reading audience and little known in dance studies. One such unacknowledged area of significant contribution is his important work in applied ethnochoreology through key interventions in Hungarian presentational stage choreography and participatory social dance revival. In both spheres Martin made a significant contribution at key moments in their development. At least two fundamental concepts drawn from his theoretical work informed his activist interventions. First, that folk dancing needs to be conceptualized, and studied, as process (táncfolyam). Second, that this process cannot be excised from its complete con- textualization in the lives and history of its practitioners if it is to be fully understood. This theorization of dance is relevant far beyond the village dance idiom that so absorbed him. It should be more widely known, acknowledged and, indeed, applied specifically within ethnochoreology as well as dance stud- ies in general today. As work in the application of scholarly knowledge outside the walls of academia becomes ever more important in our field, it is worth remembering that this is not an activity without precedent. Martin’s theoretically informed interventions in both participatory and presentational dance practices in Hungary provide an excellent model for such work. Keywords: traditional dance, applied ethnomusicology, applied ethnochoreology, participatory dance revival, presentational choreographic representation, applied ethnochoreology, György Martin, Ernő Pesovár, theory and practice
Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 2018
The author of the article wishes to compare Hungarian textual and musical folkloristics at the turn of the 20 th century with regard to changes in fi eldwork methodologies. Hungarian folklore studies in the 19 th century preferred text-oriented recording of performances, while by the fi rst half of the 20 th century the need for a performance-centered study of folklore with the help of audio recording emerged. Owing to a fundamental change in the method of folklorecollection, Hungarian folklorists studying folk music and folk dance by the middle of the 20 th century applied the method of participant observation. In the meantime extensive collection gave way to intensive collection focusing on the repertoire of a given local community or of an outstanding performer. In this process Béla Vikár had a distinguished role as he was the fi rst one to use phonograph in collecting folk poetry and folk music in Hungary, besides which, with the help of stenography, he has a remarkable manuscript legacy of folktales and folk customs as well. The approach and objectives of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály differed from those of Vikár's, since for them quantitative considerations were still important, while Vikár's approach borrowed elements from social sciences as well. The breakthrough in this respect was marked with the oeuvre of László Lajtha, a disciple of Bartók, who dealt with vocal and instrumental folk music alike. During fi ve decades Lajtha as a collector shifted paradigms a number of times and on the peak of his folklorist oeuvre he published monographs on the vocal and instrumental musical repertoire of bands and villages. His studies inspired György Martin, dance folklorist as well as the revival folk dance movement in the 1970s. The performer-centred study of narration that Gyula Ortutay elaborated on at the beginning of the 1940s proved to be successful primarily in the study of prose epic genres and it unreflexively followed the method of folk musicologists.
TRACING THE DISCIPLINE: EIGHTY YEARS OF ETHNOCHOREOLOGY IN SERBIA
The interest for traditional dance research in Serbia is noted since the second part of the 19th century in various ethnographical sources. However, organized and scientifically grounded study was begun by the sisters Danica and Ljubica Janković marked by publishing of the first of totally eight volumes of the “Folk Dances” [Narodne igre] in 1934. All eight books of this edition published periodically until 1964 were highly acknowledged by the broader scientific communities in Europe and the USA. Dance research was continued by the following generation of researchers: Milica Ilijin, Olivera Mladenović, Slobodan Zečević, and Olivera Vasić. The next significant step toward developing dance research began in 1990 when the subject of ethnochoreology was added to the program of basic ethnomusicological studies at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade and shortly afterward in 1996 in the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. Academic ethnochoreological education in both institutions was established by Olivera Vasić. The epistemological background of all traditional dance research in Serbia was anchored mostly in ethnography focused on the description of rural traditions and partly in traditional dance history. Its broader folkloristic framework has, more or less, strong national orientation. However, it could be said that, thanks to the lifelong professional commitment of the researchers, and a relatively unified methodology of their research, ethnochoreology maintained continuity as a scientific discipline since its early beginnings. The next significant milestone in the development of the discipline happened when traditional dance research was included in the PhD doctoral research projects within ethnomusicological studies at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. Those projects, some of which are still in the ongoing process, are interdisciplinary and interlink ethnochoreology with ethnomusicology and related disciplines. This paper reexamines and reevaluates the eighty years long tradition of dance research in Serbia and positions its ontological, epistemological and methodological trajectories in the broader context of its relation to other social sciences/humanities in the contemporary era of interdisciplinarity and postdiciplinarity. Keywords: dance research, ethnochoreology, Serbia
Yearbook for traditional music 47, 27-44., 2015
Although ethnochoreology maintained continuity as a methodologically and theoretically grounded discipline for last several decades, there is an ongoing need among scholars to reevaluate its traits and achievements and (re)position it within both social sciences and/or the humanities. This is even more evident in scholarly traditions in Southeastern Europe within which ethnochoreology as independent academic discipline was mostly developed from the field of (ethno)musicology. Based on the triad field research-transcription-analyses of primarily local rural practice i.e. folk dance/music material, epistemological basis of ethnochoreological research was rooted in the concept of dance as a syncretic unity of dance movement and dance music. This paper historically traces main methodological orientations in scholarly traditions of Southeastern Europe, particularly Serbia with emphasize on determination of the fluctuating boundaries between etnochoreological and ethnomusicological research. The questions which will be raised are directed toward discussing some of the heuristic traits of ethnochoreology as independent scholarly discipline. Keywords: ethnochoreology, Serbia and Southeastern Europe, methodology, scholarly discipline
From the Chair to the Field. Research in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology
The "Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology" (IECA UW) is a department of the Faculty of History at the University of Warsaw 1 . It gathers researchers interested in contemporary socio-cultural phenomena and in searching for new analytical tools and theories adequate to interpret these phenomena. This article presents only the research of Institute faculty conducted in Poland and Europe. Research conducted outside of Europe ̶ in Buryatia, Yakutia, Mongolia, India, Mexico and Sudan falls outside the scope of this journal and will only be mentioned in passing. Our team specialises in research carried out in Poland and across its Eastern border. Since its founding in 1934, the IECA UW has conducted fieldwork in the Polish countryside. In the 1930s, and then after World War II, researchers focused on documenting the remaining elements of traditional folk culture. The founder of IECA UW, CEZARIA BAUDOUIN DE COURTENAY EHRENKREUTZ JĘDRZEJEWICZOWA, examined and analysed folk customs and rituals in the Vilnius Region (Łańcuch tradycji. Teksty wybrane (engl. A Chain of Tradition. Selection of Texts 2005). WITOLD DYNOWSKI, Head of the IECA UW after the war, conducted research focused on material culture there. Research aimed at documenting traditional folk architecture and art has been 1 The name Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology (IECA) is in use since 2001, earlier it was the Chair
In this paper, the disenchantment of the world (Entzauberung der Welt) is taken as a metaphor for the fear of the vanishing of folklore (perceived as the oral lore of rural communities) due to modernization and technological progress-the model of thinking that was predominant during the 19 th and the first decades of the 20 th century and affected the history of folkloristics. First, the similarities between the disenchantment and conceptualization of folklore as a vanishing object are discussed, based on the possibility of expanding Weber's theory to the other domains in the humanities, direct influences that came from the Romantic era and the 20 th-century orality/literacy theories that deal with how technological progress affects oral culture. Weber's ideas are applied to a point in the history of Serbian folkloristics, analyzing the case of formation of the Ethnographic collection of SASA 1 Archives. Stojan Novaković, who initiated the idea of the Ethnographic collection and was one of the most prominent figures of his time, warned about folklore being endangered and the necessity of it being collected. In contrast, folklore collectors responded by offering large amounts of material. The discrepancy between their stands is reviewed in the context of social and historical circumstances in Serbia and the Western world, as well as literary, cultural, and scientific influences that shaped Novaković, his role in Serbian culture, folklore collectors' will, interests, competency, resourcefulness, and even personal agenda. Some of the indications of this research are that the insiders' perspective of the collectors coincides with the stance that at the time, no significant changes in mentality took place; that sometimes the very means of overcoming disenchantment turned out to be the symptoms of this process; and that collecting practice was used for both national goals and personal gain.