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Folk Dance Federation of California, South, Inc.
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STEPHEN "STEVE" KOTANSKY was raised in the San Francisco area, dancing as part of his grade school curriculum and junior high as well, but he started folk dancing at age sixteen at Stanford when two of his "girl friends" got him to drive them there and pulled him into the dancing. He moved to southern California after high school, and danced with the prestigious AMAN Folk Ensemble (aka, AMAN International Music and Dance Company) of Los Angeles, California. He also danced with Vince Evanchuk and his Ukrainian dance troupe, the Westwind Folk Ensemble, and the San Francisco Russian Dance Group, before becoming a dance major at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Steve says that authenticity is a loose term. Everything has an origin, even though we may not know what the origin is. He prefers to use the term "closer to the source" and reminded us that all dancing and all folklore is in flux. Everything is always changing.
Traditionally, dances were done as part of village celebrations, rituals, or to mark special occasions such as a saint's day. The dances had a simple repetitive structure and often didn't fit the music. Steve spoke of the differences between the Macedonian dances taught by Atanas Kolorovski and the Macedonian dances taught by Pece Atanasovski. While Atanas was an authentic village Macedonian dancer, he was also a folk artist, and had every right to choreograph dances. On the other hand, the dances that Pece taught came across as closer to what people in Macedonian villages would be doing. Yet, Pece actually taught from a standardized Macedonian dance repertoire that was "already something that was beyond the village."
People in many Eastern European countries are now moving away from village life into urban settings and are forming clubs that work to keep or revive their dance culture. Steve stressed the importance of leadership in these clubs and said that since many of the dance leaders come from choreography schools, the dancers are learning a choreographed form of the folk dances. They are also learning dances from many parts of their country, not just the dances from their ancestral area. These clubs have taken village folk dancing to a whole new level.
Steve also gave us two fabulous examples of modern innovations in traditional folk dance settings. There is a video taken about 20 years ago in Turkey of a group of Turkish men who were dancing Black Sea-style dances. When the lira player took a break and the kemenche (kemençe) player switched to playing the Macarena, the dancers also switched and did the well-known line dance. And at a Hungarian village wedding, while a group was doing a strictly structured men's dance called the legényes, two young men incorporated some break-dance steps they had learned from the Internet into the structure of the dance. The villagers were thrilled to see this.
We asked Steve to talk about choreographies in the North American and Western European recreational folk dance world. Steve acknowledged that some mistakes have been made, and that egos can get involved. Yet, Steve also reminded us that many folk dance teachers need to make a living. And, he stressed that there is a market for folk dance choreographies. Dancers in North America like variety. We like variety in music, variety in dance steps, variety in tempos, and even variety in couple, line, and circle dances. As dancers, we likely wouldn't keep dancing if all we did in a folk dance evening was 20-minute repetitive traditional dances.
Steve said that one challenge choreographers face is choosing dance music that doesn't offend individual cultures. For example, in Bosnia, Sevdah music is not for dancing. Yet, modern folk music can often be a good choice for choreographies. In fact, people will dance their traditional dances to modern folk music if they are able to recognize a specific musical structure and know what dance they can do to it. On the other hand, Steve doesn't like to mix traditional dances from one culture with music from another culture. He says that while this might be fun to do once in a while, he feels it betrays the dance a little.
Steve stressed that every dance he choreographs has a story. He uses traditional steps, and stays as close to the source as possible. Steve likes the word "arranged" better than "choreographed." He also is diligent about telling people when he's presenting a dance he's created.
Used with permission of the author.
Used courtesy of National Folk Organization News,
Kathy Bruni, Editor