Back to the activities in the Culture Center of Valmiera city and being concerned about it, today I started going to the event called "Kad gadiem es pāri skatos": an act theatre involving latvian folk dance performances; said dances regarded mostly about the process of flirting and mating couples dating in the ancient ages of Latvia...
Seriously, I said in previous articles that many of the folk dances in Latvia regard always couple dancing, dancing in couples between groups of males and females in different compasses going closer and farer over and over again, making a group of dancers paired each other. And here, as being a theatre work, it involves a story, a tale and a context to tell; thus giving the context for said dances and performances, the latvian dances.
This is NOT something to criticize nor complain about (and actually...I like it. I was even slightly involved during Līgo´s holidays dancing in pairs and enjoying every second of it, happily...). BUT anyway! It´s just a characteristic I point, that´s it.
Considering that event was for free it was a quite nice time spent in learning more, or refreshing, about the latvian folk dancing, and singing too. It´s strange if there´s one day a latvian dance performance with no singing involved in some moment, another fact to note, despite is quite known as even in the acme of the latvian folk historical events, the Song and Dance Celebration, as we can see by the name, dancing and singing are by hand.
Good thing is to see latvian dancing with context, as I said, in the form of a theatre play where the story involves a group of young locals during the pre-Brishop Albert of Riga times. You know, for that time, populations in the towns of the old Latvia territory weren´t too populated
(still they aren´t) so every group of people was more developed as a "community" way of life, more concentrated than the spanish towns in the Middle Ages by far. Here, the story of these young guys were about, as far as I was able to correctly understand and be 100% sure that I didn´t lose in translation anything, about the love stories between each other, focusing in one particular maiden and the fight for her love between two men, with squabbles we will see now. Never was easy to have love affairs:
The dance performances, varied and following the pattern I said before. Oh! I forgot to mention, when there´s one gender starting...
...usually the other gender accomplishes the rest of the song.
The theatre play itself in a simple scenary. Anyway, the remarkable thing are the costumes, the fancy latvian folk costumes.
Some parts going of the act playing throught the terraces. I still complain by my horrible camera (I will complain about it until the end; the end of its use, I mean)
The protagonist couple making several rites to declare themselves in a relationship.
Fog effects included! I never knew about the existence of a smoke machine in the center!
People had bad drinking habits by that time; something that the future generations have tried to keep it very well.
...And depressions too.
Sometimes the play turned like a latin soap opera, thought. Not my favourite turn-out.
More fog!!
Waiting in the pier in an eerie scenary while meditating about anguish by love...or because of existential crisis. I cannot assure which one actually was but the scene was worth to see.
And by the end there flowers for thanks! Because there´s always flowers to give! And also there was a last song as well, a last singing will.
After a 20 minutes break the show went on, but however the performance changed dramatically: now it was time for a third age concert in a cozy, more restaurant-esque style with the tables and chairs. I think this was actually the event regarding today. Looking "past the years", as the title suggest, I´m not sure if it´s looking back about the ancient folk dances or about the senior people making a concert regarding songs at least older than me (I´m not good in the latvian music from 50 years to present):
Not to mention that this second part of the event was a complete different staging from the previous act. I´ve got to say but I like more the "first part" (I´m starting to worry about that I think I focus a lot on latvian folk music and dancing when talking about culture, as it´s the favourite genre of culture people like. Got to say, with reason people like it most).
Like this part was completely different. Honest.
