Dance house under the socialist regime in Hungary

Abstract

At the beginning of the 1970s there was a drastic turn in the history of Hungarian folklorism brought by the ‘dance house’ [táncház] movement. This movement, based on civil initiative, aimed to evoke and revive the patterns of peasant dance and music culture of local communities, preserving its aesthetic values. Within its confines, many young people followed the example of the initiators, Ferenc Sebő and Béla Halmos through the intensive appropriation of instrumental folk music. Their professional leaders were such folklore researchers as Lajos Vargyas, Imre Olsvai, and György Martin, later the amateur activity ignoring scientific requirements came to play a determinant role. (N.B. the “dance house method” was inscribed in 2011 on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.) As an urban subculture rooted in the peasant traditional culture, it expanded independently from the centrally supervised cultural establishment — without the control of the communist party. It seemed to be dangerous from ideological point of view, because it could have involved the ideas of nationalism, liberty, and self-organized communities as well.