Re: dance of death

[Sylvia Schildt <creativa...>]

Yasher koyekh Helen for a tru;y illuminating posting on the Dance of Death.

Sylvia Schildt


Please contact me privately about a workshop for the conference.

creativa (at) charm(dot)net


on 7/6/02 2:21 AM, Helen Winkler at winklerh (at) hotmail(dot)com wrote:

In my reading, I've come across a couple of references to the dance of
death.  In Sendry's Music of the Jews of the Diaspora, he mentions a wedding
in Cleve Germany in 1674 where the Dance of Death was performed.  A male
wedding guest was made to play dead.  Men and women danced around him
singing and prepared his body for burial.  Then the man got up and and
joined the party.  He says it was "a superstitious practice, a revival of
the ancient resurrection charm."  He also quotes from the memoirs of Gluckl
of Hamelin of a relative's wedding: "(seventeenth century)...they concluded
their performance with a truly spendid Dance of the Death."
 
Michael Alpert discusses the Dance of Death scene in the Dybbuk in his
article  "Freylekhs on film:  The Portrayal of Jewish Traditional Dance in
Yiddish Cinema"  (Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Newsletter Vol 8, No 3-4,
1986).  He says"[the Dance of Death] is the film's most famous dance scene
and the one based least on traditional dance."  He does mention the practice
of marrying off poor orphans in a cemetary to ward off epidemics (lots of
descriptions of this in the yizkor books--many online), and also the modern
tkhies hameysim tants in some Hasidic sects.  He says that the original play
by Ansky did not include this dance as it was protrayed in the movie.
Instead it was part of the beggar's dance in the play, where a beggar
representing death danced with the bride.  In the film the dance with death
was added for theatrical effect.  The choreographer Judith Berg-Fibich
"never saw the toytntants but heard about it from her grandmother who said
it had been a women's dance.  When and where her grandmother heard about it
remains unclear."  She says that her dance choreography throughout the
Dybbuk was "authentic folk dance a little magnified."
 
Helen

Helen Winkler
Helen's Yiddish Dance Page
www.angelfire.com/ns/helenwinkler <http://www.angelfire.com/ns/helenwinkler>

Calgary Folkdance Fridays
www.cadvision.com/winklerj/cff.html
<http://www.cadvision.com/winklerj/cff.html>