43rd National Táncház Festival & Fair • 5–7 April 2024
Issue:
Starting page: 3
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Remembering Zsoldos István „Pista bácsi” Forrószeg, Szék/Sic, Transylvania (Romania) 1934 October 4 – 2021 May 9. Zsoldos István had an outstanding knowledge of the local traditional dances, particularly the men’s dance known locally as „tempo”. This study sums up Pista bácsi’s descriptions of his generation that produced a large number of excellent men dancers in the village. He spoke of „the golden age of Szék dance and music” as the period when he was young. In the early 1930s an unusually large number of boys were born who reached the age of 12-14 during WWII. One of the Szék musicians described the Forrószeg dance house of the time to be like a beehive. The „sponsors” taught the boys to dance. „…from the end of the 1940s to the end of the 1950s there were weekends in Szék when 6-8 dance events were held at the same time.” Musicians and others known as excellent dancers are described, as well as Pista bácsi’s wedding in 1959. By dance ethnographer Varga Sándor.