“In my eyes, the original dances and the genuine values of other branches of folk art truly possess great worth. I would not wish to live as a half-person, interested only in dance. Folk art is connected to many areas of knowledge and requires a broad historical awareness; and whoever is drawn to history will inevitably become receptive to the issues of our own time. Among my friends there are beat musicians just as well as weavers, painters, musicians and woodcarvers. I had no family or other early encouragement in this direction; it was at the Institute that I was shaped into a dancer. And it was there, too, that I was given the desire for a full life. I admire and respect those village people whose everyday life is still interwoven with art: they dance, they make music, they work with their hands, and they know a thousand kinds of things. […] Perhaps one day I will be an artist myself. Like those I have just spoken of.”
So spoke the twenty-four-year-old Zoltán Zsuráfszky in 1980, in what was perhaps the very first interview of his life, published in Dél-Magyarország.
At the time of the interview, the young dancer-choreographer had already been a member of the Magyar Állami Népi Együttes (MÁNE, Hungarian State Folk Ensemble) for five years. He studied in the first graduating class of the folk dance specialisation at the State Ballet Institute [predecessor of today’s Hungarian University of Dance Arts]. Among his teachers were the renowned Katalin Györgyfalvay and Sándor Tímár. Together with his creative partner Zoltán Farkas, he created in 1978 the duet and full-length programme Párhuzam (Parallel). In 1983, they founded a group of young ensemble members under the same name within the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble.
He choreographed for the ÉDOSZ Dance Ensemble [an amateur ensemble historically linked to a workers’ cultural association in Szeged] and for the JATE Dance Ensemble [of the József Attila University in Szeged, now University of Szeged], with which he had been collaborating since 1975. By this time, he had already been holding the title Népművészet Ifjú Mestere (Young Master of Folk Arts [a state honour for emerging folk artists]) for three years.
By the early 1980s, Zsuráfszky had also gained considerable experience as a collector of folk dance, making use primarily of opportunities offered by extended rural tours. His field work included documentation among Roma communities in the Szatmár region, and the first sound film recordings in Gyimes [a Hungarian-inhabited region of the Eastern Carpathians], undertaken together with ethnographic filmmaker Gyula Pálfy. His research journeys to Poland, where he studied the traditions of the Górale [Polish highland communities], were reported in 1981 in the pages of Táncművészet [lit. Dance Art, a Hungarian professional journal focused on dance and choreography].
“Anyone who has collected folk dance or folk music knows that it is proper to sit and talk with the informants; but they cannot know that collectors must arrive punctually at the venue of their scheduled performance. More than once, therefore, we found ourselves arriving at stage rehearsals loaded with cameras, tape recorders, and film equipment.”
In 1983, the year of the formation of the Párhuzam group, Zoltán Zsuráfszky, now already working as a public cultural lecturer at the JATE University, recalled (again in Dél-Magyarország, in an interview by Erzsébet Sulyok)
“Before we joined the State Folk Ensemble, we compiled and performed several programmes built primarily from original dance material which presented the Hungarian and national minority dance heritage, yet took the form of stage productions. In these, we drew upon the traditions of the dance-house movement [the ‘táncház’ revival of the 1970s], we involved small folk bands, we included mostly our own choreographies, and followed a distinctive method of preparation and performance. […] For me, dance, collecting, transmission, and choreography – that is my whole life.”
The 1983–84 season proved extremely intense for Zsuráfszky, the recently departed member of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble. He assumed the artistic leadership of three ensembles: the JATE Dance Ensemble (until 1988); the Vidróczki Ensemble of Gyöngyös (until 1992); and the newly formed Kodály Chamber Dance Ensemble, established by dancers who had likewise left the State Folk Ensemble, and making its debut in Budapest in the autumn of 1984. The ensemble members articulated their aims as follows: “… the high-level interpretation and stage adaptation of original Hungarian folk dance and folk music; the maintenance of close contact with still-living forms of folk art; […] the teaching of folk dancers and the development of methods of instruction. The ensemble has developed an entirely new, distinctive repertoire that differs from other groups and embraces any initiative representing the most accomplished and representative achievements of the established dance-house movement.”
Writing about the Kodály Chamber Dance Ensemble and its leader on the occasion of this introductory performance, the dance critic Zsuzsa Kaán observed:
“Zsuráfszky gathered around him colleagues and musician-friends who understand and share his vision, organising a chamber ensemble that brings ‘original’ folk dance material to the stage, accompanied by original peasant folk music and in traditional costume; thereby openly demonstrating that approach to folk dance adaptation that his former master, Sándor Tímár, had taught him back at the State Ballet Institute. […] It was in this spirit that the debut production was created, which, fittingly, again received the title Parallel. Each of its numbers came from the work of recent years, yet the intimate singing of Márta Sebestyén, the virtuoso folk instrumental performance of Zoltán Juhász, and the accompaniment and independent instrumental sets of the Téka, Muzsikás, and Ökrös folk bands, alternating with the dances, created a lively, fresh, well-paced performance.”
“Zsura” and “Batyu”: the two central figures of the Kodály Chamber Dance Ensemble have been known throughout the profession by these nicknames ever since their joint creative-performer beginnings with Parallel. The double portrait written by dance critic and historian Zsuzsa Kővágó in 1986 in Új Tükör also bears their two names. The occasion was their receipt of the Dance Artist of the Year distinction of the Magyar Táncművészek Szövetsége (Association of Hungarian Dance Artists).
In the conversation – in which they also recalled their encounters and collaborations with Zoltán Kallós and György Martin (both key figures in twentieth-century Hungarian folk dance research and revival) – they described the beginnings of their work as follows:
“We wanted to prove that even as professionals we remained dancers of the same inner drive, that we dance with the same heart and spirit as they do (the amateur folk dancers – ed.), only perhaps a little better.”
Zsuráfszky’s production Egy mondat… (lit. One Sentence…), which received exceptional critical attention and featured dancers of the Kodály Chamber Dance Ensemble and the Vidróczki Ensemble, was presented at an unconventional venue, the Szkéné Theatre, (Budapest), during the International Meeting of Movement Theatres (IMMT). Zsuráfszky and the Kodály Chamber Dance Ensemble appeared at this theatre on several occasions in the late 1980s. Writing about this performance in Film Színház Muzsika in 1988, Kinga Jálics described Zsuráfszky’s stage presence as follows:
“There is faith in his gaze – and much more besides. Integrity and a steady assurance. A natural purity. No posturing. In him I felt most strongly that ‘straight-forwardness’ so characteristic of Hungarian folk dance. […] One is reminded of honest work, free of idle chatter and evasiveness.”
Not long after the foundation of the Kodály Chamber Dance Ensemble, the ensemble made its international debut. In 1988, with the assistance of Interkoncert [the Hungarian state concert agency of the period] and the Soros Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and with the approval of the World Federation of Hungarians, the twenty-member ensemble set out on a two-month tour of North America. By this time, the group had already established a permanent home in the Lágymányos Community Centre, Budapest. The extensive tour opened in New York and continued through numerous major cities across the United States and Canada. The dancers were accompanied by the Ökrös Ensemble and the singer Márta Sebestyén. Writing in the New York Times about their New York performance, the critic Jack Anderson observed:
“The choreographers employ traditional dance steps in original ways … It was a splendid evening, full of wild dances and deep reflection fused with enthusiasm.”
In 1991, Zoltán Zsuráfszky became the artistic director and choreographer of the Budapest Táncegyüttes (Budapest Dance Ensemble), founded in 1958. Among his predecessors had been such distinguished figures as the founder István Molnár, Antal Simon, Antal Kricskovics, and József Janek. Recalling the beginnings of his leadership in a 1995 interview with Lajos Márton Varga, given on the occasion of the ensemble’s tour of Japan, he stated:
“Together with László Kelemen, our musical director, we began in the autumn of 1991. […] We represent the mother-tongue level of music and dance culture, this was our starting point even when we presented works in what used to be called the dramatic choreographic form, such as our productions Betyárok (lit. Outlaws), Szabadság, szerelem… (lit. Liberty, Love…) or Földből való ember (lit. Man from the Earth). Physical strength, technique, and an assured familiarity with the types and dialects of Hungarian folk dance: this was the professional stake of the first eighteen months. And then, of course, all this must not only be mastered but made beloved.”
During the years that Zsuráfszky led the Budapest Dance Ensemble, which from 1998 until its closure functioned as the independent chamber ensemble of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble, he developed an extensive repertoire. Alongside large-scale productions presenting in representative form the parallel folk dance cultures of the Carpathian Basin (and also drawing upon the ensemble’s earlier repertoire), the stage also featured material drawn from his own research collections (the Élő Martin Archívum [lit. Living Martin Archive], referring to the legacy and field recordings associated with György Martin), as well as numerous performances aimed at the youngest generations.
“It is difficult to reach the point where the spectator buys the ticket and enters the theatre. One must now bring to the stage material that calls people in. I am willing to compromise up to a point, but there are things on which I cannot give way. I must persuade my dancers to come with me, that the struggle is worthwhile, even at the cost of financial sacrifice” – said Zsuráfszky in 2003, by then recognised as an Érdemes művész (Artist of Merit), in an interview with Gábor Margittai about his work at the Budapest Dance Ensemble.
In the early 2000s, the Ensemble continued its large-scale tours. In 2004, it embarked on a six-week tour of the United States together with Kálmán Balogh and his band, the Gipsy Cimbalom Band, performing their programme Gipsy Spirit at thirty-three venues, from Toronto to San Francisco. Four years earlier, they had toured stages across North America with their programme Csárdás (Csárdás, the Tango of the East).
The Budapest Dance Ensemble’s production Monarchia – Népek tánczai (Monarchy – Dances of the Nations), choreographed by Zoltán Zsuráfszky in 2007, presented the ethnic diversity of the Carpathian Basin – its neighbouring cultures and shared traditions – in a series of large, tableau-like stage scenes. Zsuráfszky articulated the artistic concept of the production in an interview with Éva Mikes, given in the year in which the independent Budapest Dance Ensemble ceased to exist (being incorporated into the Honvéd Táncszínház [Honvéd Dance Theatre]):
“Although each small nationality formed part of the Monarchy, each enjoyed an inner freedom. They lived side by side in peace, without harming one another. Then, around the time of the Millennium, governments changed, and strong nationalist politics took shape. Inner freedom, openness, acceptance, turned into a demand that everything become Hungarian – from language to education to the arts. That is to say, a great fracture occurred in what had been a beautiful arc. What we truly know of that era, through the works of our writers, is the gentry world, the life of the aristocracy. Yet we forget that alongside this there was János Bihari (1764–1827, an influential Hungarian Romani violinist and composer), the musicians, and the self-affirmation of Hungarian dance, from the palotás to the waltzes, polkas, and the Polish material. The csárdás and the Romanian dances all existed side by side.”
From 2007 to 2012, following the retirement of Ferenc Novák [a leading Hungarian folk dance choreographer and influential ensemble director], Zsuráfszky served as the artistic director of the Honvéd Dance Theatre. In a 2008 interview conducted by Eszter Veronika Kiss, he described his approach to leading the company:
“I consider it very important for the ensemble to have freedom, to be able to choose from its own repertoire and follow its own path, from authentic material through to more abstract dance-theatre works. […] An ensemble is not sustained solely by large productions, but by the everyday, Sisyphean labour of steady, sweaty work. Our work is based on the authentic folk art of the Carpathian Basin. This is a dance ensemble, not a group performing musicals or show entertainment. I want to preserve the roots, and even if an authentic programme were difficult to sell, I would still direct our energies toward showing the world that this truly is necessary.”
From the summer of 2012, Zoltán Zsuráfszky has served as artistic director of the Honvéd Együttes (Honvéd Ensemble), the umbrella organisation which encompasses the previous Honvéd Dance Theatre renamed in 2014 as Magyar Nemzeti Táncegyüttes (Hungarian National Dance Ensemble). In 2013, he directed and choreographed the Cluj-Napoca production of the rock opera István a király (Stephen, the King), performed on the occasion of the work’s 30th anniversary.
He expressed his thoughts on the art of dance in his message written for International Dance Day in 2010: “The pulse of dance, the splendour of an art that lives only in the moment, has already enchanted many, and it is difficult, often almost impossible, to break free from this enchantment. Once someone has been bound to it, no matter their age, they do not forget the freedom of movement, its beauty, the longed-for trials of practice, nor the happiness that crowns the success it yields.”
[2016]