This eclectic collected volume focuses on historical modern and contemporary dance artists and issues, as well as addressing contemporary practices across the vast region that encompasses the former “second world,” which includes not only eastern Europe, but also Cuba and Mongolia. It is divided into two parts, the first: Dance History and Memory, the second, Dance Productions and Circulation, with five essays in the first part, and four in the second. Four of the nine chapters focus on Serbia. In part one, Dunja Njaradi and Igor Koruga propose that the Second World, at least those parts in eastern Europe, have been assimilated into the First World as a poor cousin, with nothing to offer the west. Njaradi and Koruga argue that two global events propelled the consideration of postsocialist studies in new directions. The first was the economic global crisis of 2008. “The resulting scholarship illuminated how the histories of socialist countries are far more complex than the dominant historiography suggests” (5). The second was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “[w]hich illuminated the importance of the Cold War legacies and the urgency of understanding former socialist worlds” (6).
Annalies Van Assche and Milica Ivić in the second introduction note that in the present: “The (post)socialist world is one of the blind spots in dance, not just in international scholarship but also in the global performing arts market” (10). They claim that “[d]ance from (post)socialist countries remains largely invisible” (10) for two reasons. “The first is the fact that historically, any knowledge about dance in socialist states in the English-speaking academic world has been articulated through dance scholarship in the frame of Cold War studies” (11). This view permitted much of scholarship, as well as popular writings, to emphasize the superiority of the west.
The editors assure the reader that this volume is in no way encyclopedic. The reader can expect a degree of unevenness in both the writing and coverage found in this volume. Space does not permit me to focus equally on all the chapters. Since the second part of the volume focuses on present-day individual artists and the precarity of contemporary dance throughout the region, I will focus on the chapters in the first part.
In Ch. 1, “One, Two, Three, Comrade Come, Dance with Me,” dance scholar and practitioner Igor Koruga delves into Serbian modern dance history in a witty “conversation” with Vera Obradović Ljubinković, “the most respected scholar on local modern dance and its pioneer Maga Magazinović” (24). He deconstructs Magazinovic’s history as a Nazi sympathizer and antisemite, in spite of attempts to cast Magazinović in the role of “the Grandmother” of Serbian modern dance. He contrasts Magazinović’s career and openly fascist and racist opinions with the career of Lujo Davičo, the Serbian Jewish communist modern dance figure, who died a hero in World War II. In Koruga’s view, the history of Serbian modern dance follows a right-left political trend that characterized the newly emerging modern dance genre in both Germany and the United States from 1930–45.
In Ch. 2, “Choreography, Revolution, War: Kozaračko Kolo Between Dance Studies and War,” ethnomusicologist Dunja Njaradi views a short-lived but fascinating history and meaning of the walking genre kolo (circle and line dance), found throughout many regions of the former Yugoslavia, and how it came to be a spontaneous symbol of the Yugoslav Partisan Army during WWII. The song-dance became an important source of empowerment for the Partisans. Njaradi concludes, “This ritual is about forging feelings of unity and creating energy through the act of collective dancing. Through this collective act of dancing and marching a new revolutionary subject was forged” (60).
In Ch. 3, “A Yugoslav Folklore Ballet: A Consideration of the Legend of Ohrid’s National Character” by Sylvie Van de Vyvere, the author frames the first of several “national” (folk themed) ballets within the fluid and confusing nationalisms—Serbian, South Serbian, Macedonian, and Yugoslav—within the context of the popularity of the ballet and musical score of the Legend of Ohrid, in which both modernism and national identity played a role in its continuing popularity. In Ch. 4, “The World of Art in the Russian World,” dance historian Hanna Järvinen traces the history of two ballets, Swan Lake and The Rite of Spring, within the context of symbols of Russian national identity, noting that The Rite of Spring never resonated with Russian audiences despite the theme of Pagan Russian Rusʹ.
Chinese dance scholar Emily Wilcox reveals in Ch. 5, “Inner Mongolia’s Ulan Muchir Art Troupes as Socialist Performing Practice,” the little-known history of small performance units (12–13 performers), who sing, dance, act, play musical instruments, as well as participate in the lives of the nomadic groups of Inner Mongolia. Wilcox concludes that, “The Ulan Muchir, through work and performance, continue to be recognized as important carriers of China’s revolutionary socialist cultural tradition in the contemporary era” (124).
Throughout the former socialist world, for the most part following the lead of the former Soviet Union, the various national states largely supported large classical ballet companies like the Bolshoi and Kirov ballet companies of the former Soviet Union, and state-supported folk dance ensembles that performed highly choreographed, staged folk dances. These ensembles, like the Moiseyev Dance Company (The State Academic Ensemble of Folk Dances of the Peoples of the USSR), Mazowsze, the Polish State Ensemble of Folk Songs and Dances, and Kolo, the State Ensemble of Folk Dances of Serbia, with casts of between 50–100 performers, toured widely as political vehicles in the competitive international dance world of the cultural Cold War, and were always guaranteed large budgets by their respective governments.
Modern and contemporary dance throughout the socialist world received little to no financial or government support, a legacy that continues in the present, a precarity that is detailed in several of the chapters of this collected volume.
