Bulgarian Folk Dance During the Socialist Era, 1944-1989

Extract

In order to understand what “folklore” stood for in the period after the socialist revolution in Bulgaria in 1944, we should consider five important factors:

1. • First, proceeding from the National Revival traditions of Bulgarian ethnology, Bulgarian scholars continued studying folklore as knowledge of the people about itself. In the 1970s the aspiration towards a more systemic comprehension of this knowledge produced the theoretical concept of the study of folklore as a type of aesthetic culture, with a dominant sociological approach. The next decade saw a focus on people as the agents of folk culture and began the anthropological approach to culture.

2. • Second, the first state ensemble for folk song and dance was set up in accordance with the Soviet model in 1952. The concept of its founders was that the “rather simple” art of the people ought to be developed, embellished and enriched in line with contemporary aesthetic needs. The socialist ideology of culture needed an art for the people. Thus in the 1980s small Bulgaria had no fewer than 17 state professional folk song and dance ensembles financially supported by the state.

3. • Third, a centre for amateur art activities was set up. This centre's institutional network and organisational structure covered the entire country via special directives and culture management methods, and “folk amateur art” was one of its priorities. This included groups for arranged folklore and groups for so called “original” (authentic) folklore from the villages. Groups for arranged folklore generally repeated the choreography of professional ensembles on a smaller scale. Groups for original folklore tried to enact on the stage customs, dances, and songs that were only recently part of their life.

4. • Fourth, the forums of folk amateur art activities were municipal, district and national festivals for arranged and for original folklore. There were juries, ratings and prizes in both cases. But while the jury at arranged folklore festivals was made up of choreographers who rated performers depending on whether their own works figured in the repertoire so that they would get their production fees, there was place for scholars on juries at shows of original folklore-scholars who were trying to preserve and keep the Bulgarian folk phenomena alive.

5. • Fifth, along with staged folk festivals, wedding traditions survived in their traditional cultural context and created spontaneous performances of folk works in a natural folk environment. Thus the full annual cycle of feasts and rituals with music and dance that had governed the cultural life of Bulgarian villages and had been preserved until the 1940s, splintered into a rich kaleidoscope of separate elements and fragments.