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Folk Dance and
the Creation of
National Identities
Staging the Folk

Anthony Shay
Folk Dance and the Creation of National Identities
 Anthony Shay

Folk Dance and the

Creation of National
Identities
Staging the Folk
Anthony Shay
Pomona College
Claremont, CA, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-23335-7    ISBN 978-3-031-23336-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23336-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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This book is for my dear friend Penny Aratin Baker.
 Acknowledgments

The richest experience any scholar can have is thanking those who pave the
way; open doors; share their knowledge, archives, and research materials;
and otherwise permit the individual to, in turn, share what they have
learned. One of the joys, as one finishes a volume, is to thank the many
individuals who shared, prodded, and supported. Ideally, we acknowledge
our teachers, especially those like Sally Ann Ness, who inspire, or col-
leagues who are unfailingly generous, like Barbara Sellers-Young, both of
whom have always been inspiring to me.
For this volume, I benefited by the generosity of several artists and
their staffs, who provided hours of inspiring interviews of how they work,
what inspires them, what are their aesthetic values, and how they keep the
faith with the populations, peasants, and indigenous peoples, whom they
represent on the stage. In some cases, they also represent nation states,
and in doing so, they take that responsibility with great care and serious-
ness. What they put on the stage has political and social repercussions
beyond the fervid applause for the concerts that they create and structure.
Many of the artists provided access to photographs and permission to
reproduce them, printed matter, books, video, and CD recordings, which
greatly aided me in pursuing and analyzing their work.
In Karolin estate, the home of Mazowsze since its founding in 1948,
the staff gave me the warmest welcome. I especially wish to thank Annette
Ormanczyk, a Polish folk dancer in her own right, who supervises and
provides dance classes in the newly established folklore center, which she
curates. Her personal guided tour (June 15, 2022) provided important

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

insights into the artistic visions of the founding director Tadeusz

Sygietynski and his wife, Mira Ziminska. It was Madame Ziminska’s vision,
a highly theatrical one given her successful career as a successful actress,
that prevailed because Sygietynski passed away only a few years after the
company’s founding. The staff generously welcomed me to their thirty-­
acre estate at Karolin and provided me with multiple books and recordings
of the company and patiently answered all my questions.
From the moment that I arrived at the headquarters of Kolo, the
Serbian State Ensemble of Folk Dances and Songs, Vladimir Dekić, the
current artistic and managing director of the ensemble was the most warm
and welcoming host. He provided me with hours of lively discussions; an
opportunity to see the ensemble perform a program of the works of Olga
Skovran, the founding artistic director; and an engaging interview with
the author of a newly published book about Skovran, in which he served
as the discussion leader. He also gave me the gift of the newly published
book about Olga Skovran, which had been a major gap in research about
dance in Serbia. His warmth and boundless enthusiasm for the direction
of the national company were most welcome.
In Hungary, I wish to give my hosts in the Hungarian State Folk
Ensemble Gábor Mihályi, the artistic director, and his assistant Gábor Illes
for the time they generously gave me for thoughtful and insightful inter-
views about the company’s direction and future plans. They also provided
me several DVDs of recent productions, other printed materials, books,
and tickets to see their newest production, as well as permission to print
the images for the book. I also thank my former colleague and dear friend
Ted (Tibor) Toghia, now living in Siofok, Hungary, for his thoughts about
the national dance company and the new direction it has taken.
In Poland, I thank the warm welcome provided for me by the staff of
the Mazowsze Polish State Folk Ensemble, especially Annette Ormanczyk,
the curator of the Mazowsze Folk Center at Karolin for several hours of
intellectual conversation about the conversion of folklore from field to
stage. They also provided me with recordings, books, printed materials,
and permission to use the images for this volume.
For the chapter on Egypt, I relied on the generous and very lengthy
conversations that I had with Mahmoud Reda. He was, before all else, a
gentleman, a word I rarely use, in every way. He showed enormous
patience and generosity in sharing with me his thoughts about dance,
about the Egyptian peasant and how he or she should be represented. In
larger terms, he thought deeply about how Egypt should be represented.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

In the belly dance world, Reda became, especially toward the end of his
life, a towering figure with an international following of largely female
dancers, who greatly appreciated the way in which he presented the female
dancer in a unique and flattering fashion. Women from all over the world
would travel to Egypt or bring him to their countries in order to work
with him. Although I critique his vision of the peasant, and his representa-
tions of Egyptian peasants, I try to always retain the positive image that
presented to the world and remember that in Egypt what he did in dance
was new and pioneering, and his stage and cinematic performances were
honored and revered among many individuals in Egyptian society in which
he made dance an acceptable performance art.
For the chapter on Hawaii, I am indebted to Patrick Makuakane, kumu
hula extraordinaire, originally from Hawaii, but deeply immersed in the
welcoming artistic environment of the San Francisco Bay area. He was
most generous with his thoughts and information in our personal inter-
views. From the first time that I saw him and his company, Na Leie Hulu
i ka Weiku, in concert at the Water Court in downtown Los Angeles, I was
struck by this astounding artist who had wed tradition to innovation in a
startling way. From the outset of the concert, Kumu Hula Patrick
Makuakane’s fidelity to tradition and years of rigorous training in the
performance of hula chant, movement, and poetry, framed in Makuakane’s
own unique vision, shone. I determined that at some point I wanted to
profile, describe, and analyze the work of this unique creative artist.
Subsequently, on an annual basis in my classes I show the film American
Aloha, which devotes a lengthy interview with Makuakane and members
of his company, which provided additional insights to accessing his vision
of hula and the Hawaiian people.
At Pomona College I wish to thank my colleague John Pennington, the
chair of the Pomona College Dance Department (just established in 2022)
for his unfailing support of dance research in general, and mine in particu-
lar. Pomona College provided a large research grant for this project, as did
a generous Hirsch grant, for which I thank Susan and David, former
Pomona College students who really support faculty research. I also thank
David Tannenbaum, who served as dean and saw the grant processes
through to completion.
I always cherish the at-home love and care that allow me the time and
space to carry out my research and the gritty reality of writing it, and for
my loving spouse Jamal, who makes my life the thing of beauty that it is.
 Contents

1 The Folk  1

2 Mazowsze: Poland on Stage 47

3 Proper Peasants: Hungarian Ethno Identity Dance 85

4 
Kolo Artistic Director Olga Skovran Stages
the Serbian Folk141

5 Mahmoud Reda and the Egyptian Fellahin197

6 Hawaiian
 Hula, Patrick Makauakane, and
Na Leie Hulu i ka Weiku229

References265

Index289

xi
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Mazowsze performs the Polonez. (Photo by Krzystof Sitkowski.

Courtesy of the Mazowsze Polish State Folk Ensemble) 48
Fig. 2.2 Mazowsze performs the finale from the choreography
Kaleidoscope of Polish Colors. (Courtesy of Mazowsze the State
Folk Ensemble of Poland) 50
Fig. 2.3 The Mazowsze choir. (Photo by Krzystof Sitkowski.
Courtesy of the Mazowsze archives) 77
Fig. 2.4 Mazowsze performs krakowiak, one of the most popular Polish
folk dances. (Photo by Krzystof Sitkowski. Courtesy of
Mazowsze Polish State Folk Ensemble) 78
Fig. 2.5 Finale of a Mazowsze performance. (Photo by Krzystof
Sitkowski. Courtesy of Mazowsze Polish State Folk Ensemble) 81
Fig. 3.1 The Hungarian State Folk Ensemble performs a Miklós Rábai
choreography, Evening in the Spinning Room.
(Courtesy of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble) 122
Fig. 3.2 The Hungarian State Folk Dance Ensemble Orchestra today.
(Photo by Gábor Dusa. Courtesy of the Hungarian State Folk
Dance Ensemble) 124
Fig. 3.3 Liszt Mosaics. (Photo by Levente Váradi. Courtesy of the
Hungarian State Folk Ensemble) 132
Fig. 3.4 Celebration. (Photo by Szilvia Csibi. Courtesy of the
Hungarian State Folk Ensemble) 134
Fig. 4.1 Igre iz Srbije, one of Olga Skovran’s first choreographies.
(Courtesy of Kolo, State Ensemble of Folk Dance of Serbia) 142
Fig. 4.2 Igre iz Srbije, performed by Kolo Ensemble today.
(Courtesy of Kolo, State Ensemble of Folk Dances of Serbia) 143

xiii
xiv List of Figures

Fig. 4.3 Dances of Eastern Serbia. (Courtesy of Kolo, Ensemble

of Folk Dances of Serbia) 185
Fig. 4.4 Dances of Vranje. (Courtesy of Kolo, Ensemble
of Folk Dances of Serbia) 188
Fig. 5.1 Portrait of Mahmoud Reda. (Courtesy of Mahmoud
Reda and Farida Fahmy) 199
Fig. 5.2 The stick dance is one of the earliest and most famous of
Mahmoud Reda’s choreographies. This is one of the most
widespread of Egyptian male folk dances and was also a
form of self-defense. (Courtesy of Mahmoud Reda and
Farida Fahmy) 210
Fig. 5.3 A scene from one of Mahmoud Reda’s narrative
choreographies depicting the lighter side of Egyptian village
life. (Courtesy of Mahmoud Reda and Farida Fahmy) 212
Fig. 5.4 Mahmoud Reda’s depiction of village life in a festive mood.
(Courtesy of Mahmoud Reda and Farida Fahmy) 215
Fig. 6.1 The Natives Are Restless. Choreography by Patrick Makuakane.
(Photo courtesy of Patrick Makuakane) 230
Fig. 6.2 The natives are restless. Choreography by Patrick Makuakane.
(Photo courtesy of Patrick Makuakane) 231
Fig. 6.3 Patrick Makuakane performing ancient hula in San Francisco.
(Courtesy of Patrick Makuakane) 232
Fig. 6.4 The men of Na Leie Hulu i ka Weiku. (Courtesy of Patrick
Makuakane)259
Fig. 6.5 Hula Mua, progressive hula. (Courtesy of Patrick Makuakane) 260
Fig. 6.6 One of Makuakane’s modern works, Mi Nei. (Courtesy of
Patrick Makuakane) 261
 Staging the Folk: Introduction1

This book is about the folk: the folk in folk dance, the folk in folklore, the
folk in folk wisdom. When we see folk dance on the stage or in a tourist
setting, which is the way in which many of us experience folk dance, the
question arises: are these the “real folk” performing their authentic dances?
Or are they urban, well-trained, carefully rehearsed professional dancers
who make their livelihood as representatives of a specific nation state act-
ing as the folk? Or something in between? We will delve more deeply into
the folk, their origins, their identities, their lives in the next chapter, in
order to know the source of inspiration for ethno identity dances, that is,
dances prepared for the stage and the ballroom and for public perfor-
mances from ballet, state folk dance ensembles and their amateur emula-
tors, immigrant folk dance group performances, and tourist presentations.
These dances, unlike modern dance, ballet, or most vernacular dances,
always have strong ethnic references.
For the staging part of the title, I will also look at a gallery of choreog-
raphers and artistic directors across a wide spectrum of dance genres to ask
the question of these dance creators: Who are the folk that you are repre-
senting? How do you see them? Why have you made the choreographic
decisions and strategies that bring the representation and desired image of
who the folk you are representing before the public? Are you challenging,
or laboring under, choreographic and ethnic stereotypes? What drew you
to create the specific representational images to achieve your goals? Most
of the people whom I interviewed have thought long and hard about
these questions. Those who choreograph works based on traditional
sources know that they represent something beyond themselves, often an

xv
xvi STAGING THE FOLK: INTRODUCTION

entire ethnic group or nation state. Thus, the dances found in “folk dance”
groups and ensembles form a part of what I call the politics of representa-
tion. Unlike modern dance or ballet in which the choreographers have a
wide scope of representation, choreographers of traditional dance, or
inspired by traditional dance, are choreographing the folk or a specific
ethnic or national group. Some of them, as members of a particular ethnic
group, understand their responsibility to represent specific traditions in a
specific way and when to break with that tradition. Others, like myself,
representing the choreographic traditions of others, feel a special respon-
sibility toward those we represent, to represent them in an honorable,
authentic fashion. Much like classical composers of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries like Liszt, Brahms, and Copeland, a third group
chooses to use the folk as inspiration in a loose fashion, without using
specific movements or other morphological elements from dances in the
field, shaping their own idiosyncratic interpretations for presentational
purposes.
In some societies, like those of Serbia or Poland, that still have strong
peasant traditions, folk dancing was a part of the life cycle throughout the
year, an organic part of daily peasant life. But even within traditional con-
texts, there were times and events when individuals were on display in
their own society. As an example, when young men and women were of a
proper age, they entered adult society through dance events in the same
way that debutantes in Jane Austen novels did. For such occasions, they
attempted to dance well by village standards, dressed in the finest clothing
that their families could provide for them to show that they were desirable
marriage partners. They were scrutinized for their potential as marriage
partners: clean, well-dressed, well-behaved, hard-working, prosperous,
and able to reenact societal expectations of proper male and female behav-
ior through their dance movements and demeanor, as their parents and
their parents’ parents had done.
Many nations, like the former Soviet Union (Moiseyev 2016; Shay
2019; Zemtsovsky and Kunenbaeva 1997), Hungary (Lázár 2021; Taylor
2021), Ireland (Shay 2016), and Croatia (Sremac 2001; Žganec and
Sremec 1951), developed festivals and competitions for showing folk
dances prior to World War II, while other nations like Turkey (Öztürkmen
2014) and Venezuela (Guss 2000) developed them later. In Latin America,
saints’ days and national holidays provided an opportunity for celebrations
of which staged folk dancing was a part (Farfán 2016; Mendoza Garcia
 STAGING THE FOLK: INTRODUCTION xvii

2016). These festivals often grew out of market days that dated to medi-
eval times in which the folk gathered to conduct economic exchanges.
The stagings that I address are in new contexts like the repertoire of
Kolo, the Serbian State Folk Dance Ensemble, for which Olga Skovran
choreographed the folk dances in a new way, in suite arrangements, meld-
ing a series of often simple typical steps and figures into a choreographic
whole representing a single village or an entire region that had not been
arranged for the stage in that way before.
Folk and traditional dance is a dynamic idiom. It is not frozen in time,
as some individuals think. In most traditional forms, except strictly ritual
ones, improvisation constitutes an important element, or as in solo impro-
vised dance in Iran, Egypt, and Turkey, it is the basis of the entire genre
(Shay 2002, 2019b; Shay and Sellers-Young 2005). Innovation and
improvisation are not new elements in dance. Even in the antique
Mediterranean world, pantomime and mime dancers in ancient Rome and
other dance performers constantly used innovation, seeking new ways to
make themselves more popular and to present new and novel elements
into their performances for their paying audiences and patrons to increase
the value of their appearances (Shay 2014). Although classics scholar Karin
Schlapbach discusses dance in the antique world of ancient Greece and
ancient Rome, her characterization of it as a dynamic medium rings
true today:

Dance does more than just preserve and transmit the traditions and stories
of the ancestors, although this is an important aspect too. Libanius knows it
when he writes that thanks to pantomime an artisan knows how to converse
about mythology with learned people (Or. 64.112). But more importantly,
dance is a practice that contributes to creating and defining culture in the
first place. By imposing the vital and physical presence of its own perfor-
mance, it is able to influence and, as it were, overwrite received cultural
knowledge in the most compelling of languages, that of bodily experience,
which is shared by both dancer and spectator. (2018, 20)

Underlying this discussion, always, is the question of authenticity.

When one places tradition on stage, prepared for a public performance,
alterations are made, some small, some drastic. What are those alterations,
and how far can one push traditional boundaries? “Authenticity,” in my
view, is a fluid term; few individuals participate in events and activities that
they regard as inauthentic. I still encounter students who are enthusiastic
xviii STAGING THE FOLK: INTRODUCTION

participants in ballet folklórico, hula, Bollywood, Irish step dancing, and

Chinese folk dance groups.
These are questions that I pose not only for these individuals but also
to myself in autoethnographic mode. In past studies, I have addressed
issues of politics and the political aspects of staging dance, and those will
recur in this study (2002, 2021). I have looked at specific choreographic
strategies employed by such widely emulated choreographic figures as
Igor Moiseyev (2002, 2016a, 2019), and the historical and political con-
texts in which they created their works and the effects they achieved
(2002, 2019, 2021). In this study I will focus on the folk who are being
represented, and how the choreographers identify them and represent
them. What kind of ties do these choreographers have with the people
they represent? Are the links between the folk and the choreographer
organic or abstract? I address questions and issues about the folk in the
next chapter.

Choreographic Issues of National

and Ethnic Representation

The terms “folk” and “national” have been deployed in relation to the
multiple ways in which the staging of dances is done, with links to folk
dance for proscenium stages and other performance sites such as night-
clubs, festivals, and tourist hotels that expanded dramatically after World
War II. The very term “folk” carries multiple meanings. “The meaning of
the folk shifts across its spectrum of possible definitions in relation to pro-
cesses of state formation and, in particular, the formation of the nation-­
state” (Taylor 2021, 3; emphasis in the original). The folk, the Volk, and
their unique language are the basis of the establishment of many nation
states, especially in Europe and the Far East. Following the lead of Johann
Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), and his disciples in the Romantic
Nationalism movement, like the Grimm Brothers, the folk in its original
meaning focused on the peasant, and his linguistic forms like folk songs
and folk tales and, later, folk dance (Coccharia 1981). “The study of folk
dance in the context of folk movements offers glimpses into nation affect
in the making” (Taylor 2021, 4). Staging the folk helped followers of the
Romantic Nationalism create nations, focusing on the folk for that pro-
cess. Thus, in this study folk dance and its staging become a valuable lens
for viewing political processes of how the folk are part of the process of
national identity construction.
 STAGING THE FOLK: INTRODUCTION xix

National/Character Dance
I will follow Lisa C. Arkin and Marian Smith’s lead in the use of the two
words “national” and “character”: “Please note that we use term ‘national’
and ‘character’ dance interchangeably in this article, as writers of the nine-
teenth century frequently did” (1997, 13).2 National and character dance
became an integral part of classical ballet in its most formative period, that
of the nineteenth-century romantic ballet. It is no longer a popular part of
ballet although it is still part of ballet blancs. Many schools and individual
teachers no longer teach it, although classes are still given in major ballet
centers like the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg. National
dances find their way into contemporary works much less often than
nineteenth-­ century ballets, when in the Paris Opera Ballet, “national
dance seems to have occurred in over three-quarters of the performances
given there” (1997, 13). And national dance has received very little schol-
arly attention compared to other areas of ballet, which I would argue is
due to its connection with folk dance rather than the classical and noble
end of the ballet spectrum. Arkin and Smith note, “For, though the type
of dance referred to variously as ‘national,’ ‘folk,’ ‘character,’ and ‘ethnic’
is acknowledged to have constituted a part of the Romantic ballet, it is still
generally treated only as a marginal adjunct in scholarly investigations of
the subject, a lesser cousin to classical dance” (1997, 11. See also
Shiovitz 2021).
As their illuminating article demonstrates, using research from many
primary sources, national dance occupied a central position in the perfor-
mance of theater dance during the romantic period; most of the ballet
luminaries such as Fanny Elssler and Marie Taglioni included national
dances in their performances. In the early twentieth century, Anna Pavlova
performed the famous Mexican folk dance jarabe tapatío en pointe, fur-
ther increasing its popularity in its home country. The popularity of
national dance, as I indicated earlier, stems from its connection with the
powerful sentiments surrounding newly emerging nationalist ideas. In
performing the jarabe tapatío, as a national dance, Pavlova appealed to
strong sentiments of Mexican nationalism in her Mexico City audience
(Mendoza-Garcia 2016).
Basically, national dances are a part of narrative ballet, both as separate
group and solo divertissements, which are theatricalized folk dances
included in the classical ballet performances that represented a specific
nation. In this period, and I will argue even into the present, people
xx STAGING THE FOLK: INTRODUCTION

believed that ballet or dance masters, as choreographers were then called,

had the ability to observe folk dance, or even glean through some kind of
osmosis, the ability to distill the national or regional traits of an ethnic or
national group into a choreographed dance. This idea persists in the pre-
sentation of state-supported national folk dance companies. This philo-
sophical notion links their performances to national and character dance.
The program notes of all of these ensembles show this tendency to reduce
the “national” “ethnic,” or “regional” character of the peasants into two
to three adjectives, often traits like brave, merry, light-hearted (e.g. see
Chudnovsky 1959; Rey n.d.; Varjasi 1956).
Dance historian Susan Au states,

Character dancing borrows various elements from given dance forms in

order to create the illusion that an authentic folk or social dance is being
performed … Many character dances tend, however, to select the most
salient characteristics of a dance type, sometimes to the point of stereotype,
such as the gesture of the hand behind the head in ‘Slavic’ dances and the
undulating arms of ‘Hindu’ dances. (1998, 106)

She quotes Igor Moiseyev, whom we will meet later in this essay, “One
must not turn the national dance in the ballet into an ethnographic docu-
ment. It is not slavish photographic reproduction of folk dance” (1998,
106). He certainly followed his own advice when he founded his own
company, spectacularizing “folk dance” beyond any character or national
dance seen in classical ballet performances. He had created a new dance
genre, which included elements of ballet (Shay 2019).
For many of the nineteenth-century audience members, as Garafola
indicated earlier, these dances transported them to exotic and foreign
locales, and the choreographer was the tour guide. As Arkin and Smith
note these national dances “offered spectators the satisfying illusion that
they had actually glimpsed some foreign place” (1997, 26). One might
compare this to the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century experi-
ence of hip urbanites finding new exotic restaurants with “authentic” cui-
sines. The excitement of experiencing colorful natives added to strong
feelings of nationalism that led to the creation of national dances by cho-
reographers for the ballroom. “In the 1830s and 1840s, in fact, there was
a veritable national-dance craze on Europe’s public dance floors. Amateur
dancers flocked to dance studios to take lessons in national dances. They
rented and purchased national costumes to wear to public balls” (Arkin
and Smith 1987, 17). Needless to say, these “national” costumes
 STAGING THE FOLK: INTRODUCTION xxi

exhibited as much authenticity as the dances which the ballet masters cre-
ated. (For stunning versions of “national costumes” worn by the Greek
court and urban elite for gala events see Hadzimichali 1948, plates 1–11.)
Nevertheless, like Herder did for language genres such as folk poetry
and folk song lyrics, these romantic period choreographers sought a
degree of authenticity in the dances they wished to present.

Like Herder, many ballet theoreticians of the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries expressed a keen interest in the authentic, ‘true,’ and ‘natural’ folk
expressions of various nations … [because] the expressive arts embody the
‘genius’ of a nation and should render their subject matter in as convincing
a manner as possible. (Arkin and Smith 1997, 30)

However, the result was expressed in the academic movement vocabu-

lary of classical ballet. “It seems highly likely that original folk dances were
distilled to a certain repertory of steps, poses, and gestures that were rec-
ognizably associated with a particular culture—with technical virtuosity
and the choreographer’s own artistry begin added to the mix” (Arkin and
Smith 1997, 36). And because these choreographers at that time, as now,
felt that ballet was the apex of humankind’s choreographic achievements,
no matter how much time they may have devoted to field work, they
almost always reverted to expressing these “national” characteristics and
dances through the classical ballet technique. Viewing Swan Lake or
Sleeping Beauty today, although I am sure that a ballet scholar can see the
differences, I can discern no difference between the Spanish variation and
the Polish and Hungarian variations, beyond vague references to national
identity found in the costuming: the Spanish dancer wears a comb in her
hair, the Hungarian dancer does not. Reflecting my observations of char-
acter dance Au notes, “the ethnic element was often confined to sets and
costumes, while the dancing was couched in the vocabulary of danse
d’ecole” (1998, 107).
In surveying the history of character dancing, it is sometimes difficult
to judge the degree to which authentic folk dance actually shaped the
choreography. Some ballets used little more than token gestures, often
many times removed from the originals, such as the upward-pointing fin-
gers in “Chinese” dances (Au 1998, 107). But I am not a nineteenth-­
century viewer for whom the ballet masters created the dances and for
whom Arkin and Smith note “A certain repertory of markers, then, was
sufficient to function emblematically, reinforcing the spectators’ sense that
they were gaining access to the essence of a culture or nation” (1997, 36).
xxii STAGING THE FOLK: INTRODUCTION

Thus, we meet the folk in staged national dance in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries and beyond. We do not encounter them as
themselves nor through their actual dances, but largely through the
mediation of classical ballet in which they appear as interchangeable stock
figures with no individuality like Giselle’s village friends. In reviewing two
important manuals for teaching character dance, one finds Hungarian or
Russian dances, among many others. The dances are presented and
described as if there is only one essentialized Hungarian or Russian dance,
as if the actual dances in the field have no regional or local specificity,
which they actually do (Lopoukov et al. 1986; Pagels 1984).3
In 1936–1937, Igor Moiseyev (1906–2007), a graduate and former per-
former and choreographer of character and national dance in the Bolshoi
Ballet, would usher in a new era of staging the folk. He created a new genre
of dance: professional folk dance, and a new type of dancer: the professional
folk dancer. One of the first steps he took in the founding of his company
was to establish a school to ensure that his new dancers were trained in
the Moiseyev mode. New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff famously
wrote: “The Igor Moiseyev Dance Company is, of course, a ballet company
in disguise, it is a troupe of professional, ballet-trained dancers” (n.d.). But
Kisselgoff does not claim that the Moiseyev Dance Company is performing
ballet or national dances from ballet, with which she was familiar.4 In fact, the
Moiseyev Dance Company was performing a new genre of dance that was
called folk dance, but was something new, and which I argue, he invented as
the “new” way to stage the folk (Shay 2019). What it was not was actual folk
dance as performed in villages and tribal areas across the globe.
Some of these dances have been staged as theater dance genres, first in
classical ballet during the nineteenth century, in some countries like
Hungary and Ukraine in musical comedies, and later in the repertoires of
state-supported folk dance ensembles since the 1930s, but these dances
have been confusingly labeled as “folk” and “national” dances, or folk-­
inspired dances.5 In this chapter, I will tie these two dance traditions
together, and in the next chapter I will look at the original producers of
folk dance, the source: the folk. Who are the folk? Why are they impor-
tant? Why was it important to stage their cultural production?

National Dances for the Ballroom

Like others, dance makers and performers were caught up in the spirit of
nationalism that continued well into the twentieth century creating
“national” dances for the stage and the ballroom. As dance historian Lynn
 STAGING THE FOLK: INTRODUCTION xxiii

Garafola observes, “To the cosmopolitan audiences of Paris or London,

dances such as the bolero, mazurka, or tarantella served a largely decora-
tive purpose, providing local color and, a mild dose of primitivism.
Elsewhere, however, the same dances could become a patriotic statement,
an expression of the desire for national self-determination” (1997, 6; see
also Mazowsze 2020). These dances were featured in ballets and diver-
tissements throughout the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century the-
ater performances, and they also found their way onto the ballroom floors
of cities throughout Europe and North America (Arkin and Smith 1997).
This division between the urban elite and the “folk” resulted in the
creation of “national” or “character” dances for both the stage and the
ballroom, precisely when audiences, imbued with nationalistic fervor and
emotion, wanted to both view them in ballet performances and enact
them on the ballroom floor to express their national identities and senti-
ments through “national” dances. But they did not want to do or get near
the actual folk, nor perform actual folk dances. “It was in this context that
the Hungarian nobility embarked on inventing a national dance from
motifs borrowed from ‘the folk’ resulting in the introduction of the newly
invented dance, the csárdás, as a ballroom dance” (Taylor 2021, 27). In
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the performance of the
csárdás became de rigeuer at society balls in Budapest, and throughout
Hungary as an emblem of burgeoning national fervor, dressed in urban
versions of a “national” costume.
As another example of this enthusiasm for national dance I turn to a
lesser known nation that had embraced nationalism in the nineteenth cen-
tury, Croatia, in which ballet masters created a new dance, dvoransko or
salonsko kolo, for the elite. As music scholar Frank Dubinskas notes about
the period: “The imagery of the folk dance, the kolo, and the medium of
folk song pervaded the tropes of the cultural renaissance [prepored] ... Its
central image for unity is a giant kolo [circle dance]” (1983, 33; see also
March 1983). And however much the elite claimed to have interest in
peasant folkloric forms, they had no interest in performing actual peasant
dances, in actual peasant costumes, to actual peasant music. They required
the services of a dance master to mediate between the authentic peasant
dance and the elite ballroom dances they performed at their nationalist-­
themed social events and a modiste to provide a suitable costume.
Sometimes the dancing master created a dance based on, or inspired by, an
actual folk dance, or they created one out of whole cloth. The first recorded
instance of the use of a folk-inspired social dance for national
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