Calgary International Film Festival’s Presentation of
A Halába Tábcoltatott Leány (The Maiden Danced to Death)

Laszlo Zsolt (Gyula Udvaros) and Bea Melkvi (Mari) on the Banks of the Danube.

Hungarian and Slovenian folk dances are so intricate, it takes years of practice to acquire the necessary precision and dexterity before the dancers can proceed at the breakneck speed of a professional company. One misstep, one forgotten element of movement, one careless moment of distraction and a Rube Goldberg’s progression of disasters unspins. When everything goes perfectly, however, the dance leaves viewers breathless, pulses racing like the dancers themselves.

The Maiden Danced to Death, a labyrinthine tale of treachery, betrayal and revenge, written and directed by Endre Hules, is like one of those folk dances. Each detail has been placed so precisely within the story’s structure that revelations unfold with breathtaking élan — always fresh, startling, unpredictable and unveiled at the moment of greatest impact. It takes a wild spin across two of the most beautiful cities in the world, Budapest and Montréal.

Twenty years after Pista Udvaros, played by Endre Hules, has been exiled from communist Hungary, he returns with a purpose. From the moment he sets foot outside the arrivals terminal under overcast skies and commandeers a taxi from under the people who hailed it, his character is established. Pista means ‘crowned’ and Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography takes us with him over Budapest’s famous ironwork bridge and up the cliff face, where palaces, the great Cathedral and grand hotels show Udvaros overseeing vast tracts of the Danube and its surrounding flatlands — a man of far-reaching vision, who knows exactly what he wants and allows nothing to impede him.

A jubilant reunion takes place with Udvaros’ younger brother, Gyula, and sister-in-law and one-time lover, Mari, in their dance studio, a place which has fallen on hard times now that the communists are no longer in power. The sedate colour pallette and muted lighting reinforce a sense of hidebound tradition. Even the signature company dance, The Maiden Danced to Death, has not changed since Pista left.

Bea Melkvi (Mari) and Steve Court (Endres Hules) engaged in an elaborate chess match.

Court is a cypher. Is the elder of the two brother’s return a matter of celebration, or a warning of darker business to come? And what has happened to the family he left behind in Canada?

A phone call, to the senior Gyula Udvaros, their father — forced upon Court by his brother and faced with resignation and acceptance — results in an exchange of bitter words, as both brothers seemed to know it must. These personal relationships are political, and the end of the old regime leads to a new power balance, reflected in Hungary and the Balkans.

Ancient Fertility Rituals and Blood Sport

As the movie’s title indicates, folk dances contain symbols for the social orders of their creators, and may include or reflect darker, more barbaric practices stretching back through the past to tribal origins. Just as Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring addressed the oft-times brutal rituals of the ancient Slavs, the Honvéd Dance Company’s Eastern European folk dances also depict a similar element of blood sport.

The company’s lead female dancer must pass her ‘crown of flowers’ to a younger woman just as they are on the cusp of international success. Marriages serve up aridity and deceit, meeting vulnerability with hostility and bitter humiliation. Children are alienated from parents. A father is publicly beaten in front of his daughter in a scene which pivots so much between ossified tradition and liberty, the viewer must choose where their own sympathies lie and what the cost of those beliefs entail in very graphic terms: who is led off in chains? Who is set free?

“The Maiden Danced to Death” referred to a punitive measure taken against a young woman who offended the strict and narrow social codes of farming communities and villages. A girl, deemed too flirtatious and seductive, is culled from society by those she rejects. She is danced from young man to young man until she is spun out of their circle and ostracized, left exhausted, without protection, as good as dead.

Shortly into the film, we learn the full cost of Court’s exile, but until the climax, we never learn the identity of the ‘maiden’ in this particular dance; every principle and most of the supporting actors have their moment of public excoriation. We only know for certain that the dance unfolds irresistably before us.

When the brothers ask why girls allowed themselves to be subjected to this sport, Mari explains, “What could they do? When you’re asked to dance, you dance.”

Smoke and Mirrors

The techniques of mirrors and smokescreens which Hules uses to misdirect his viewers recall the mechanical wonders and Vaudevillian stagecraft imported from Prague, Budapest and those great Medieaval capitals. Mirroring starts in earnest as we track Court back to the mountain over Montréal. The city is less stately and more modern, but the scene stretching beneath him is almost identical to the landscape he surveyed from the cliffs over Budapest. Emergency sirens provide an omen of what he awaits, both in his marriage and the company he founded.

Much is made of pacts with the devil, an archaic trope favoured by Eastern Europe pre-dating Goethe. Binding agreements, Machiavellan negotiations, masked identities — both onstage and behind the scenes — feature throughout the film, and it seems as though the plot will unfold with the usual cost of Faustian bargain, but this underestimates Hules’ skill as a storyteller. The true role of the contract is so unexpected as to leave the viewer nonplussed.

When Court tells Mari, “I’m just a ghost,” it seems as though ruin and desolation are inevitable, but Hules’ pulls out another astonishing surprise — one which shows the vibrancy and relevance of folk dancing to our modern age, just when it seems the craft no longer reflects our modern world.

From the Calgary International Film Festival, the film now proceeds to France.

A Halába Tábcoltatott Leány (The Maiden Danced to Death)

A joint Hungarian, Canadian and Slovenian production written and directed by Endre Hules.

Photography: Vilmos Zsigmond

Cast :
Endre Hules: Pista Udvaros/Steve Court
Bea Melkvi: Mari Udvaros
Laszlo Zsolt: Gyula Udvaros, Jr.
Boris Cavazza: Gyula Udvaros, Sr.
Deborah Kara Unger: Lynne Court
Stephen McHattie: Ernie Hatchet

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MAINSTAGE DANCE

Thursday, March 18 – Saturday, March 20, 2010
8:00 PM
University Theatre
at Craigie Hall, University of Calgary

DO ANIMALS CRY

By Meg Stuart and Damaged Goods (Belgium)

Saturday March 13th, 2010
8:00 PM
Theatre Junction GRAND
608 – 1st Street, SW

Cry if you want to: it’s family time now! In Do Animals Cry Meg Stuart and her performers (Damaged Goods,from co-producers, Théâtre Garonne du Toulouse, Théâtre de la Ville du Paris, Wolksbühne am Rosa Luxemberg Platz of Berlin, PACT Zollverein of Essen, and Kaaitheatre of Brussels) challenge the greeting commando called family — a frantic reunion where loved ones reminisce for the last time before falling to pieces. Featuring six dancers addressing the family dynamic with tension and unspoken comfort, this show is a melting pot of scenes and situations with movement as the main ‘trigger.’

Tickets: Theatre Junction, (403) 205-2922, or at the box office 608 – 1st Street, SW.

(X-posted to Calgary Theatre)

SONGS OF A WAYFARER
and
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS

Calgary: March 25 – 27, 2010
Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium
1415 – 14 Avenue, NW, Calgary.

Choreographer, Emily Molnar’s Songs of a Wayfarer, set to Gustav Mahler, and Alberta Ballet Principal Dancer, Yukichi Hattori’s theatrically explosive The Seven Deadly Sins, composed by Kurt Weill combine opera and ballet.

Tickets in person: Alberta Ballet Box Office 341-17 Avenue SW, Calgary, AB T2S 0A5.  Monday to Friday 9 am – 5 pm (Except performance days 9 am – 3 pm.)

Telephone: (403) 245-4549

2010: A TAP ODDITY

March 19, 20, 23 – 28, 2010
Theatre Junction GRAND
608 – 1 Street, SW

A new Live Musical Show Choreographed by guest artist, Joshua Hilberman — “a loose cannon of modern tap” — Decidedly Jazz Danceworks company jazz choreographer, Sarisa Figueroa, and featuring dancers, Deanne Walsh and Kaleb Tekeste. Decidedly Jazz promises this to be a “freewheeling, playful evening of rhythmic rapture.”

Tickets available by phone:
DJD Box Office, 403-245–3533
(9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Monday – Friday)

Tickets available in person:
Decidedly Jazz Danceworks
1514 – 4 Street SW
(9am – 5pm Monday – Friday)

March 19 – 20, 2010
Tickets: Adults: $20/ Students: $15
(403) 244-0950 or at tickets@dswlive.ca

Dancers’ Studio West
2007 – 10 Avenue SW
Calgary AB T3C-0K4

BD&P World Music Series

LIZT ALFONSO DANCE CUBA

Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba: Fuertza Y Compàs; De Terra y Aire, Photo Credit: Jorge V. Gavilondo.

Jack Singer Concert Hall,
105 – 8th Avenue, SE, Calgary, AB (next to the Olympic Plaza)
March 26, 2010
8:00 PM

Ethnic Cuban dance is characterized by its history which lends it the Caribbean elements of Flamenco, Ballet and Dance with Spanish and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Created in 1991, the all-female Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba combines these elements in a refreshing and original style under the direction and choreography of this company’s director, Lizt Alfonso. Expect technical finesse, precise ensemble work, individual flair and complex footwork.  The show features superb musicians and soloists, incuding Flamenco singing, guitar and keyboard accompaniment.

Tickets: (403) 294-9494
Online or in person at the Epcor Centre

SHEN YUN CLASSICAL CHINESE DANCE
& PERFORMING ARTS CO.

March 30 – April 1, 2010
Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium

Shen Yun shows feature traditional dances and songs, accompanied by a live orchestra and singers. The size of each production varies, but traditional Chinese culture inspires everything from the choreography to the exquisitely crafted costumes and projected backgrounds that evoke temples, breathtaking landscapes, scenes of heaven, or imperial courts.

The styles vary from fine classical Chinese dances which only highly trained dancers could perform, ethnic or folk dances which revealed regional forms of movement and grace, and storytelling narrative dances.

Shen Yun‘s performances are extremely popular. Prices vary from $30 – $200, and can be ordered through Ticketmaster.

Classical Chinese dance has its own complete set of training methods in foundational skills, a strict regimen for perfecting bearing and form, and means of training for skill sets such as jumps, turns, and flips, as well as extremely demanding aerial techniques, culminating in an enormous dance system. The aerial movements of classical Chinese dance contain a wealth of high-flying dives, dexterous leaps, and diverse spins.

It is the deeper resonances of traditional Chinese culture, however, that imbue a dancer’s movements with such rich expressive power. The dancer is thus capable of not only portraying a given figure’s disposition or mood, but even the vivid expressions unique to a certain age, whatever the land or time.

— Shen Yun website

Love Lies Bleeding, a ballet set by the acclaimed contemporary dance company, Alberta Ballet, to the music of rock stars, Sir Elton John and Bernie Taupin, have been going like gangbusters, selling a record 2,160 tickets in one day.

Sir Elton John with Jean Grand-Maître and Alberta Ballet Members

Alberta Ballet,  which performed at the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, and whose ballet The Fiddle and The Drum, set to music by Joni Mitchell, received such warm praise, has broken its ticket sales records.  To keep up with the demand, Alberta Ballet added two matinee performances in Calgary before the Box Office opened at 9:00 am on Monday. Even then, half the tickets were sold before the day was over.

Alberta Ballet’s artistic director, Jean Grand-Maître, impressed Sir Elton with Joni Mitchell’s ballet. The rock star asked him to express the essence of his music through dance, and the result is Love Lies Bleeding.

Love Lies Bleeding premieres in Alberta in May 2010 at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Calgary.
Alberta Ballet Box Office:
403.245.4549 in Calgary or online at www.albertaballet.com