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This show is coming on December 10th., not only to CVWPB but also to the Kravis Center – same exact show J
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Traditional music and dance of Hungary come alive
The folk music and dance of Hungry lit up the Mainstage
Theatre at UB’s Center for the Arts on Tuesday night as
Budapest’s Hungarian State Folk Ensemble presented
Hungarian Rhapsody, a delightful gypsy-themed journey
through centuries of traditional Hungarian song and dance.
From the outset, one got the feeling of being transported to
an authentic Hungarian village
festival where the village folk – all of them excellent
musicians, singers and dancers –
performed traditional dances handed down for generations.
The ensemble, founded in 1951, is a multi-generational
troupe of 25-plus dancers, an
ensemble of six divinely talented musicians along with singer
Agnes Enyedi, who acted as a
thread weaving through the program; her dulcet voice
singing
a range of songs that often
incited the dancers’ performances while eliciting applause from the audience.
The program in two acts began with the troupe in dances
originating from northeastern
Hungary.
In traditional costumes – men in hats, pants and long-sleeve
shirts, and women in head
scarves and long skirts that took on a bell shape when they
twirled – the dancers moved
quickly through familiar folk dance phrases that saw the
men clapping and rigorously
slapping their thighs and boots while the women spun and
swayed, “whooping” their approval.
The dancing, like many folk dance forms, had similarities to
Irish jigs and reels, Russian
dances and others, and the remainder of the program
featured dances that stemmed from
that same movement language introduced at the start of the
show along with several
musical interludes.
The program’s first act ran through a series of Hungarian
regional dances from the
Renaissance period forward.
The dances included several czardas (couples) dances as well
as all-male and all-female
numbers with the dancers pulling double duty as singers and
even sometimes as musicians
for many of the numbers.
Highlighting the first act was the work “Girls From Moldva,”
in which eight women sang
while clasping one anthers’ waists and rapidly circling,
stomping and shuffling their feet in a
blur of movement; “Rhythmic Variations”, a rapid-fire solo
by male dancer Mate Modos in
spurs, who danced to the sounds of a jew’s harp wildly
kicking up his legs, tap dancing and
intensely clapping and slapping at his body.
A rip-roaring, high-spirited dance for the entire ensemble concluded the act.
The program’s second act brought more of the same with a
succession of wonderfully
choreographed and patterned dances that took full advantage
of the dancers’ excellent
timing and musicality.
Several of the dances featured the cast gathered round in an
intimate setting singing while a
few dancers took turns performing in solos, duets and trios.
Most memorable was a section called “Dreaming” in which
Enyedi sang a song tinged with
yearning accompanied by a hammered dulcimer player and
five couples dancing slowly in
the background.
Also of note was the all-female work “Gossip” and the men’s
dance “Test of Skills,” in which
the dancers showed off their skills using bottles, brooms and
sticks that they spun like batons.
Great music and great dancing by one of the most polished
traditional folk dance troupes I
have seen, the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble oozed fun and
proved they were the very definition of entertaining.
