Article from The Herald-Times newspaper of March 26, 2004 following Kalman Balogh Gypsy Cimbalom Band performance at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

‘Gypsy’ crew gives IU bright, energetic concert
Article from The Herald-Times newspaper of March 26, 2004 following Kalman Balogh Gypsy Cimbalom Band performance at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana’Gypsy’ crew gives IU bright, energetic concert
By Peter Jacobi, Herald-Times Reviewer
March 26, 2004In the beginning, there was rhythm.
That might be the primordial principle of the universe, according to the Gypsies, or so was the energizing suggestion from a band of players that brightened and dominated the stage of Recital Hall Wednesday evening.
Thanks to all sorts of people and outfits, both at Indiana University (such as the departments of Central European Studies and Folklore/Musicology) and elsewhere (the Hungarian Cultural Center in New York), the Kalman Balogh Gypsy Cimbalom Band and friends came for a visit, meaning they came to perform. Their purpose: To introduce the audience — and a hall-filling audience it was — to “The Music of Gypsy Spirit,” to musical traditions of a roaming people who started their journey millennia ago in India, then traveled to Turkey, then across the European continent and beyond.
One heard, in compelling combination, generous samplings of the Gypsies’ own folk music along with applications that they added to the music of lands they came to inhabit. The rhythms, of course, were catching. So was the virtuosity of each band member, whether fiddler or clarinetist or accordion player or trumpeter or guitarist or bass player or master of the cimbalom.
Yes, a cimbalom, a large dulcimer set on three sturdy legs, with strings for notes stretching across four octaves, an instrument to be struck by mallets. That’s the instrument favored by the leader of the visiting band, Kalman Balogh, and what a show he put on, hitting the strings at such speed sometimes that the mallets seemed to lose visibility.
Speed, indeed, was another hallmark of the music exhibited. No matter what the velocity of a given number on the program — and some of the items began as slow, deliberate songs of romance or melancholy — everything ended at racer pace. Rossini, the so-called Signor Accelerando of music, must have been bitten by the Gypsy spirit somewhere along the way; his method of gaining excitement through gathering momentum turns tame, however, when set next to what these musicians were demonstrating. Of course, Signor Rossini had a few other tricks up his compositional sleeve.
Balogh and colleagues emphasized the universality of Gypsy music. One heard at times the mystic components of an Asia of long ago and, then, of an ageless East. The essences of Middle Eastern tunes and tuning were prominent as well as music we’ve come to associate with Eastern Europe, sort of atmospherically sad and in a minor key. One could hear Klezmer and the jigs of Ireland. And the waltz. And the foxtrot. And the polka. And the czardas. And jazz. And to each and all, blended and seasoned, there was the unity of a tradition. Here was music of the world, taken from the air and soil of a seeming everywhere and given back as “Gypsy spirit.”
From jazz came an additional element, that of show. One goes to a jazz concert, and all evening one hears solo riffs in which individual musicians exhibit their skills, resulting, they hope, in applause and cheers.
Ninety percent of the pleasure came from watching and hearing technical dexterity. Ten percent came from the music’s content. As is so often the case with jazz, it was a matter of style over substance. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. The result is entertainment. But as in jazz, so, too, in this music of the “Gypsy spirit,” there was an added component: the expression of a cultural and social history, in this case of a people who have roamed the world in search of home and an unfettered life, of a people who brought their music along and, in each new stopping off place, enriched it with the folk dances and syncopations of the area, a kind of mutual give and take.
It’s unfortunate that the printed program failed to identify each musician. Since there was but a single clarinetist and accordionist, a listener could assign tribute to their work. But there were three violinists. I’ll name them — Sandor Budai, Attila Jakab and Laszlo Major — because all were extraordinary at their fiddling, but also because one offered up a display of romancing and plucking and bowing that was absolutely breathtaking and brought an extended roar from the audience, and I wanted somehow to give him credit in print.
One relished as well the perhaps too rare quiet moments of gentle melody and harmonies played not by the whole ensemble but by two or three members in dreamy, change-of-pace fashion.
Let it be said that this concert was not one to engender contemplation. It was designed to bring amiable, quickly ingratiating pleasure. And it did.
Honoring the Roving Spirit
By JACK ANDERSON
From The New York Times, March 29, 2004According to a legend, the ancestors of the Gypsies were spirits of birds who flew around the world and settled everywhere. When they touched earth, they became men and women – dancing and singing men and women, to judge from “Gypsy Spirit: Journey of the Roma,” the program on March 22 at Symphony Space that honored these rovers.The presentation by the Budapest Ensemble and the Kalman Balogh Gypsy Cimbalom Band, augmented by guest musicians, suggested that when they reached Hungary, the Romany people, as the Gypsies call themselves, staged one party after another. The Hungarian performers offered an evening of nonstop high-energy songs and dances. Zoltan Zsurafszki was the production’s artistic director and choreographer and Mr. Balogh was the musical director and the composer of some of the numbers.One scene depicted a party at which people at tables joined in community singing and then got up to dance, everybody dancing with everybody, men with women, and men with men. The speed of the dancing grew ever more dizzying. And the musicians provided rousing accompaniments on a variety of instruments.Other scenes may not have been specifically set at parties, but were unmistakably festive. The dancers frequently turned their bodies into percussion instruments, clapping their hands, stamping their feet, snapping their fingers and slapping their sides and knees as they kicked, bobbed up and down and leaped energetically. An episode called “The Vocations” featured rhythmic motions based on work activities. All work should seem to be such fun. In a “Dance Suite from Szatmar,” men twirled canes and pounded them on the floor, women whirled in circular formations and both men and women joined hands and raced back and forth in lines.Most of the offerings were celebratory. But there was also a reference to folktales in “Rokatanc (The Dance of the Fox),” in which, after a nimble barefoot dance standing erect, men crouched down and pawed at the floor as if transformed into foxes.As it proceeded, the program grew ever more exhilarating and it became easy to wish that this Gypsy revel would never end.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/arts/dance/29SPIRI.html?ex=108157292…
&en=724a7a2a7d03c468
This Week: “Gypsy Spirit”; Is Not Afraid to Be Fiery
March 21, 2004
New York Times
By BRIAN SEIBERTLike many folkloric showcases, “Gypsy Spirit: Journey of
the Roma,” which will be presented tomorrow at Symphony
Space in Manhattan, purports to correct history, then
abandons that ambition in the interest of putting on a good
show. The program notes glance at the centuries of
oppression the Gypsies, or Roma, have endured, and the
stereotypes with which they have been branded. And then it
goes on to celebrate what it calls the “fiery” Gypsy
spirit.Though the opening number establishes the Roma’s origins in
India, what follows is more a collection of regional
specialties than the journey promised by the program’s
title. Except for projected slides of actual elderly Roma,
the group is treated less as an ethnicity than as a mythic
people. A legend, related in voiceover, explains how they
were once birds who grew too fat to fly.Just as well. The performers and their art are the story
here. The music of Kalman Balogh and the Gypsy Cimbalom
Band serves as a kind of prism, reflecting both the
influences the Roma have absorbed and those they’ve
exerted. Mostly Central and Eastern European in origin, the
songs have Turkish tints, flamenco accents. A sobbing
clarinet suggests klezmer, then the band veers into the Hot
Club jazz of Django Reinhardt. A jug someone plays sounds
like a tabla, and we’re back in India again.The musicians are virtuosos, especially Mr. Balogh, who
plays his cimbalom, or hammered dulcimer, with Art
Tatum-like dexterity. (It’s a rather bulky instrument for a
traditionally nomadic people.) And they like to show off.
The clarinetist gradually disassembles his instrument while
playing it, ending up squawking through the reed. The
violinist, eyebrows flapping wildly, conjures a bird song,
a police siren, the theme from the “Pink Panther.”The dancers of the Budapest Dance Ensemble are show-offs,
too – at least the men are. In fedoras and boots, they kick
up their heels and slap their chests, thighs and shins in a
rhythmic frenzy of seeming self-abuse. The women don’t have
much to do except twirl in their bright skirts. Even in the
partner dancing, it’s the men who have all the improvised
embellishments. They do the shimmy.Amid all the raucous fun, the ancient “Dance of the Fox”
stands out. Two men, on hands and knees, pass a hat with
their teeth, the older fox teaching the younger how to
survive. The spectacle is at once silly and touching. The
foxes are the stuff of legend; the artistry is real.
‘Gypsy Spirit’ Feels Like a Celebration
Friday, February 20, 2004’Gypsy Spirit’ Feels Like a CelebrationBy Richard Atkinson
For the Journal
Santa Fe residents have demonstrated their City Different-ness nearly every year recently by flocking to revival screenings of “Latcho Drom,” Tony Gatlif’s 1991 dialogue-free film about the music of the Roma people, commonly called gypsies.
Thursday, gypsy culture junkies can experience this rich tradition in the flesh with 28 Central and Eastern European dancers, musicians, and singers from the folkloric Budapest Dance Ensemble. They’re paying homage to the dance and musical traditions of the Roma during a cross-country tour organized by promoter Kalman Magyar and presented locally by FanMan Productions.
Like “Latcho Drom,” Gypsy Spirit emphasizes the migrations of the Roma people through a colorful demonstration of Hungarian/Transylvanian dances; Indian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Romanian costumes, music and dance— and even Spanish flamenco which is also a gypsy-based genre.
Ethno-linguistic scholars believe the Roma are descended from a multiracial warrior caste recruited in the 11th century to defend India from invading Muslims. These soldiers and their families later pursued the Muslims westward through Persia, eventually spreading all the way to Spain both north and south of the Mediterranean. Included in their wanderings was a lengthy settlement in Egypt from which the misnomer “gypsies” may be derived. Chronically mistrusted and misunderstood by Europeans, gypsies were enslaved in the Balkans in the 1500s and, in the 20th century, experienced persecution along with Jews under the Nazis. Their culture, however, has proven to be both indomitable and highly diverse.
Since 1991, the 40-year-old Budapest Dance Ensemble has been under the artistic direction of Zoltan Zsurafzski, a legendary Hungarian dancer and choreographer. Formally trained at the Hungarian State Ballet, Zsurafzski has expanded his classical dance background with numerous research forays throughout the Carpathian Basin to learn the folk dances of his native Hungary as well as those of neighboring Romanians, Slavs, and Croats, even Poles and Germans.
The result, wrote Sylviane Gold of New York’s Newsday, is that “you feel you’ve dropped in at a local celebration rather than bought tickets to a show.”
The Chicago Sun Times reported that these Hungarians are “more improvisational and free-wheeling in feel than the rigidly patterned routines of many similar folk companies” and the Boston Globe said, “the men seem to have ball bearings in their knees and ankles.”
The company’s musical director, Kalman Balough, is from a well-known gypsy musical family and a virtuoso performer on the cimbalom. This trapezoid-shaped stringed instrument of Persian origin is somewhat akin to a clavier but played with small felt-tipped mallets rather than keys.
Since graduating from Budapest’s Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music, Balough has also expanded upon his classical background. The current tour is his ninth trip through the United States where he has previously performed with American classical mainstays such as the Philadelphia Orchestra and also with his own Cimbalom Jazz Band.
Besides the exotic cimbalom, Lensic listeners will hear the more familiar sounds of gypsy guitars and, of course, violins. None of the above, however, bears any relationship to the pentatonic scale music which the first Hungarians brought to Europe off the steppes of Central Asia, according to Hungarian-American scholar Stephan Maurer of Albuquerque. “The similarity is in the excitement,” he said.If you go
WHAT: “Gypsy Spirit: A Journey of the Roma” presented by the Budapest Dance Ensemble
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
WHERE: Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco
TICKETS: $18-$29, available at the Lensic box office or by phone at 988-1234
Dances inspired by the Gypsy spirit
“Gypsy Spirit: Journey of the Roma”
When: 2 p.m. Feb. 22
Where: Poway Center for the Performing Arts, 15498
Espola Road, Poway
Tickets: $18-$35
Information: (858) 748-0505 or www.powayarts.orgBy: SANDRA KRAISIRIDEJA – For The North County TimesHungarian choreographer Zoltan Zsurafszki has spent years
immersing himself in the music and dance of Gypsy culture.His knowledge was crucial to the development of “Gypsy
Spirit: Journey of the Roma,” which performs at the Poway Center for the
Performing Arts at 2 p.m. Sunday.Zsurafszki works with Kalman Balogh, musical director and
a master cimbalom player on the show. The cimbalom is a stringed instrument
that has a trapezoidal body and stands on four legs.”Gypsy Spirit: Journey of the Roma” chronicles the
development of Gypsy culture and the migration of the Roma, who began in
India, then proceeded to Turkey and across Europe.The performance will feature music and dances from those
countries, aided by 14 members of the Budapest Dance Ensemble and 11 guest
musicians from Bulgaria, Romania and Transylvania.Zsurafszki became artistic director for the Budapest Dance
Ensemble in 1991.He draws inspiration for his choreography from research he
compiled while visiting remote villages in the Carpathian Basin. While in
the villages, Zsurafszki danced with the people and participated in local
festivities, such as a wedding, where music and dancing are integral parts
of the event, explained Kalman Magyar, one of the producers of “Gypsy
Spirit: Journey of the Roma.”Many members of the Budapest Dance Ensemble also studied
in the villages so they could “learn firsthand the wonderful, exciting and
exuberant Gypsy dancing,” Magyar said.When the Roma, which was really a group of different
cultures, traveled out of India and across Asia in the 11th century, the
people developed their own language and ethnic identity.”Wherever they settled they absorbed the culture of those
countries and made those countries’ cultures more interesting and exciting,”
Magyar said.”Gypsy Spirit: Journey of the Roma” pays homage to the
Gypsy spirit and creativity that touched so many different cultures.Many dances associated with certain cultures were actually
created by the Roma, said Magyar, who cited the Spanish flamenco and
Hungarian csardases as examples.The blending of language, music, fashion and cultures
continued as the Roma journeyed across Asia and eventually entered Europe
through Hungary. Mistaken for Egyptians, the group was labeled “Gypsies” by
the Europeans and were known for their passion and exotic energy.”In every culture they excelled and created something
new,” Magyar said. “What you see in the show is this very top layer of high
creativity and very exciting elements of different countries Roma cultures.”
SHU to host celebration of Gypsy music, dance
Connecticut PostSHU to host celebration of Gypsy music, dance
By PHYLLIS A.S. BOROS pasboros@ctpost.comThursday, March 04, 2004 -The enormous impact that Gypsy culture has had on ethnic music and dance traditions throughout Europe and Asia will be showcased in a production that comes to Sacred Heart University on Monday.”Gypsy Spirit, Journey of the Roma” will celebrate the music and dance of a group of people who have fascinated Westerners for centuries, said Kalman Magyar, of New Jersey, who is producing the tour in association with Columbia Artists.The 8 p.m. performance, at SHU’s Edgerton Center for the Arts, will feature a troupe of about 30 performers from the Budapest Ensemble of dancers and the Kalman Balogh Gypsy Cimbalom Band, both of Hungary.Magyar said the 2004 tour of the United States and Canada will feature 35 performances; it kicked off on Feb. 11 in Berkeley, Calif., and will conclude in New York on March 22.Through music and dance, the production will trace the migration of the Gypsies, also known as Roma, from India to Turkey and then west across the European continent.Showcased will be exotic Turkish music and dances, Spanish Flamenco, Bulgarian and Romanian folk tunes and refined csardases from Hungary and Transylvania, Magyar said.The producer, who was born in Hungary, said that Gypsy music ranges from the melancholy and sad to the romantic and fiery.”The scope of the music is quite remarkable,” Magyar said. The production includes a sampling from the vast repertoire as “it pays homage to the creativity and spontaneity of the Roma.”Much of the current research on the Roma, Magyar explained, has been undertaken by Ian F. Hancock, of British Romani and Hungarian Romani descent, who is a professor of Romani studies at the University of Texas in Austin. (Hancock represents Roma on the Untied States Holocaust Memorial Council.)Magyar explained that research indicates that the homeland of the Roma can be traced to Northern India about 1,000 years ago. The reasons for their migration are apparently unknown, but when they reached Europe, they were mistakenly called Egyptians or ‘Gyptians, which evolved into the word “Gypsy.”Hancock has written that “From the very beginning, then, the Romani population has been made up of various different peoples who have come together for different reasons.”As the ethnically and linguistically mixed occupational population from India move further and further away from its land of origin (beginning in the 11th century), so it began to acquire its own ethnic identity, and it was at this time that the Romani language began to takeshape. . . .”In the course of time, as a result of having interacted with various European populations, and being fragmented into widely separated groups, Roma have emerged as a collection of distinct ethnic groups within the larger whole.”Today, Roma can be found in almost every country in Eastern, Western and Central Europe and the United States.Monday’s show is under the musical direction of Kalman Balogh, who is considered one of the world’s leading cimbalom players. (The cimbalom is a percussion instrument with a pedal, akin to a hammered dulcimer, with a sound somewhat like a piano.)Balogh has toured the United States extensively with his own folk and cimbalom jazz bands and has performed with such classical groups as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New World Symphony, the Austin Symphony and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra.The Budapest Ensemble, one of the oldest troupes in Central Europe dedicated to the preservation and performance of authentic folkdance, also has toured the U.S. on several occasions. It is under the direction of Zoltan Zsurafszki, a graduate of the Hungarian State Ballet Institute.”This show,” Magyar said, “is really a wonderful, exciting experience. Not only does it have artistic value, it has social and educational value, as it focuses on the very creative side of the Romani people, who have often lived on the fringes of society.””Gypsy Spirit, Journey of the Roma” will be on stage Monday at 8 p.m. at the Edgerton Center for the Arts at Sacred Heart University, 5151 Park Ave. in Fairfield. Admission is $25; $15 for children under 12. For reservations, call toll free 1-877-238-5596 or visit http://www.smartix.com/
‘Gypsy Spirit’ offers life-affirming show of fiery music, dance
Monday, February 16, 2004, 12:00 a.m. PacificPermission to reprint or copy this article/photo must be obtained from The Seattle Times. Call 206-464-3113 or e-mail resale@seattletimes.com with your request.’Gypsy Spirit’ offers life-affirming show of fiery music, danceBy Misha Berson
Seattle Times arts criticThe Romany people, commonly known as the Gypsies, have for centuries been romanticized and despised, exoticized and marginalized. Targets of mass genocide during the Nazi era, since the fall of Communism in the 1980s they’ve fallen victim to a new wave of ethnic hatred in Eastern and Central Europe, where roughly 8 million Gypsies reside.Those who packed Meany Theater for the two-night run of “Gypsy Spirit: Journey of the Roma” last weekend heard no lectures about this. What they were treated to was a life-affirming aspect of a far-flung, nomadic culture that’s often under siege: its captivating music and dance virtuosity.The large-ensemble revue, making a Seattle stop during a nationwide tour, afforded a vibrant exhibition of European Gypsy artistry at its most dynamic.Tracing the roots of the Roma from medieval India, through Turkey and Spain, to such countries as Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, this was a slickly packaged yet spontaneous-feeling evening, with no museum mustiness attached. Rather, it blazed along on a tide of athletic dance and fiery-sweet music.Performance review”GYPSY SPIRIT: JOURNEY OF THE ROMA.” At Meany Theater, Seattle. Closed Saturday.
While sociologists and immigration experts in Europe raise concern about the plight of the Roma, the artists in this troupe are spreading positive cultural imagery through sheer bravado. Sleek male dancers sporting fedoras stomped and kicked their boot-clad feet in furious unison, accenting the footwork by clapping and slapping their chests, thighs, knees and heels in intricate tattoos of rhythm. Women in bright shawls and long skirts flung their braids as they swirled and sang through partner and group dances.The production, arranged by dances of different types and regions, showcased two renowned Eastern European Gypsy troupes: the Budapest Ensemble (led by the show’s expert choreographer-director, Zoltan Zsurafszki) and the Kalman Balogh Gypsy Cimbalom Band, featuring three guest stars: Sandor Budai (who can be best described as the Jimi Hendrix of the Gypsy violin), clarinetist Yasko Agrirov and Attila Jakab, another superb violinist.The prime ingenuity and survival technique of Gypsy culture is the borrowing and blending of many ethnic influences into one spicy and flavorful stew. (Such composers as Brahms, Liszt and Ravel have returned the favor by incorporating Gypsy influences into their music.)Into the Gypsy cauldron goes the Roma language (probably derived from Sanskrit), the line and circle dance patterns reminiscent of some Balkan and Middle Eastern folk-dance idioms, the bebop jazziness marking the lightning riffs of Budai on violin and Balogh on cimbalom (hammered dulcimer), and the insistent rhythmic schemes redolent of both the Near and Far East.Just as it’s hard to identify every element in these forms, it’s difficult to single out for special praise one or two numbers in a show as consistently vibrant as “Gypsy Spirit.” But by the final segment, a torrid display of exhilarating moves and whirling music that might qualify as a Transylvanian Fling, the entire Meany audience was up and cheering in a well-earned display of appreciation.
‘Gypsy Spirit’ tracks Roma people’s history Berkeley, SR events place authentic dancers, musical ensemble in traveling show
February 8, 2004
By DIANE PETERSON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Featured Advertiser
Northwest ExteriorsEnslaved and persecuted for centuries, the Roma people are the ultimate
outsiders, a fringe culture flung across the globe with no country of their
own to call home.
Yet throughout history, the Roma have proven themselves insiders in the
entertainment world, contributing their skill, energy and excitement to
music, dance and drama. Scratch a famous entertainer and you’re likely to
find gypsy blood, from Django Reinhardt and Charlie Chaplin to Rita Hayworth
and Michael Caine.”Gypsy Spirit — Journey of the Roma,” is a dance and musical revue tracing
the Roma people back to their exodus from India 1,000 years ago through
their migration to Central and Eastern Europe. As part of a national tour,
”Gypsy Spirit” will be presented at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley this
Wednesday and at the Burbank Center for the Arts on Feb. 18.”This is the very first show of its kind to pay homage to the Roma culture
and its contribution to music and dance,” producer Kalman Magyar said in a
phone interview from his New Jersey home. “They polished the art and made it
more lively.”The show features professional dancers from the Budapest Dance Ensemble
under the direction of choreographer Zoltan Zsurafszki, with guest artists
from Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Transylvania (a Hungarian area of
Romania) and the Ukraine.
”He does a lot of authentic research, and his dancers learn first-hand,”
Magyar said of Zsurafszki. “What we’re trying to do is to present a show
from five or six countries, in a seamless presentation.”An 11-member musical ensemble — playing accordion, violin, clarinet and
other folk instruments — will be led by Kalman Balogh, a virtuoso player of
the cimbalom, which is a cross between a piano and harp.”Gypsy Spirit” opens with a fairy tale, told in the Romani language, about
the origins of the Roma people that explains their carefree,
live-for-the-moment philosophy.”One myth is that they used to be birds and fly everywhere there is warm
weather,” Magyar said. “One time, they were flying for a long stretch, and
they landed on a meadow. They started to eat the food, and the next day they
decided to stay. Eventually, their wings became arms and they could not fly
anymore. Then they had to build houses … But they know they will have
their wings back again someday.”After leaving northern India for mysterious reasons, the Roma gradually
migrated west through Turkey toward the European continent, where they
served as slaves in Romania during the Middle Ages. They earned the “gypsy”
nickname because they were originally thought to have come from Egypt.
Wherever they migrated, the Roma people served as musical Robin Hoods,
borrowing from indigenous musical traditions and transforming them into
virtuoso forms, performed at breathtaking speed.”As musicians, they take the local music and culture, and they play it and
make it into a much more exciting form,” Magyar said. “The dancing is very,
very fast.”
Under the passionate influence of the Roma, for example, Spain developed the
Spanish Flamenco, and Eastern European countries developed their own fiery
footwork. The Roma spirit also influenced classical music, revitalizing
works by Liszt, Bizet, Brahms, Dvorak and Verdi, among others.
Like the Roma music, the Roma dancing is very free spirited and highly
improvised, with each dancer going off into their own world.
”All the Roma dancing is fast, with intricate footwork, and slapping of
boots and bodies,” Magyar said. “The woman and the man hardly touch, like in
medieval dances. Because they live on the fringe of society, they have
preserved their culture longer than urban folks.”Constantly on the move and always persecuted, the Roma nevertheless were
able to forge a kind of European blues music — an amalgam of styles unified
by the spirit behind it.When asked to define “gypsy spirit,” Magyar described it as “open, free and
very, very creative.””They want to experience life to its fullest,” he said. “And they are still
very close to nature. They still believe in things that other people don’t,
like fortune-telling.”
One of the dances in the show is a ritualistic “Dance of the Fox,” in which
an old fox symbolically teaches his offspring the secrets of survival.
It’s an important lesson for a minority that has always struggled with
poverty, poor health, high mortality rates and few educational
opportunities.
”In Hungary, many of the musicians are descendants of famous musicians, and
they live a comfortable life, but the others are less educated, and today
those people don’t have an equal chance,” Magyar said. “The Hungarian
government is aware of that, and they are supporting this tour for that
reason.”You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or
dpeterson@pressdemocrat.com.FREE SPIRITS
What: “Gypsy Spirit,” a program celebrating the music and dance traditions
of the Roma people
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Zellerbach Hall, south side of the UC Berkeley campus, near Telegraph
and Bancroft
Tickets: $22-$38
Phone: (510) 642-9988
When: 8 p.m. Feb. 18
Where: Burbank Center for the Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa
Tickets: $22-$44
Phone: 546-3600
GYPSY SPIRIT, Journey of the Roma(Previous reviews of the Budapest Ensemble)
The New York Times-January 19, 2000 – Anna Kisselgoff”…Admirable presentation of Hungarian folk dances…””A strong sense of community and intimacy peers throughâ… and the dancers impress … with their mind-boggling stamina and fleet virtuosity””Above all there is the company’s compelling way with rhythm in dance and music.”New York Newsday, New York-January 17, 2000 – Sylviane Gold”…superb musicians… lively, seductive music… “”…young agreeable dancers…””Yet you feel you’ve dropped in at a local celebration rather than bought tickets to a show.”The Star Ledger, New Jersey – January 17, 2000 – Robert Johnson”Yet anyone in the audience who remembers shaking a leg on Saturday night could identify with the thrilling, muscular energy and high spirits on display.””…Budapest Ensemble was an ethnographers dream-come-true. Director Zolton Zsurafszki has refrained from adding theatrical “refinements” and distortions. None was needed.””As for attitude, the members of this troupe performed with a candor that impressed far more than any glittering, Las Vegas revue”The Boston Globe, January 26, 2000 – Karen Campbell”These men play off the pulsating rhythms in the music with rhythms of their own…””The men seem to have ball bearings in their knees and ankles, as legs swivel and kick in sharp angles at fast speeds.””There is one especially fantastic stick dance resembling a Hungarian version of “Stomp”, in which pulsating rhythms of the sticks and heels send dust and testosterone flying in a powerful display of machismo.”The Daily Gazette (Schenectady), January 27, 2000 – Wendy Liberatore”But what made this particular fold program so luminous, and so distinct from other traditional music and dance shows, was how Artistic Director Zolton Zsurafszki cast it…””The program was fresh, too, in that there was a lot of improvisation.””…there was an honesty that is nearly impossible to capture in high-tech and highly polished folk tour groups.””…Zsurafszki himself leading the pack in a riotous, infectious and happily improvised finale.”Spectator Online, Durham, N.C., January 31, 2000 – John W. Lambert”The show was brilliant from a technical standpoint…””…the dance master himself giving a stunning display of intricate and demanding styles…””It was, in sum, a heart-warming evening of people-to-people diplomacy in which representatives of one culture demonstrated the best they have to offer to members of an other. In the process, many hearts were won, on both sides.”Chicago Sun Times, February 21, 2000 – Hedy Weiss”…rollicking performance…””Had the irresistible fiddlers continued playing, the whole thing might have turned into a giant party””The ensemble is a vivid, living treasury of the grand fold idiom of Central and Eastern Europe””And the company’s charismatic director-choreographer, Zoltan Zsurafszki, arrived for the finale to spice things up even further with his brilliant, seductive, wild-eyed dancing.””More improvisational and freewheeling in feel than the rigidly patterned routines of many similar folk companies…””At a time when the new nationalism often has negative connotations, this company is an example of its most positive face, something the audience at the Chicago Theater-abuzz with Middle European accents – only confirmed.”The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH., February 15, 2000 – Wilma Salisbury”…a colorful array of raucous-sounding folk instrument, the music sets the dancers stamping, stepping, singing and whirling at ever accelerating tempos.””…Zsurafszki brings the audience back to the present with a show of intricate solo dances that involve quick footwork and deep knee bends.”