Locsolóbál • Sprinkling dances / Szatmári táncok • Dances

Magyar Állami Népi Együttes

Az együttest, melyet három kar alkotott (tánckar, énekkar és zenekar), 1951-ben alapították. A művek zenei kíséretét hagyományos cigányzenekarra alapozott, de a művészi feladatok érdekében kissé átalakított, úgynevezett „népi zenekar” látta el Gulyás László vezetésével, míg az énekkart Csenki Imre irányította. Rábai Miklós koreográfus, művészeti vezető az eredeti néptáncot többféle műfajban állította színpadra: egynemű női vagy férfitáncokként, a tájegységekre jellemző táncszvitekként és a népszokásokat bemutató kompozíciókként – az alkotásokat a három kar harmonikus együttműködése tette egységes egésszé. Az 1970-es években kibontakozó táncházmozgalom új látásmódot hozott a színpadi néptáncban is. 1998-tól a MÁNE művészeti vezetője Sebő Ferenc népzenész, zeneszerző, a magyarországi táncházmozgalom egyik elindítója lett. Ő kérte fel karigazgatónak Mihályi Gábort, aki – Timár Sándor tanítványaként – minden színpadra készült koreográfiája megalkotásánál az eredeti néptánc alapos megismerését tekintette kiindulási pontnak. 2002-től, Mihályi Gábor művészeti vezető irányításával – alkotótársakat maga mellé állítva – a művészeti munka új impulzusokat kapott. A korszerűségre, az aktualitásra való törekvés (a múlt feltétlen tisztelete mellett) elementáris erővel jelent meg az együttes szellemiségében és a színpadra állított művekben.

This dance performance for the Easter holiday relies as much on the liturgies of the different denominations as on the ancient peasant customs and songs of regions in the Carpathian Basin that lie at great distances from each other. The respective Easter rituals of the Székely Land, the Rábaköz, former Upper Hungary and the south of the Great Hungarian Plain – both Christian and pagan – are linked in a unified dramatic form. The exciting musical fabric of the performance consists not only of folk songs, religious folk tunes and dance music, but Easter-themed songs of the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches, as well as archaic folk prayers. Most of the latter are rooted in the distant past, the time before the conversion to Christianity.

The performance, consisting of a prologue and eleven scenes of varying lengths, weaves together the folk customs associated with the end of winter and spring, and key moments of the Gospel into a single, unified narrative – primarily, of course, through the language of dance and music. Like all life on Earth, this story begins with birth (Prologue). For centuries, the Annunciation and the manger of Bethlehem have been themes much favoured in Christian art, music and folk art. After the opening folk song, the choirs will sing three songs in Latin, Greek and Hungarian (Rorate coeli – Gregorian introit; Patris ingeniti – motet on the miraculous conception; Christos gennate – jubilant hymn for Christmas). One of the typical customs of the winter season is regölés. It is “the Hungarian version of the mid-winter greetings of good luck, a custom known everywhere in Eastern Europe,” writes ethnographer Tekla Dömötör. The singers visited homes where there were marriageable girls, and sang magic songs to confer luck and fertility, with the refrain, “hej regő rejtem.” These songs are also about the mythical stag that holds the sun and the moon between its antlers, and they also declare the singers to be servants of St Stephen.

The well-wishers are followed by the Busós. Their festival, the Busójárás is the custom of the Šokci, a Slavic ethnic group native to the Balkans, with which they bid farewell to winter and welcome spring. Forest spirits were part of the ancient mythology of Slavic and Turkish peoples: memories, or the “faces” of these inform the carved masks of the Busójárás. Along with the tambura, the pipe also plays a prominent role in the musical accompaniment of the dances that are associated with the custom. It was common among the Csángós of Gyimes for young men to visit the farmers, while loudly cracking their whips (Harsogtatás). They wished good health, luck, abundance and fertility to the households. The custom is related to the regölés, not only because of its content, the singing of good wishes, but also because the singers claim to be the servants of St Stephen.

GÁBOR MIHÁLYI

Photo: Szilvia Csibi / Müpa Budapest

The Saint Ephraim Male Choir perform Béla Bartók’s choral work, Spring, as the first “chapter” of Spring, to be followed by Moldavian Csángó dances (Tavaszi szél vizet áraszt). In the village communities, the recollection of the story of the wedding at Cana was well suited to the liberated spirit and amusement of the carnival. The song of the wedding at Cana (its long epic text) appeared in the Kájoni Codex in the 17th century. The custom was so popular it was sung even at weddings and pig killing feasts in the region of Szeged.

Carnival was a time of merrymaking, masked games and parades, when the world was “inverted” and was marked by ribaldry, suggestive symbols and mischief (Carnival masquerade from Kalotaszeg).

The medieval line-dancing that is now all but extinct was represented in the Carpathian Basin by the singing round dances of the Magyars, Slovaks, Slavs and the Boyash (Lenten round dance, straw doll ritual, women’s csardas). The karikázó was a ring dance associated with the spring fertility rites, and was danced mainly during the Lenten period and the holidays. The related pagan texts and songs were integrated into the liturgical texts of the Christian culture and its music, which later employed polyphony. In the north, the kiszézés was clearly a surviving form of a pagan ritual, with older verses being the remnants of verses meant to break spells. At the same time, the name of Saint John was already included in the Slovak lyrics, indicating that Christianity had integrated the old religions, but had not permanently erased their memory. The customs preserved in the peasant tradition (villőzés, zöldágjárás) both welcomed spring and evoked Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. The emblematic processional song for Palm Sunday: the evocative music conjures up the text of the Gospel, according to which the children of the city received the Master with hosannas, palm branches and their clothes spread on the ground (Pueri Hebraeorum vestimenta).

The most poignant moment of the Good Friday Vigil is the Kyrie puerorum, the children’s Kyrie, or supplication. Grave sentences express the profound grief and shock felt over the death of Jesus. In the church this is sung in total darkness, at the light of a single candle. This is the penultimate stage of the mystery of Easter. The next scene is accompanied by the bells and chimes of the resurrection and the happy hallelujah, followed by one of the most common rituals of Easter folk traditions, the sprinkling (Sprinkling Dance – Dances from Szatmár County).

Gábor Mihályi, the leader of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble, thinks that “Christmas, the birth of Jesus and Easter, the death on the cross and resurrection of Christ, have a special place in the list of our holidays. Staging the production, His Cross Blossomed is itself a profound spiritual experience for me. I look forward with faith and certainty, trusting in the communal strength of our peasant traditions, in the omnipotence of art, in the eternal hope of resurrection.” Tamás Bubnó, artistic director of the Saint Ephraim Male Choir says that “there are two kinds of music in the world: sacred and secular. The human soul needs both greatly. His Cross Blossomed shows how the sacred and the profane are connected in the Christian world, in the festivals of the Christian calendar. The Saint Ephraim Male Choir and the Schola Cantorum Budapestiensis bring timeless hymns, the folk music of wondrous times, and songs from the Hungarian tradition reinterpreted by Béla Bartók to this unique, special, ceremonial event.” István Szalonna Pál, artistic director of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble, feels fortunate “to have grown up in an environment where our traditional holidays were imbued with the memories of an old world: the family getting ready before leaving for church, greeting friends coming from the dawn ceremony of the consecration of the bread, choosing the poems for sprinkling with friends for weeks in advance, the Easter eggs the girls painted. Our performance will be a celebration of these experiences, dressing our souls and bodies in festive attire, so that we can truly experience the holiness of Easter by listening to God and to each other.”

Hungarian State Folk Ensemble

Founded in 1951, the ensemble has three sections: a dance troupe, a choir and an orchestra. The productions were provided with musical accompaniment by a so-called “folk orchestra,” which was based on a traditional Gypsy band but was slightly modified for the artistic purposes, and was conducted by László Gulyás. The choirmaster was Imre Csenki. Choreographer and artistic director Miklós Rábai staged original folk dances in various forms: as performances by all-female or all-male troupes, as dance suites dedicated to geographical regions, and as compositions that focused on folk customs, with the harmonious cooperation of the three sections turning the work into a unified whole. The dance house movement of the 1970s also brought a new outlook to staged folk dance. In 1998, Ferenc Sebő, folk musician, composer and one of the instigators of the dance house movement, was appointed artistic director of the Ensemble. He invited Gábor Mihályi to head the dance troupe; a student of Sándor Timár, he considered a thorough knowledge of the original folk dance as the starting point for all his choreographies for the stage. Mihályi, who became artistic director in 2002, gave a new impetus to artistic work with fellow creators. The ensemble’s spirit and the works they staged were galvanized by the new fusion of an unconditional respect for the past and a drive for modernity and timeliness.

Photo: Attila Nagy / Müpa Budapest

HUNGARIAN STATE FOLK ENSEMBLE

A címlapon: Magyar Állami Népi Együttes: Kivirágzott keresztfája Grafika: Hetényi Milán