Ideology, Tradition, and Heritage Choreography: Some Theoretical Observations

In order to proceed with my analysis, it is important to stress that the terms “dance,” and “choreography” in the Yugoslav area, although never theorized by Yugoslav dance researchers, do not align with those pertaining to Western concert dance. Although I utilize Susan Foster's theory of choreography as a plan or orchestration of bodies in motion (Reference Foster2010, 98), in my theorization of the concept of heritage choreography, I also incorporate the Yugoslav understanding of what staging and choreographing dance as heritage entails—a process that I later analyze in extent. In the former Yugoslavia, and in the present-day post-Yugoslav independent countries, choreographers tend to be self-taught dancers, ethnologists, ethnochoreologists, or people interested in dance who follow a certain tradition of choreography making that was imposed by the national dance ensembles. Whereas today choreographers and dancers broadly use the term “choreography” to refer to the creation of entirely new works, Yugoslav dance scholars and practitionersFootnote ¹ associated with heritage production and performance used the term “choreography” to describe the process of arranging already existent forms of social dance, and/or combining dance material with new step patterns. This definition automatically creates an opposition between the social dance as non-choreographed and the staged dance as choreographed, given that, for many dancers in the Balkans, choreography refers only to the formally arranged dance that is presented onstage, in front of an audience. By contrast, dances performed in a social setting would be simply characterized as dance.

I theorize the concept of heritage choreography as an anesthetization of social practice and as a medium through which choreographers transform socially transmitted dance practices that were passed on as traditions in local contexts into a choreographic spectacle for display on the proscenium stage. The purpose of heritage choreography is to offer a cultural as well as educational experience—a look within the long-lasting traditions of a certain community or the nation-state as a whole. Following Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's theory of heritage as “a mode of cultural production that has recourse to the past and produces something new” (Reference Kirshenblatt-Gimblett2014, 163), the purpose of heritage choreography is to make heritage appealing to an audience, that is, to be educated on the nation's history and traditions through performance of local dances, music, and customs. Moreover, heritage choreography also allows for manifestations of cultural and national identity. Performance, then, gives these heritage forms a chance to live, to be embodied and disseminated nationwide and internationally, and to be cherished by the people who will regard them with utmost respect. Finally, one of the principal tasks of heritage choreography is both to promote the values of the past and prove them worthy of appreciation, and to serve the state's political and ideological projects of glorifying the nation and its people.

My theorization of the concept of heritage choreography is informed by prevailing discussions about tradition (Williams Reference Williams1977; Shils Reference Shils1981; de Certeau Reference De Certeau1984; Hobsbawm and Ranger Reference Hobsbawm and Ranger1983; Anttonen Reference Anttonen2005); ideology (Marx [1867] Reference Marx2011; Althuser [1974] Reference Althuser2014; Williams Reference Williams1977; Hewitt Reference Hewitt2005; Malešević Reference Malešević2008); and choreography (O'Shea Reference O'Shea2007; Foster Reference Foster2010; Cvejić Reference Cvejić2015; Franko Reference Franko2015; Banerji Reference Banerji2019). However, I also acknowledge the different critiques of choreography (Savigliano Reference Savigliano1995; Franko Reference Franko2015; Cvejić Reference Cvejić2015), especially when considering the sociopolitical and economic context in which choreography was defined or redefined. I also consider Raymond Williams's (Reference Williams1977) critique of Marxian ideology, mostly because he extends the notion that ideology and the base operate together, as ideology is not separated in power. The concept of ideology is at the core of my discussion because both heritage and choreography in the region appear as fixed concepts that follow a set of strict rules and exist as top-down approaches of power.

In order to understand these differences, it is important to mention that the concept of choreography in the Yugoslav area has a different genealogy than the concept of choreography in the West, mostly because at the time of its dissemination, it was largely dependent on the process of choreography making that involved ethnographic and archival research, and the “proper” staging of “authentic” material—an ideology as well as a methodology in its own right. As these dances are considered traditions, Raymond Williams's (Reference Williams1977) critique of tradition aligns with the contemporary theorizations of heritage as everyday culture that relates to the past but is realized in the present. Williams states that culture is simply everyday life; given that tradition and heritage are aspects of culture, I regard tradition as part of the practice of everyday life also, given that social dances in the region were, and to some degree still are, considered part of the everyday lives of the communities in which they exist.

Before the intervention taken by cultural theorists such as Raymond Williams (Reference Williams1977) and Michel de Certeau (Reference De Certeau1984), among others, the concept of tradition has long been interpreted as oppositional to the concept of culture: tradition is understood to operate as an unexamined force that places emphasis on collective consensus whereas culture—especially high culture, the cultivated aesthetic associated with “civilization,” or as a hegemonic ideology in the Marxist sense—was associated strictly with the bourgeoise. In order to overcome the division between tradition and high culture, Yugoslav officials had a great impact on Yugoslav choreographers, as they encouraged them to modernize and spectacularize the choreographed and staged material in order to resemble “high art” performances, such as ballet. In the context of folklore and heritage studies, tradition often implies communal or group activities that promote cultural cohesion and that at times can work against innovation, as it emphasizes links with the past (Hobsbawm and Ranger Reference Hobsbawm and Ranger1983). Because of its frequent use by nationalist projects in the Yugoslav region, tradition today is often regarded as a subaltern cultural mode, whereas the notion of high culture coincides with Western European and American aesthetics.

However, it is important to stress that tradition signifies both the process of transmission and the elements themselves that are being transmitted (Bauman Reference Bauman and Bauman1992, 31). Although social dances—the source of inspiration in making heritage choreography—are often regarded as national patrimony when elevated through festive occasions (Guss Reference Guss2000, 17), they should not be solely understood as long-established customs rooted in “authenticity” but as an ideology “that attributes precedents to practices that may have recently been revived, recast, or reinvented, even if the label of contents refer back to a previous practice” (Hughes-Freeland Reference Hughes-Freeland and Buckland2006, 55). Because they do not refer to the past nor the future, traditions are simultaneously atemporal yet have temporal structure, as they are beliefs with a sequential social structure (Shils Reference Shils1971, 126).

The process of staging and choreographing social and participatory dances becomes ideological, as it incorporates unwritten rules in the form of discourses around tradition, folklore, and the nation-state. In order to embody “the people,” and given that heritage choreography has to produce ties with the past and the nation's folkloric symbols, many choreographers use archival material—in other words, dance knowledge stored in archives that is considered to be authentic. Much of the dance knowledge produced in the past takes the form of verbal or written descriptions of dance events, Labanotation scores of certain performances of the dance, recorded videos of performances, illustrations, and photographs—all stored at national archives or similar institutions. In addition, choreographers often conduct ethnographic research and interview dancers whom they consider “living archives” about their histories, record their dance performances, and try to learn their dance styles. Furthermore, choreographers are supposed to observe not only the performing style but also the surroundings, so they can create a sense of the social setting when adapting the dance for the stage.

When performed on stage, the choreographed works are no longer participatory but rather a set piece that must be memorized, rehearsed, and performed exactly as taught by a dance instructor. The dance steps or whole sequences of the dance are often modified, while movement must be uniform among all bodies. The stage also creates a separation where the dancers are positioned center stage, the orchestra or the choir are in the background of the stage, and the audience is completely removed and not participating in the staged action, in contrast to social dance events at which the performance boundaries are more fluid, with dancers, musicians, and audience often in close proximity to one another and participating in the event together. As folklorists and scholars in the region claim that the dances have existed for several hundreds of years, the act of dancing and repeating the same dance patterns from the past during performance implies a sense of continuity that is not only crucial to local and global understanding of heritage but also shows the ideological investments in the conceptualization of heritage.

For Clifford Geertz, this process of collecting culture is a process of inscribing social discourse (Reference Geertz1973, 19). This discourse, created by artists, folklorists, and dance scholars who assembled dance materials through their research, manifests in the principle of “ethnographic truth,” given that many choreographers try to “properly” transfer the “field” to the stage. Whereas the task of dance researchers was to collect and archive dance material gathered through fieldwork, choreographers are expected to use that material, stage it, and therefore transform it into a staged repertoire. As choreography making became influenced by socialist ideology in the 1940s, it had to follow strict rules that played to its advantage, whether its tasks were to promote socialism or stress the importance of cultural identity by placing emphasis on authenticity or evoking notions of contemporaneity by experimenting with tradition and cultural heritage. In the dance-making process, artists picked the most typical dance elements and the most popular dances from the ethnographic regions that they researched in order to create choreographic works that would be representative of the culture of the people who live there. When arranging the dances for the stage, choreographers often reconstructed and recontextualized the dances as representative of a certain local culture. The stage, therefore, may be perceived as a space that can accommodate such exhibits.

Choreographing dance heritage is always a political act, given that choreographers must abide the norms and the ideologies of the state that dictate the rules and the means of its production. Because of the constant need to ideologically restate the importance of heritage appreciation, the nation-state becomes, as Antonio Gramsci frames it, “educative” (Gramsci cited in Hoare and Smith Reference Hoare and Smith1999, 502) as it commands its discourse. Hence, dance becomes, as Susan Manning frames it, “a site of ideological contest” or “a cultural space where ‘the categories and judgments that connect our utterances and practices to dominant structures and powers’ (to quote Joseph Roach's definition of ideology) undergo dispute and transformation” (Reference Manning1993, 27). If, for Kristin Kuutma, heritage is also a product of an ideology in which its conceptualization depends on modernity's sense that the present must reforge its links with the past (Reference Kuutma, Arizpe and Amescua2013, 11), then the main task of choreographers is to choreograph dance knowledge that insists on reenacting that past in a form of spectacle that raises questions about authenticity and tradition. Although I agree that choreographing entails composing, creating, and arranging movement and dance, I see it as an artistic process that is fueled by ideology that attempts to recontextualize what dance means to the communities that perform it and align that meaning with the state's understanding of heritage. At the same time, I regard this process of purposeful heritagization of dance as another attempt of state hegemony, given that it operates as a top-down approach, through which the state and other relevant institutions can exercise their dominance and power.

Early Attempts at Choreographing Dance Heritage

Following the First World War, and after the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires, the South-Slavic peoples that populated the Balkan Peninsula (excluding Bulgarians) united under the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in 1918, later renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. With the abolishment of the monarchy in 1945, the country was renamed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946, and in 1963 it was renamed again as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1948, Yugoslavia ceased its alliance with the Soviet Union and left the Communist Information Bureau. Soon after the split, the country became open to the West and started to promote a type of “soft socialism” or “liberal socialism” (Hofman Reference Hofman, Pistrick, Scaldaferri and Schworer2011), followed by a process of liberalization that was of particular significance for cultural institutions and the cultural life of artists. As a socialist country that severed its ties with the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia abandoned the process of collectivization and replaced it with a model of self-management (Jakovljević Reference Jakovljević2016), followed by a period of industrialization.

Yugoslavia was made up of six republics—Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia—as well as two autonomous provinces: Kosovo and Vojvodina. The country was multiethnic and multireligious, although its inhabitants racially defined themselves as Caucasian, with the exemption of Roma communities who are of South Asian racial descent. In a nation of three religions (Catholicism, Christian Orthodoxy, and Islam) and several different ethnic groups (Roma, Albanians, Turks, Slovaks, and Hungarians, to name a few), the country was led by the Yugoslav socialist idea of culture, made possible through training of the population in Marxism. This education aimed to develop feelings of belonging to the Yugoslav nation, its culture, and its heritage and to acknowledge the common interests and goals of the Yugoslav socialist community (Wachtel Reference Wachtel1998, 187). Because of its alignment with the Yugoslav slogan of bratstvo i jedinstvo, the governing Communist Party of Yugoslavia influenced its citizens to believe they were members of a specific national group, or narod, through a process of imagining the nation (Reference Wachtel1998, 226). These politics primarily promulgated the notion that citizens were Yugoslavs before being, for instance, ethnically Serbs, Croats, or Macedonians; any type of separatist nationalism was to be persecuted and punished.

Choreographing dance heritage in the Yugoslav area first became popular in the 1930s, as peasant dances were increasingly becoming institutionalized and staged because of the development of folklore festivals. The official use of the term “koreografija” (choreography), however, was accepted and disseminated with the emergence of dance groups and national dance ensembles in the 1940s. The earliest attempts to stage social dances were made by local dance groups and peasant organizations who aligned the process of choreographing with staging social dances that they practiced in the villages in order to participate in local and national festivalsFootnote ² and international tours. Specifically referring to dance examples from Macedonia, Elsie Ivancich Dunin and Stanimir Višinski state that these festivals created a new model for staged performances of dance: they had to be aesthetically adapted as they were increasingly performed outside of their local social context (Reference Dunin Ivancich and Višinski1995, 5).

Nascent efforts to stage and choreograph dance in Croatia are linked with the formation of Seljačka Sloga (the Peasant Concord) in the 1920s, whose mission was to publicly promote Croatian folk culture. The main goal of the organization was to awaken the Croatian spirit by assembling and arranging local music that was distributed among the newly formed choirs in the country (Sremac Reference Sremac2010, 147–148). Seljačka Sloga often organized smotri—music and dance festivals that involved juries made up of folklore experts who were invested in raising awareness and stressing the importance of heritage appreciation. As Tvrtko Zebec asserts, the models and canons of performing heritage were largely influenced by Croatian political movements that, since the 1920s, had made efforts to popularize peasant culture (Reference Zebec, Hameršak, Pleše and Vukušić2013, 315–316). The first attempt to stage Croatian dance, and a wedding ritual that was popular among communities from the area surrounding Zagreb, was made in 1925 by Stjepan Novosel.Footnote ³ Novosel, as Stjepan Sremac writes, recognized the power of folk dance as a medium for expressing political goals, thereby inaugurating dance as a suitable bearer of strong national messages (Reference Sremac2002, 148).

Photo 1.

Dancers from Posavski Bregi—members of Seljačka Sloga, photographed by Tošo Dabac in 1936, IEF photo 1284. Photo courtesy of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb, Croatia.

Later, after an invitation to perform at the eleventh Olympic Games, held in Berlin in 1936, an organization named Matica Hrvatskih Kazališnih Dobrovolaca (Croatian Theater Volunteers) had the task of staging several local dances from the regions of Slavonija, Posavina, and Istria that would serve as representatives of Croatian culture.Footnote ⁴ Arranged for the stage, the dances were presented, Sremac explains, as “authentic,” following the organization's quest to preserve the supposedly “purest” Croatian traditions, “cleansing” them of any foreign influences (Reference Sremac2010, 260–261). This occasion laid the ground for a new style of arranging and performing peasant dances in Croatia that further developed after the Second World War.

Although Sremac (Reference Sremac2010) writes about the history of arranging and staging Croatian dance in great detail, little has been written about choreographing peasant dance in Macedonia and Serbia before their inclusion in the Yugoslav state in 1945. The first known attempts to stage heritage in Macedonia occurred in 1932 by a local dance group from the village of Rashtak near Skopje,Footnote ⁵ and a few years later by other dance groups from the villages of Lazaropole and Miravci.Footnote ⁶ Trajko Popov, a talented dancer associated with the Rashtak group, had the task of arranging and presenting a local repertoire of dances that the group performed at many international tours throughout the 1930s. The repertoire was based on chain dances that were performed in the villages, such as Postupano, whereas other dance groups frequently performed Teshkoto and the ritual dances of the Rusalii, all of which eventually grew popular and became internationally well-known Macedonian dances. Following the example of this group, other dance outfits, who became popular because of their virtuosity, had the chance to perform peasant dance internationally. They would often present themselves as “Macedonian authentic culture,” hence presenting Macedonian national identity as distinct from the Yugoslav national identity.

Photo 2.

Dancers from the Rashtak group, performing on the Oceania boat in Hamburg, 1937. Photo from personal archive.

What was common about these village dance organizations was their association with nationalist separatism, as they presented these local peasant dances and musical expressions as distinctively Croatian and Macedonian, and not necessarily Yugoslav. The analysis of this early choreographed dance material shows that, although the process of staging already existent social dances was not referred to as koreografija per se, these early attempts established a methodology that would later serve as a canon for choreographing and arranging dance on the stage that would be widely accepted, especially after the Second World War and the creation of folk dance groups in the cities.

Some of the first efforts to choreograph peasant dance in Serbia were made by Maga Magazinović, who utilized kolo dances in making what she labeled as “modern” works as early as 1911 (Bajić Stojiljković Reference Bajić Stojiljković2016a, 62). Influenced by Rudolf Laban's classes that she attended in Germany in 1911, Magazinović did not follow the example of the Croatian and Macedonian dance organizations that aspired to stage authenticity through recourse to folk traditions and to align their performances with national identity; rather, she used local dance expressions as a motif for creating what she labeled as modern dance. Influenced by her work, dancers at the Serbian National Theater and other student groups continued choreographing and performing internationally throughout the 1930s. Other attempts to stage folk dance, as opposed to modern dance, were also popular among the emerging local dance groups in the villages of Serbia throughout the 1930s and the 1940s, when dance was adapted for its scenic presentation at local folklore festivals.Footnote ⁷ It is likely that Magazinović's emphasis on modernization played an important role in developing a new aesthetic in making heritage choreography during the socialist period that followed.

Choreographing the Yugoslav People

With the formation of the Yugoslav state after the Second World War, the idea of choreographing peasant dance became influenced not only by village groups but also by Soviet and Yugoslav socialist ideology that insisted on an overarching modernizationFootnote ⁸ of the state. Following the Marxist-LeninistFootnote ⁹ ideology of social progress and improvement, Yugoslav officials started to promote the performance of music and dance heritage as a popular form of entertainment (Hofman Reference Hofman, Pistrick, Scaldaferri and Schworer2011, 36). These processes are similar to what Andrew Hewitt describes as the nineteenth-century migration of cultural interest away from assumed high culture and toward, on the one hand, public amusement and mass entertainment, and toward, on the other hand, anthropology (Reference Hewitt2005, 38). According to him, the ideal of choreographed labor “had become an important component both in social modernization and in the aestheticization of social and political thought” (38). Such attempts are especially visible through the emphasis on folklore production and promotion as mass entertainment, which was included in the Yugoslav policy of modernization of local culture that was to be projected as national.

Socialist ideologies of culture were mostly oriented toward discovering an art from the people and art for the people. The emphasis on celebrating and promoting the collectiveFootnote ¹⁰ character of chain dances resembled Yugoslavia's ideological emphasis on the commune, rather than the individual. Because of the collective character of the chain dances that were studied as folklore,Footnote ¹¹ government officials saw great potential in identifying these types of dances as national resources, that is, in accordance with Yugoslav national politics. As these dances had no individuated inventor or choreographer, but were produced collaboratively, they became ideal for realizing socialist ideologies, different than the ones produced in capitalist societies that placed emphasis on the expression of the individual through contemporary dance (Vujanović Reference Vujanović and Szymaja2014, 63). Choreography's attachments with socialism became reinforced through mass performances of the chain dance in which the bodies, joined by the hands in a circular formation where no one stands out, literally represent “the people,” hence evoking notions of community, unisonality, and solidarity—key aspects that were constantly emphasized through socialist teachings and that reinforced the idea of brotherhood and unity.

Politically socialist, yet economically consumerist, popular culture in Yugoslavia was situated between Soviet socialist realism and Western postmodernism (Čvoro Reference Čvoro2014, 4). Whereas postmodernism was expressed in other dance forms, such as modern and contemporary dance, dance heritage was regarded as the culture of “the people,” and therefore it was exclusively aligned with the aesthetics of socialist realism. In order to popularize the culture of peasants and the working class, Yugoslav officials promoted a concept of amaterizm (amateurism) as a spontaneous collective expression and “a basic necessity of each individual subject in the aspiration to be part of the wider social community” (Supek Reference Supek1974 cited by Hofman Reference Hofman, Pistrick, Scaldaferri and Schworer2011, 37).

The further popularization of heritage choreography in Yugoslavia was directly related to the institutionalization of dance and the appearance of kulturno-umetnička društva (cultural and artistic associations) in the 1940s whose mission was to embody a notion of socialism through the performance of folklore. These organizations provided the opportunity for the working class to gather, practice, and perform music and dance, and promote Yugoslav folklore internationally. As ballet and modern dance were regarded as foreign and bourgeois, choreography was intended to transform peasant culture into national culture. The national, as Hofman writes, often referred to the category of narodno Footnote ¹² (the people's authorship), and it included not only the rural population but also the working intelligentsia as an attempt to unify the culture of the masses (Reference Hofman2010b, 35). Although cultural production in the Yugoslav area had to be rooted in collective structure, its origin had to be geographically oriented within the political borders of the state. Chain dances, which eventually became signifiers of national culture, provided such opportunity, as they allowed for unlimited dancers to join, connect, bond, and interact together while dancing.

By the mid-1950s, Yugoslavia witnessed a mass expansion of these dance associations, which created the need for the construction of even more performing venues such as domovi kulture (cultural houses), as well as more opportunities for performing in front of an audience. As Yugoslavia established cooperation with the West, government officials started investing in the development of the tourist industry by organizing even more folklore festivals than before through which rural culture was presented and popularized (Hofman Reference Hofman, Pistrick, Scaldaferri and Schworer2011, 41). Transformed into superstructural commodity in service of the state, folklore performances alienated the audience from being participants and turned them into consumers (Maners Reference Maners, Halpern and Kideckel2000, 305). The aim of such performances of local and national culture was not only to entertain but also to educate the audience about the richness of cultural diversity that was expressed in the repertoire. In order to emphasize the notion that culture and performance were not only to be located on the proscenium stage, art forms like drama, music, and dance were brought by workers to the factories and other working spaces where the working people of Yugoslavia spent a great deal of their time. Therefore, many factories and other working institutions had their own kulturno-umetničko društvo (cultural and artistic association) that included choirs, drama, and folklore dancing sections.

Aware of the possibility that performances of dance heritage can initiate separatism and nationalism, as was the case in the 1930s, Yugoslav officials insisted on the creation of a Pan-Yugoslav repertoire that included dance and music examples of all the peoples in the country. This decision offered a strategy, based on the principle of bratstvo i jedinstvo, that functioned as a precautionary measure to prevent ethnic, religious, and political unrest. Despite focusing on local repertoire, or learning other dances from their own country, Yugoslav dancers had to learn how to perform dances from the other republics that took part in a national repertoire performed by many ensembles. Local village performing groups were encouraged to perform their own repertoire and were often exempt from having to perform the Pan-Yugoslav program, mostly because they were regarded as the true carriers of folklore whose task was to keep preserving their traditions.

The decision to promote not just the culture of certain nations but all of the nationalities and ethnic groups that lived in Yugoslavia was a good example of the relationship between socialist ideology and heritage performance. Another reason for the decision was that this repertoire created opportunity for dance groups to showcase ethnically diverse repertoire and practice and perform “foreign” material. Specifically following the paradigm of bratstvo i jedinstvo, chain dances did not allow any room for individualism, racism, or class difference, as every dancer was performing the same dance pattern in a circular formation. Although the Yugoslav ideology of brotherhood and unity was realized mainly in the “program” part, in that every performance had to feature music and dance performances of the other Yugoslav nationalities, it never fully manifested itself within the act of choreographing that followed the methodology that was created by village dance groups in the 1930s.

Consistently labeled as folklore, peasant music and dance continued to be used as an ideal for cultural propaganda, due to its populism. Ideologically, these types of performances, which were both entertaining and educational, were supposed to create an idea of national culture and negotiate a sense of Yugoslav identity that was manifested through performance of the local. Although certain Yugoslav officials considered the performances of heritage to be problematic because of their ability to express separate ethnic identities that differed from the idea of Yugoslav, others saw heritage choreography as the perfect medium for cultural propaganda that would lead to a new Yugoslav identity (Čvoro Reference Čvoro2014, 39).Footnote ¹³ The mission to present and perform national identity was carried through the program part, not only by amateur dance groups but by national dances ensembles who aimed to transform heritage as spectacle.

Stylizing and Spectacularizing Dance Heritage

Because of the potential to foster counter-state nationalism, given that there were still local dance groups who expressed their identities as distinct through the performance of local culture, the Yugoslav officials insisted on modernizationFootnote ¹⁴ that would transform the dances from peasant into “high culture.” The process of modernization differed from the Soviet “socialist realism” style,Footnote ¹⁵ and it was critiqued by Yugoslav ideologues who advised against its adoption and dissemination but encouraged scholars and artists to be free in their creativity (Jakovljević Reference Jakovljević2016, 10). This freedom in creativity and the emphasis on modernizing the folk included a process of stilizacija (stylization) that involved altering the music and dance for the stage. These changes were intended to modernize the performance of the folk and make it appear less rural and more in line with Western cultural aesthetics.

In the late 1940s, choreographers of modern dance utilized “natural” movement as a new form of aesthetic, thereby embracing intentional minimalism. Yugoslav dance heritage choreographers, however, embraced an aesthetic of spectacle that was predominantly influenced by the Soviet-based Moiseyev's dance ensemble who toured in the region in 1945 and 1946.Footnote ¹⁶ For Igor Moiseyev, as Bajić Stojiljković writes, the intention was to develop a creative interpretation based on folk material (Reference Bajić Stojiljković2016a, 93), as opposed to “faithfully” translating the music and dance of the Soviet people on the stage.Footnote ¹⁷ Similarly, Anthony Shay argues that folklore had to be cleaned up, colorfully costumed, dramatically rechoreographed, and repackaged so it could compete onstage with other art forms, no matter how classical or refined (Reference Shay, Shay and Sellers-Young2016b, 114). For Yugoslav choreographers, this type of “cleaning up” was realized by stylizing the repertoire.

Some of the changes that occurred with the recontextualization of social to staged dance involved altering the form of the dance according to an aesthetic mode that had been set up by previous choreographers and artistic directors, including those dances that were popular in the 1930s. Such changes involved shortening the duration of the dance, changing the dance pattern and adapting it for the requirements of the stage so the dancers do not turn their backs to the audience, limiting improvisation, and focusing on performing unison collective movement in which each dancer performs the same as everyone else. Choreographers would often select dances whose structure seemed more complex and spectacular, and eliminate the parts that were considered too simple and therefore not as entertaining to the audience.

As many choreographers regarded the repetitive character of the chain dance as boring, they would often try to upgrade the choreography by inventing movement they would combine with the basic motifs of the dance. The analysis of the choreographed material shows that through their attempts to stylizeFootnote ¹⁸ and modernize the performance of dance, choreographers accelerated the tempo, exaggerated the movements, introduced acting, and incorporated narratives that were not common in social performance of the dances. Other changes involved the incorporation or creation of new, uniformed costumes that resembled the clothing and accoutrements worn by the communities that originated the dances; the introduction of polyphony and choral arrangements of the songs; and the incorporation of foreign, Western-originated musical instruments. The choreographic works often involved a finale at the end, which was not a convention in any existing circle social dance, but was the sole invention of the choreographer.

Changing and modifying dance heritage follows the rhetoric of modernity in which “everything is destined to be speeded up, dissolved, displaced, transformed, reshaped” (Hall Reference Hall1992, 15). Such ideas were evident not only in Yugoslavia but also in the other socialist states, especially the ones behind the Iron Curtain, where staged dance was becoming increasingly rapid, the costumes were ever glitzier, the rhythm was more intricate and the narratives were ever more patriotic and emotional (Ilieva Reference Ilieva2001, 126). Aware of the economy focused on theatrics and spectacle, many choreographers dismissed the idea that heritage should be unchanging and frozen in time.

As Uroš Čvoro adds, such performances also became the key cultural exports of Yugoslavia, used for branding of the country within an international arena (Reference Čvoro2014, 39–40). Anthony Shay, who writes about dancers as cultural diplomats, argues that the peasant became “the perfect stand-in for the nation as a whole, and their performances of traditional dances served as a visual symbol of mass support for non-democratic regimes of all political stripes” (Reference Shay2019, 32). Although social performances of the dances are participatory and improvisational, staged performances of heritage as spectacle require a great deal of professionalism, as the dancers are required to perform and execute the movement exactly like the person dancing next to them. The need to create a cultural brand subsequently resulted in the formation of professional and national ensembles whose task was to promote Yugoslavia's music and dance heritage within the country and internationally.

Whereas the shift from Stalinism to a more liberal type of socialism in 1948 allowed for a socialist modernization of popular culture, the idea of creating choreographic works that would be treated as national was realized in the repertoires of the first national and professional dance ensembles. Their mission was to collect, adapt, and preserve the folk dances and songs of their countries. The first folk dance ensembleFootnote ¹⁹ in Yugoslavia was the Serbian Kolo, founded in 1948, whereas in 1949, the Yugoslav Republics of Macedonia and Croatia also founded their national dance ensembles Tanec, based in Skopje, and Lado, based in Zagreb. The first repertoire was based on social dances that were taught by local performers who were invited to teach the newly employed professional dancers proper execution and style. Following the Yugoslav ideas of modernization, Olga Skovran, the first director of Kolo, believed that the dances had to be choreographed and refined in order to fit the category of “artistic performance” (Bajić Stojiljković Reference Bajić Stojiljković2016a, 95). Along with Dobrivoje Putnik, Olga Skovran created the first choreographic works that were based not only on Serbian dances but also on chain dances from the other Yugoslav republics.

For Skovran, modernizing meant upgrading the chain dances by applying ballet aesthetics, so the dancing was stylized, cleaned up, and choreographed according to classical standards.Footnote ²⁰ As Yugoslavia became opened to the West, the acceptance and the promotion of ballet aesthetics was regarded as positive and progressive, given ballet's treatment as Western concert aesthetic. Such changes involved pointing of the feet, lifting the legs and arms higher than what local dancers would do during social dancing events, including movements such as pirouettes, and many other such alterations. As ballet was a foreign aesthetic for the dancers, Bajić Stojiljković writes that during the first months of Kolo's emergence, Skovran worked toward elevating the basic dance culture by teaching artists about “proper” bodily postures and the harmony and beauty of stage movement (Reference Bajić Stojiljković2016a, 94). It is likely that Skovran was influenced by the Moiseyev and the Soviet style of performing dance that followed the same principles of modernization since the 1930s and focused on modeling the folk according to Western standards of the beauty of movements.

These attempts at modernizing danceFootnote ²¹ are also evident in one of Olga Skovran's first choreographic works from 1948, titled Igre iz Srbije (Dances from Serbia), which included a popular form of the genre kolo named Moravac, now safeguarded by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Performed as the finale of this choreographic work, during the first few sequences, the dancers execute the basic steps as performed during social occasions. As the tempo of the dance becomes increasingly faster, Skovran intervened by altering and exaggerating the dance steps and incorporating dance formations and movements that she personally invented in order to make the dance appear more grandiose and spectacular. Her choreographic combinations drastically differ from the dance patterns that are performed during social occasions, as they include high jumps and fast footwork that would require professional dance training. As she was an influential person within the folklore milieu, her approach is still widely accepted throughout Serbia.

Photo 3.

Dancers from the Serbian National Ensemble Kolo, performing Kolo from the region of Šumadija in 2019. Photo courtesy of Jelena Janković.

Although the Serbian ensemble Kolo incorporated ballet movements as a necessary component in order to achieve the status of high art, Tanec and Lado rejected the incorporation of ballet aesthetics but embraced stilizacija nevertheless. Such decisions can be seen as a continuity from the previously established performance aesthetics that existed in the monarchical period of Yugoslavia. For Emanuel Chuchkov, the first director of Tanec, the dances were supposed to be interpreted through an “acceptable artistic expression” (Popov Reference Popov1979, 3). Many of the choreographers that I interviewedFootnote ²² said they had to intervene and invent new steps that they would combine with the already existing dance forms, or they would change the semicircular mode of performance of the dance into different geometrical formations in order to make the dance more appealing for the audience. This approach, as Dunin and Višinski wrote, involved “combining older step patterns into new challenging combinations” (Dunin and Višinski Reference Dunin Ivancich and Višinski1995, 11). Once this repertoire was standardized, it was diffused and transmitted throughout the rest of the dance ensembles in the country (Dunin Reference Dunin Ivancich1991); by contrast, Tanec's model of staged presentation was introduced through its own choreographic school, which remains the only one in Macedonia (Todevski and Palchevski Reference Todevski and Palchevski2013, 25). Even though the repertoire was stylized, in that the movement was made more spectacular, choreographers did not involve ballet aesthetics unlike the ensemble Kolo.

Kopachkata, a social dance that is now listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO was included in the first repertoire and it was demonstrated to the professional dancers in the ensemble by Stojche Zahariev and Nikola Arsov who were dancers from the Delchevo area (Dunin and Višinski Reference Dunin Ivancich and Višinski1995, 180). Even though the dance was accompanied by drums only during social performances, led by the aesthetic politics of the ensemble, the dance had to be modernized. Dragan Petrushevski, a dancer in the ensemble, was asked to choreograph a sequence while the director of the ensemble composed a musical arrangement. The dance was first performed along with the song “Dimna Juda,” and it was later incorporated into the choreographic work titled Istochna Makedonija (Eastern Macedonia), which became part of the repertoire of most ensembles in the country (Dunin and Višinski Reference Dunin Ivancich and Višinski1995, 180; Dunin Reference Dunin Ivancich1991, 203–213). Instead of copying the style of the dancers that demonstrated the patterns, choreographers in Tanec sped up the tempo and organized the dance in a way that the semicircle tightens into a small circle and reopens again, while the last dancer in the chain is dragged and lifted in the air—movement that may have seemed unnatural to local dancers. Kopachkata was later incorporated in the first suite-like choreographic work in the ensemble titled Sedenka, created by Gligor Vasilev in 1958, who took a choreography course in neighboring Bulgaria (Todevski and Palchevski Reference Todevski and Palchevski2013, 70). After its premiere, Sedenka became a popular production and found its place in the repertoire of almost all the ensembles in the country.

Photo 4.

Dancers from the Macedonian National Ensemble Tanec, performing Kopachkata in 2009. Photo of the author.

Zvonimir Ljevaković,Footnote ²³ the Croatian choreographer and the first director of Lado, who is associated with the Zagrebačka Škola (the Zagreb School)Footnote ²⁴ of staging and choreographing dance heritage, rejected Moiseyev's and Kolo's model of dance making.Footnote ²⁵ Following the principle of Seljačka Sloga (the Peasant Concord) and the village groups created before the national dance ensemble, Ljevaković was committed to “faithfully” transferring the dancing styles on the stage without changing their formations or combining them with personally invented movements. His approach is best described in the following statement by one of the first dancers of Lado, Beata Gotthardi:

Gotthardi's statement exemplifies some crucial aesthetic values that are still popular among Croatian choreographers and dancers. Namely, the emphasis on what seemed “natural” to “the people” brings up notions of originality and authenticity that remain key aspects in choreography making in Croatia. Whereas other dance ensembles in Eastern Europe followed the Moiseyev model of choreographing dance, in Croatia, the devotion to an “authentic” mode of presentation served as a form of resistance to what Tvrtko Zebec describes as “the socialist regime.”Footnote ²⁶

For instance, the Vrličko Kolo, one of the most popular types of silent dances, now listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, was first staged by a local dance group from the town of Vrlika during a local dance festival organized by Seljačka Sloga in the 1940s. Because of the popularity of the performance, the dance was also performed by Prosvjeta, a Serbian dance group from the town of Knin, at a folklore festival in Opatija in 1951. Inspired by what he saw, Lado's first artistic director, Zvonimir Ljevaković, choreographed his interpretation of Vrličko Kolo in 1945–1946 for the dance group Joža Vlahović, who performed the dance at a 1947 competition in Prague. As Vlahović's dancers became the first professional dancers in Lado, they included Vrličko Kolo in the repertoire of their first concert in 1949. Although there are no major alterations in regard to the dance steps and the movement, in order to achieve spectacle, Ljevaković included a specific jump (Photo 5), performed by the male dancers, that requires a professional training in order to be executed. Božo Žerevica, a local dancer from the city of Vrlika, where the dance originates, claims that he has never seen such components in local dances, but he remembers that local ensembles started to incorporate these movements in the early 1950s when the dance became popular due to Lado's performances (Reference Žerevica2018, interview).

Photo 5.

Dancers from the Croatian National Ensemble Lado, performing Vrličko Kolo in 2019. Photo courtesy of Petra Slobodnjak.

Despite several choreographers who were visionaries and promoted the concept of staged folk dance—such as Zvonimir Ljevaković in Croatia, Olga Skovran in Serbia, and Gile Vasilev and Atanas Kolarovski in Macedonia—the majority of other choreographers were only passive consumers of already established aesthetics. Following Moiseyev's model that required “iron discipline,” the dancers are trained to execute perfection in their dancing. According to this principle, the dancing body must obey the wants and needs of the choreographer/instructor who trains the dancers and, through a process of disciplining, contribute toward a “professional” performance of dance heritage. This discipline was oriented toward training the body in order to tackle complex movements, faster rhythms, and uninterrupted duration of unison movement that the dancers perform collectively. Andrè Lepecki writes that choreography displays disciplined bodies who negotiate their participation within what he calls a “regime of obedience” for the sake of art, which characterizes choreography as a site of investigating agency (Reference Lepecki2016, 16). Professional dancers go through rigorous training that will allow them to perform what local dancers are unable to. As they train daily for five hours, these disciplined “docile bodies” (Foucault Reference Foucault1977) are required to deliver what many choreographers consider to be the ideal and refined image of heritage performance. Inspired by their ability to master dance styles, choreographers create complex movements that the dancers will be able to endure. Hence, when performing onstage, the dancers are not only performers but also representatives and ambassadors of their local and national culture and heritage.

In certain cases, mostly in Macedonia and Serbia, when the choreographer modifies the dance so dramatically that it no longer resembles its social form, the choreographies simply become commodities that mediate spectacle in order to satisfy public appeal. By doing so, choreographers are invested in creating folklore anew, given that through the process of choreographing they are actively participating in the work of cultural production. Many Yugoslav folklorists critiqued such aesthetic choices, as they considered such performances to be artificial; staged performances were interpreted as binary oppositions, such as traditional/arranged and spontaneous/fixed (Hofman Reference Hofman2010a, 121). Such discussions still occur today, not only among scholars but also among dancers and choreographers who continue to debate whether stylizing and changing the dance pattern distances the dance from the idea of heritage.

Heritage Choreography Post-1991

The breakup of Yugoslavia, as discussed by numerous scholars (Benson Reference Benson2001; Wilmer Reference Wilmer2002; Kecmanovic Reference Kecmanovic2002; Hudson Reference Hudson2003; Malešević Reference Malešević2008), was the product of the weakening socialist system amidst a rising sense of nationalism and separatism that resulted in bloody wars and ethnic cleansing. The Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia, and Macedonia declared their independence in 1991, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, Montenegro and Serbia in 2006, and Kosovo in 2008. Following their independence, many of the post-Yugoslav countries have engaged in various processes of nation building and the production of national identity, using music, dance, and other cultural forms to express their originality and difference.Footnote ²⁷

Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the national ensembles of Macedonia, Serbia, and Croatia abandoned their Yugoslav repertoire, as the other dance groups did, and placed emphasis on choreographing and performing repertoire intended to strengthen the idea of their non-Yugoslav national identities. For the Croatian and Macedonian ensembles, these changes involved dismissing a repertoire of the minorities that lived in these countries, while the Serbian ensemble continued to perform dance material of non-Serbian communities such as Macedonian dances. Some of the other changes involved emphasis on staging material from the local repertoires of Serbian/Croatian/Macedonian communities that live abroad. Although they were unable to include religious music and rituals during the existence of Yugoslavia, these national ensembles frequently devoted full concerts to, for instance, Christmas or Easter religious chants and music. Even though they are not specifically promoting socialism, they continue to work in favor of the state as its cultural ambassadors and promote national heritage internationally. Some of the most recent changes also include the promotion of music and dance that has been recognized as intangible cultural heritage by state institutions or by UNESCO, hence using these recognitions as a marketing tool in promoting heritage as cultural brand.

Even though there is an evident shift in the ideology of the performance of heritage in the new post-Yugoslav countries, as there is in their now capitalist political economy, the previously established model of staging and choreographing heritage, which was in line with the Yugoslav socialist ideology, remains the only one. As choreographers continue to focus on what Francesca Castaldi describes as an “ethnographic mode of representation” (Reference Castaldi2006, 33), dance ensembles continue to utilize choreography as a medium for raising awareness about heritage appreciation. Even though it is no longer used to advance Communism, collecting and choreographing folklore remains one of the most important tasks of dance scholars and choreographers, who are now invested in establishing post-Socialist identities through their performance of national heritage. Such examples show that, instead of alienating their Yugoslav past and eradicating the remnants of the Yugoslav socialist ideology, they are very much kept alive through their continuous practice, which is especially evident in the stage representation of heritage.