Carpathian Festival

From an e-mail from the Polish-American Minnesota chapter I learned about a Carpathian Festival being sponsored by the Minnesota Hungarian Association. I ordered a ticket and went to a dance festival on Sunday afternoon. It was terrific!

The web site for the Minnesota Hungarian Association says this is the first Carpathian Festival in North America. There are multiple events for the festival and now I bummed out that I have a work commitment on Tuesday night because I'd love to go the historical "archeological" dig at the Minnesota History Center that is part of the festival.

But let's get on with this wonderful event. The MC for the program introduced that the theme for this event was culture through the Carpathians, going on to note how country boundaries move and one country's cultural group is suddenly found in another country. Speaking of culture in this manner, he said: " it ain't simple; complexity is wonderful." He is referring to how all the Carpathian culture mixes through many of the countries, and in fact, my first sentence illustrates the complexity -- learning about something the Minnesota Hungarian Association is doing from the Polish-American Minnesota group. Also cultures from one country may be in another country, particularly if one is looking at Hungarian culture which has significant populations in Transylvania  in Romania as well as within Slovakia.


But let's get on with the fun -- and first  -- all the videos have music. You may wish to adjust the audio on your computer.

A musical group-  Duvo Ensemble-- played alone and also provided music for many of the dancers. Their music is terrific, much better than the sound I could capture in the videos below.They played one song at the very beginning and then moved to the side of stage. I never got a good photo or video of them, but hey! you've got their web site if you want more info.

 The first dancers appearing were the Lipa Slovak Dancers

The above dance features just two men. What I didn't know until today is that some of these male dances were designed to recruit soldiers for the various armies. Below is a view of the greater group of dancers from Lipa.

We next went to the Ukraine for music by the Ukrainian Village Band. This group was founded in 2006 and specializes in early 20th century Ukrainian music. The combination of instruments provided an entirely different sound. If this music  is associated with the Carpathian basin then it must be from western Ukraine.

The next group, the Videki Hungarian Dancers gave us yet another sound. Their performance featured music from Magyarbod, a Hungarian town now in present day Slovakia. It features the polyphonic sound associated with some Slovakian music.

This group was followed by Pal Mlinar and Katalin Korosi Mlinar. This couple specialize in dances from this region. The MC explained they are so skillful that they now improvise rather than choreograph their pieces. I'm guessing they live in Hungary since Pal has a Hungarian Facebook page. They danced several times during this show, but the one I liked best was the Roma dance below.

I had heard about the group, Dolina Polish Folk Dancers.  I didn't realize how wonderfully talented this group is until I saw this performance. Dolina has been around for 62 years and their director has been working with the group for 30 years and it shows! They are super.

The MC explained that in conjunction with the theme of the Carpathian basin that Dolina was presenting dances from the Beskid. Mountains areas. The MC was of Hungarian origin and I enjoyed seeing him stumble over the Polish words in his introduction of this group!

The Dolina performance began with the men displaying their skills..  As soon as I saw them I recognized they were dressed as the mountain culture, but it is a little different than how men dress in Zakopane. One difference I noticed is that the hats do not have sea shells. And if a reader is curious about why men's hats in Zakpane have sea shells add a comment and I'll explain there.

And here is one with the entire company. I had staked out a seat in the very front row of the auditorium so I could get good pictures. Unfortunately, so had a professional photographer who didn't care at all that he walked about during the performances. In the video below he crosses for a moment.

 Dolina was followed by the St. Paul Czech and Slovak Folk Dancers. This group began in 1962 and work to keep alive the Bohemian and Moravian traditions -- cultures that were located now in  the boundaries of the Czech Republic. The MC noted dances such as the waltz and murzuka came from these cultures, and much did to my delight, he noted also the polka comes from this area. So many people in the United States think this is traditional dance of Poland, and it's not.

 The final performance featured all the dancers and musicians joining together to celebrate Uncle Lajos's Namesday. It started with a group of men celebrating and enjoying slivovitz. Then women came to present flowers and finally all began dancing! A celebration with a celebration of Carpathian music. What a wonderful afternoon.

I could tell I was in a bit of Hungarian culture because of the calls of Bravo! during some of the performances and the group sort of did the rhythmic clapping that is used in Hungary, particularly, to call for an encore.Hungarians have a unique way of doing this.

And minds in blog land think alike. I had thought about saying that if  you liked these dances to perhaps look back on my blog from the dance festival in Pecs in 2010. And today in my blog stats I see someone already has -- saved me the trouble of going through the blog and looking for the date: April 30

Hope you enjoyed a bit of trip to Carpathians!