Tants leedu folklooriliik

ENIn Lithuania the folk songs are traditionally used much more than the folk dances in the folk movement. Some of the reasons are the following: 1. At first, Lithuanian folk dances were accepted as a true worth by the promoters and researchers of traditional culture much later than Lithuanian folk songs. Already in the 19th century the huge collections of songs were published, but an interest in folk dance appeared only in the second part of the 20th century- mostly as material for creation of stylized dances. A few slender collections of authentic folk dances were published only in the last decade of the 20th century (apart from a few collections of folk games for children which were published in the beginning of the 20th century). 2. Unlike folk songs, folk dances where collected in haphazadly, mostly without the necessary methodical preparation.Therefore an archival folk dance material has often many shortcomings: it lacks a more precise description of the movements or for the musical part of the dance, and generally the context of dance performing is not supplied. The first video recordings of folk dances were made only in 1990, the video material was collected occasionally and has more an incidental character. So there is still no purposeful programme for recording folk dances. 3. After World War II folk dances vanished much more quickly than folk songs, because the political situation at that time suppressed the living tradition of folk parties in the countryside. Since old times the group dances dominated in Lithuania, here a solo dance tradition was not developed, so the gift of individual dancers (different from that of the folk singers) did not contribute to the survival of folk dances.The dances disappeared from the countryside together with the village community and young people.4. After the natural tradition to pass on folk dances from generation to generation was broken, young people lost the skill to perform folk dance authentically. Instead they often formed for themselves an image of stylised national dance which was essentially different from authentic folk dance. For this reason many folk groups, where young people are dominant, hardly ever include a folk dance into their repertoire, or such groups perform folk dances in unauthentic, slightly stylised manner. Some youth folk groups (for instance Kūlgrinda) narrow their repertoire down and perform only danced sutartinės, because their movements are more simple. 5. Folk dances also form a very small part in the repertoire of the folk groups where elderly people predominate. Only several ethnographical ensembles distinguish from others and masterly perform the quadrilles, polka and some other couple dances. Recently the intention to use more folk dances has been noticed in Lithuania (mostly because namely folk dances predominate in the repertoire of European folk festivals). Another aspect of folk movement is just starting to develop in Lithuania pursuing a run of events which has been noticeable in other European countries for many years already: the club of traditional dance was established last year and it is designed to the general public. These trends should be developed in the future, especially if we want to prepare special programmes for popularization of folk dances.