Constitution of the "Kolo" Ensemble and Choreography of Traditional Dance – Anthropological Interpretation and Socio-Political Context

Abstract

The Ensemble of Folk Dances and Songs of Serbia "Kolo" was founded in 1948 in Belgrade, on the initiative of the Committee for Culture and Art of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. The task of the Ensemble was to artistically interpret and present the so-called folk artistic creativity, which predominantly encompassed various folklore creations of the rural population, on stage, in the country and abroad. Although seemingly simple and folk-oriented, the art of traditional dance choreography has clear ideological and politically important messages of the then state leadership embedded in it foundations, intended to be spread among the Yugoslavs, but also beyond the state borders. The ensemble was supposed to present a desirable and appropriate image of Yugoslavia in its performances.

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the formation of the “Kolo” Ensemble and the process of constituting the art of traditional dance choreography, taking into account the socio-political and historical context of the Second Yugoslavia. In addition, the paper approaches the deconstruction of the intention of choreographers and artistic directors, in order to reveal the ideological messages embedded in the artistic expression. The basic assumption in this paper is that dance troupes and traditional dance choreographies are strongly connected to the ideology and cultural policy of the nation-state. In this regard, even when choreographers and artistic directors create programs without direct political-ideological objectives, their decisions always rely on the socio-political context and the dominant ideologies within the state.

The theoretical framework of the work is based on contemporary anthropological discussions about the concepts crucial for the interpretation of the material, primarily referring to the concept of ideology, understood in the Althusserian sense, but also to the ideas of the combination of state ideology, cultural policy, and dance with the aim of presenting the dance troupe with a desirable image of the nation-state. The methodology of the work consists of a combination of two approaches: classical anthropological, qualitative and archival research. Qualitative research includes conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 15 dancers who worked in "Kolo" in different time contexts, while archival research included reviewing the documentation of the "Kolo" Ensemble, the Archives of Yugoslavia and the personal and family archives of the dancers.