Opportunity for creative performance or existential necessity? Czechoslovak ensembles of folk music and dance and the World Youth Festivals in the 1950s

0551002 - EÚ 2022 eng A - Abstract
Skořepová, Zita
Opportunity for creative performance or existential necessity? Czechoslovak ensembles of folk music and dance and the World Youth Festivals in the 1950s.
[3rd Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Music and Dance of the Slavic World. 20.10.2021-23.10.2021, Poznaň]
Institutional support: RVO:68378076
Keywords : Folk music and dance * World Youth Festivals * Czechoslovakia * ethnomusicology
OECD category: Folklore studies
http://ictmusic.org/group/ictm-study-group-music-and-dance-slavic-world/post/programme-3rd-symposium-ictm-study-group

A film by Czech director Vladimír Vlček Tomorrow, People Will be Dancing Everywhere (1952) retells the story of the beginnings of the so called folklore movement in the after-war communist Czechoslovakia, when many new ensembles referring to folk music and dance were being founded, drawing on an example of Soviet ensembles of Moiseyev or Piatnickiy. The film depicts the foundation of the one of the most prominent ensembles, the Vycpálkovci, and its first successful performances at the World Youth Festivals in Budapest (1949) and Berlin (1951). However, the screenplay fuses the facts and fiction: the ensemble’s outputs performed by actors are intermingling with snapshots filmed during the real Berlin festival in 1951. The World Youth Festival became probably the most significant mass manifestation of the state-subsidized cultural expressions of the Socialist Bloc. The paper will discuss the role of the Festivals in the process of foundation of Czechoslovak ensembles and repertoire negotiation of the traditional music and dance culture within the vague framework of socialist realism and authoritarian rule on the one hand, and an everyday life perspective and ordinary desire to perform pronounced by the ensembles’ members on the other. The paper is based on data gathered through narrative biographical and semi-structural interviews with members of chief Czechoslovak folk music ensembles and archival research.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0327516