If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then writing about dancing must be…. left ultimately to the logicians. I myself don’t dance, at least in public, committed as I am to the public good. And I don’t attend much to dance as an art form, except when I find myself at a performance for any number of reasons having nothing to do with aesthetic preference. Usually, someone has persuaded or dragged me into accompaniment to some event, where I am usually pleasantly surprised at dance’s beauty or intelligence. Somehow I fail to remember this delight and grumble in reluctant attendance upon the next event.
Recently, and for the purely intellectual reason of cultural research, I attended Mazowsze, “The State Song and Dance Ensemble of Poland”—The Magnificent, self-styled. They were celebrating their 60th anniversary with a holiday extravaganza, “Christmas Time in Poland,” and magnificent and extravagant it was, in spite of a curious, not uncomical, and slightly overlong play to the American audience’s folk culture: renditions of “Old MacDonald,” “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain,” et al., in slavically accented Amerykansku.
The program covered all the national dance forms: oberek, kujawiak, krakowiak, mazurka, and polonaise. The polka, I learn, though it would seem the most Polish of dances (polka can actually mean “Polish woman”), in fact, originated elsewhere and is commonly danced among the wider central European cultures. Each of the native Polish dances has a different regional origin and a different time/tempo, among many other historical details I won’t go into because I do not know them. Suffice it to say that they were at points fluid and graceful, athletic and acrobatic; the stylized kinetic evolutions were always precise and sometimes startling in their use of garlands, walking staffs, and long-handled hatchets. But Mazowsze never accelerated into that inauthentic, feverish tappy virtuosity of Riverdance. And the shirts stayed thankfully on.
The most notable feature of the dancing, the most spectacularly visible, was the costume, the color, which seemed to change for every dance and sometimes even during. Every garment gathered and displayed brightness and particolor. One doesn’t normally associate neon lavender with military uniform, but it has its place on the dance floor apparently. Peacock cockades. Intricate needlework. Ottoman influences. No severity, no austerity. Dance as fantastic kaleidoscope. Atwirl, the women’s long skirts opened like Tiffany lampshades.
Atwirl, the women’s long skirts opened like Tiffany lampshades. Dance, if I understand anything about it, expresses sublimated sexuality. The eroticism of Polish dance is little like the eroticism of say, African dance, or flamenco, or salsa, but erotic subtlety, restraint, has a power all its own. Underneath the billowing skirts and petticoats, slender legs descended in tight, white hosiery to ankle-high red boots, surprisingly high-heeled, or to black boots with red laces. Sigh. A dance-impaired fellow could fall sublimely in love with Mazowsze.
