praxis theory

Ethnicity, Authenticity, and Politics of Presentational Ukrainian Dance in Canada

I have the feeling that this epigraph should be in a footnote or some other inconspicuous place, hidden under a layer of heady academia. But here it is - feel free to skip ahead if Marta Savigliano was enough to fill your experimental-methods-coffer. Before I begin my analysis of Ukrainian Canadian dance performance, I will forewarn you of some failures in this text. For some unspeakable (un-writable?) reason, I cannot seem to balance my theoretical pursuits with my innate urges toward expressive creativity. The effect is a series of grand conclusions that seem neither scholarly nor artistic, and at times, disjointed. When I read my own analysis, I cannot help but hear my own text as something that James Earl Jones would read as a voiceover for Nature on PBS. It fails to convey the addictive instability and excess I find in cultural dance performance. It fails to take the reader to a place of authenticity - the place where I try and try and try again to find the ethnic experience, only to find static ideology/terminology/pedagogy/other-ogy. In the end, I have not decided if this is a fault of my own or of the dances I seek to explicate. Maybe I am drawn to those dances which closely mirror my own inability to expand beyond the scaffolding of stagnant method and contrived expression. For now, I would encourage the reader to accept the following PBS melodrama as my sincere effort to start tackling ideas that are still currently swollen seeds in my brain matter.

Cue sunrise over the Saharan Desert…

Afternoon at the Outside Stage

The performance starts with the traditional Slavic offering of bread and salt. Colorfully-clad dancers float toward the audience on graceful footfalls, melting into a deep, ceremonious bow that moves in time to the proud horn melody playing from tall speakers. The two female presenters are meticulous in their presentational courtesy - they bow with flat backs and cocked heads, careful to hold the offering platters parallel to the floor. They flash trained smiles for a crowd that may include seasoned dance enthusiasts or hungry first-graders mistaking the symbolic demonstration of hospitality for a late-afternoon snack. (Of course, this excludes those first-graders closest to the front of the stage who notice that the bread is actually some specimen of airbrushed prop and the bowl of salt is glued stiff.) But before the second row can steal a closer look at the peculiarly solid mound of salt, a throng of be-ribboned dancers have thoroughly upstaged the cheerful presentation. The music changes to a light, flitting flute melody. Hopak begins.

The women circle the stage performing bihunets - quick, grounded leaps separated by two small runs. The blue, yellow, red, orange, and green ribbons trail down from the floral wreaths in their hair, flying and whipping along with the commotion. The men join in, dancing with exaggerated masculine energy in their chests and arms. For both parties, the movement is at once rigid and fluid. The dancers’ torsos are balletically upright, but theirs leaps remain low to the ground creating a flux of swirling patterns. Then suddenly, the circular flow transforms into the precise geometric placement of a drill team. The dancers are in a deep V-shape around a male soloist. He kicks and spins and bounces and flips. The dancers “yeeep!” and “opaaa!” like natives, frozen in their pose. But as suddenly as the shape emerged on stage, it folds in on itself to become part of the eddy again. The next aquiline formation features a different soloist. This time, it is a female performer. She turns rapidly on her heel, spotting toward the audience. She flicks her feet and plays with her ribbons, ending with a triple-pivot and curtsy. A solitary “hup!” and the performers are back to bihunets.

So the pattern continues: corps, soloist, corps, soloist. The spectacle becomes more spectacular and the tricks trickier. The finale garners a polite, if not enthusiastic, standing ovation. The audience acknowledges the tradition of virtuosity and spectacle that is hopak. However, an old couple sitting near the center have never seen hopak feature female soloists. Teens standing on the sidelines notice also that the first solo had elements of hip hop. And an inconspicuous ethnochoreologist has known all along that this choreography was little more than Russian ballet. In fact, many traditional performances at this Ukrainian dance festival are not actually direct imports of the motherland. After all, we are in Alberta.

Introduction

The Ukrainian diaspora represents one of the largest ethnic minorities in modern Canada. The largest wave of immigration occurred around the turn of the 19th century, and most Ukrainian Canadians are third and fourth generation descendants of this time period.

Accordingly, Ukrainian Canadian identity has had time to develop into a richly distinct collection of Old World traditions and New World attitudes. Ukrainian dance has been an especially important feature of this development, remaining a vibrant custom within community and family life. Ukrainian Canadians are well known for a wide range of traditional dance pursuits, including a lively social dance scene and a number of major performing companies. Nahachewsky notes that “Ukrainian dance has become quite well recognized by the Canadian population as a whole, and Ukrainian stage dance is popular particularly among the third and fourth generation of Ukrainian Canadians.”

However, both stage and social forms of Ukrainian folk dances in Canada have adapted to represent a new ethnicity that is a hybrid of both nations. Nonetheless, members of the diaspora associate Ukrainian identity with these forms despite evolution. Indeed, Nahachewsky finds that certain dances have become increasingly associated with Ukrainian identity despite having underwent the greatest mutation in their Canadian environment.

Nahachewsky goes on to discuss the phenomenon of “new ethnicity” as a way to classify the mutated forms in terms of well-established folk dance pedagogy that does not account for the amalgamation of cultural origin. He writes, “New ethnicity refers to later generational persons and groups who consciously choose to claim this ethnicity and both privately and publicly incorporate ethnically defined cultural practice.”

Nahachewsky’s distinction gives rise to several gnawing questions - the kind bound to come up in an any ethnographic essay. How can we reconcile the concept of new ethnicity with the politically- and socially-charged concept of authenticity? Must authenticity extend beyond the definition of ethnicity? If so, what is the relationship between authentic identity and ethnic identity?

A Brief Comparative History

Ukrainian dances most associated with Ukrainian ethnic identity in Canada (like hopak and kozachok) have little connection to the immigration wave of the late 19th century. Early Ukrainian immigrants did not bring these dances; rather, they became part of the community dance repertoire after the arrival of Ukrainian dance instructor, Vasyl Avramenko.

Also known as the Father of Ukrainian Dance in Canada,

Avramenko trained under the direction of Vasyl Verkhovynets, famed ballet master and musicologist credited with the transformation of the central Ukrainian style into an iconic national form following his choreography of hopak.

Like Verkhovynets, Avramenko channelled the nationalistic themes of Ukrainian peasantry in his stylized renditions of Cossack-style dance. Indeed, Nahachewsky observes that “these stage dance forms […] were very strongly linked to international European theatrical standards and fashions of that time.” Nevertheless, the “staged dance performances came to function as very focused, intense symbols of ethnicity, […] presented as more truly Ukrainian than the dances the pioneer immigrants brought with them.”

It is important to note that presentational Ukrainian dance in Canada developed after the wave of European folk arts enthusiasm that emerged alongside a number of völkisch movements in the West

during the latter half of the 19th century. When Nahachewsky refers to the “standards and fashions of that time,” he recalls the nationalist and imperialist political bents of the era. With that in mind, we may better understand the development of Ukrainian Canadian dance in comparison to the politico-social aspects of the folk-stage forms that developed in Ukraine itself.

One year before Avramenko came to Canada, the Soviet Union annexed Ukraine (among several other eastern European nations) under its first official constitution. Immediately following the event, the Kremlin utilized its newfound cultural diversity to experiment in the field of “virtual tourism.”

The Soviet government went on to commission an impressive number of curators, choreographers, and composers to develop the Soviet folk arts. One commissioned production was the State Folk Dance Ensemble of the Ukrainian SSR. However, according to Mary Grace Swift’s account, the Ensemble was merely a reproduction of Verkhovynets’ balletic interpretation of central Ukrainian dances.

The already technical form was a natural selection for Soviet cultivation. Under Soviet oversight, the central Ukrainian style became synonymous with all Ukrainian styles and the overall technique more balletic. In fact, the State Folk Dance Ensemble became like any other specialized “national ballet” troupe which the Kremlin produced specifically as “a convenient focal point from which to examine the type of original ballet that the government and Party encouraged among [its] national groups.”

As such, the Ensemble’s technical performances displayed those same themes of peasant revolution, satisfied workers, and civilized progress as its co-contemporary, the Russian Ballet.

Examining the dance phenomena of Ukrainian Canada alongside Soviet cultivation of dance in Ukraine proves a thought provoking dilemma in terms of ethnic identity. While there is no evidence to suggest that Avramenko imported any explicitly political themes in his repertoire, both his dance legacy and its Soviet counterpart have roots in the same politically-influenced technique of the imperial era. The heavily stylized Ukrainian dances that have become a potent symbol of the Ukrainian diaspora developed simultaneously as propaganda in their birthplace. Under authoritarian rule, the presentational dance forms adapted easily to Soviet political agendas. Yet in democratic Canada, the same dances were readily accepted as social identifiers. Hopak in the Ukrainian SSR was a representation of Soviet ideals - a blatant tool of propaganda. On the other hand, hopak in western Canada was an expression of the immigrant community, devoid of governmental initiative or oversight. In true democratic fashion, the dance developed according to the dictates of the diaspora itself. Indeed, many choreographies became part of a social dance repertoire independent of Avramenko’s instruction. Nahachewsky comments on one example:

The motifs for this dance were clearly from second existence stage dances and performed by trained revivalist dancers, but this kolomyika was performed in a participatory context. Participants improvised in terms of who stepped into the circle to perform these fancy steps, and in what order they were performed. Elements of stage dance had “descended” back down from the proscenium to become part of social dance again in a new dance form.

Although most presentational forms remained ultimately on the stage,

their popularity and iconic status among Ukrainian Canadians never diminished.

Thus, our dilemma: presentational styles in the Ukrainian SSR were undeniably far removed from the citizens they claimed to represent,

but the same dances were enthusiastically claimed and developed by Ukrainian immigrants in Canada. It is not hard to see the artifice in Soviet propaganda, but how can we see Ukrainian Canadian dance through the same lens of contrived technique and imposed culture when it was and is readily embraced by the people it does not seem to represent authentically?

Voilà: the question of authenticity.

The Question of Authenticity and Conscious Choice

Nahachewsky syncretizes the question of ethnicity versus authenticity by assigning the paradigm of new ethnicityto those cultural identifiers which have evolved from the original concept, but remain consciously chosen as identifying symbols. One might think (as Nahachewsky seems to) that a conscious decision to claim new identifiers can solve the problem of authenticity, given that authenticity relies on the integrity of representation. If members of a community are conscious of a tradition’s deviation from the original but choose to embrace it still, who are we - outsiders, spectators, intruders - to determine if the tradition is sufficiently representative? However, he does not discuss fully the implications of the “conscious choice.” Individuals may choose which cultural symbols to represent their ethnicity, but that choice is inevitably linked to the political and social conditions in which the decision is made. Thus, consciousness is a subjective state.

The Ukrainian Canadians that chose to adopt the presentational Ukrainian forms made that decision in a democratic setting. In western Canada, the nationalist themes and imperialized technique of the folk-stage style lost the political volatility it would have otherwise retained and fostered in Soviet Ukraine. While Canadians may have been conscious of the dance form’s history of cultivation and its limited geographical representation, they were not likely concerned with ideology connected to the movement. For the diasporic community, the gestures that recounted the labors of harvest or the rituals of spring were merely codified relics, recalling simple narratives of the past. Yet in reality, the choreographed gestures of hopak and kozachok contained potent ideas about gender and class, directly influenced by the folk revival of the 19th century. In turn, these same theories that bolstered the folk movement lent momentum to the totalitarian movements of the 20th century.

The dilemma about the authenticity of Ukrainian ethnicity associated with presentational dance must hinge on whether the dance forms have preserved the ideology that influenced its origin. To be authentically representative, a new ethnicity must be drawn from objective consciousness - however, cultural consciousness is subjective. Subjective consciousness, i.e. politically-influenced consciousness, must necessarily affect the collective decision to adopt or reject certain ethnic identifiers. In the case of Ukrainian Canada, the democratic setting may have guided the decision to adopt and cultivate the excessively ideological stage dance forms without recognition of their underlying potential for political instrumentation in an authoritarian setting. The clear class- and gender-based ideologies lacked the fertile foundation in which to take root and develop accordingly. Again, the question of authentic representation lies in whether or not the dance movement retains these ideologies over time. Dance that maintains the imperialist ideological roots in its movement could not be authentically representative of a democratically-motivated diaspora.

Or could it?

Either way, we must first discuss the phenomenon of preserving ideology.

Diaspora as Archive

Any discussion of a ideology maintained and transferred through diaspora leads back to the question of the definition of diaspora itself. In “Spaces of Dispersal,” Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett describes the two “entanglements” (using Handler’s terminology) associated with the concept.

First, there is the entanglement of the diaspora’s historical formation and the actual diasporic experience; second, there is the entanglement of our own analysis and practice.

Can we cut the connection between a diaspora’s roots and the customs that develop within the framework of the diasporic community? Furthermore, can we remove the diasporic experience from our own analysis of such? If we were to remove the acquired cultural context of our own discourse, “we would dismantle the very structure of our academic institutions, built as they are around departments of national languages and literatures and supported in many cases by foreign governments - Italy, France, Germany, Greece - through national ‘houses.’”

The conflict inherent in the concept of diaspora and our analysis of it conveniently lends itself to the concept of imported dance. When a culture is removed from the site of its origin, we can observe its deviations over time in reference to the original. We can see the physical changes of Ukrainian dance in Canada compared to Ukrainian dance in Ukraine and the Ukrainian SSR. In the Canadian context, we see the increase of Ukrainian dance schools and community dance events. We see more of the female dancer - more soloists, more virtuosas. We see the presentational styles “descend” to the participational level again. However, it is what we cannot see on the surface that matters for the question of authenticity. We cannot see the 19th century village festival. We cannot see motherhood, wifehood, daughterhood in the female performances. We cannot see beyond the barrier of imposed choreography, whether participatory or presentational. In effect, we see the site of export and the site of import, but not the site of origin. In the balletically stylized Canadian Ukrainian dance form, there is a remarkably frustrating entanglement of European history and Canadian experience. Frustrating more is the inability to dismantle the Eurocentric understanding of ballet and appreciation of democratically developed art forms from the objective to find the “real” Ukrainian-ness behind each bihunet.

Now, connecting this strain of thought to the previous section. If the Canadian collective is conscious of the ideology contained in the dance movement (among other aspects) and choose nonetheless to adopt it as part of their new ethnicity, the movement should be authentically representative. However, I might argue that the Western understanding of ballet as acultural combined with the democratic enthusiasm for representation creates a blind spot in the Canadian (perhaps North American?) mind’s eye concerning the question of ideology. The result is an inability to see the dogma inherent in the diasporic experience. Perhaps the question of authenticity here is much more than the genealogy of bihunets and hopak. Rather, the question of authenticity lies in the diaspora as a tool of blind preservation. Maybe it is not the bihunets in hopak that retains 19th century ideas but the diaspora itself. More specifically, it might be the diaspora’s inability to perceive its own ideology that ultimately preserves the ideology in the codified movement of presentation.

Here, the dances become a lens through which can ethnographer can identify the ethnographic texts which cannot be read directly in the pages of history. Analysis of the seemingly ephemeral ethnographic object reveals the ideology stuck in the folds of innovation and evolution. Underneath the conscious adoption of ethnicity lies the cultural subconscious. Thus, utilizing dance performance as an ethnographic text unearths the elements of ethnic authenticity. Moreover, it legitimizes claims about such.

Dance as Language of the Diasporic Subconscious

In terms of function, the most traditional of dance mimics the role of primitive language in the generation of representative ethnic identifiers or symbols. The symbolism functions on a basic level, becoming a foundation for higher symbolic development. Like Ernst Cassirer’s account of language and its relation to symbolism, participational dance emerges simultaneously with the form of myth and evolves into the “higher form” of performance art soon after.

It is important to note that Cassirer’s process closely mirrors Vico’s poetic development of language. In view of this, original dance is equivalent to the first stage of Vico’s account—the language of proverb and folklore. As such, traditional dance becomes more than progenitor of other symbolic forms. Vico claims that proverbs and folklore indicate “a mental language common to all nations, which uniformly grasps the substance of things feasible in human social life.”

In other words, early language is an expression of sensus communis, the underlying communal agreements that create the foundations of a culture.

Primitive traditional dance is thus a pure expression of sensus communis. It is both a foundation for the development of symbolism and the origin of authentic cultural community. The art forms that emerge from the original expression of sensus communis belong to a genealogy of ethnic authenticity. In the case of Canada, the genealogy of Ukrainian dances leads back to Vasyl Avramenko. Avramenko branches from the work of Vasyl Verkhovynets, which stems from the genre of character ballet. While certainly influenced by the traditions of the Cossacks in central Ukraine, the iconic balletic technique has most of its roots in France, Russia, and Italy. Based on this genealogical chart, presentational Ukrainian dance is not based on the expression of the Ukrainian sensus communis. In this regard, the Canadian Ukrainian repertoire lacks authenticity.

However, it is important to remember that the sensus communis exists in the collective subconscious. The origin of ethnicity as a communal expression is not the product of a conscious decision - hence the distinction of new ethnicity. The traditions that individuals and groups within a culture choose to adopt only become part of the collectivity by the implicit adoption of the whole community. In Canada, the descent of Ukrainian dance from the stage to the village back to the stage may evidence subconscious collective thought at work. The conscious decision by some to claim presentational choreographies became a subconscious decision to incorporate those same choreographies into a participational setting, redeveloping them into performance once more. Does the widespread cultural embrace of these dances then demonstrate a rebirth of authenticity?

I propose that the concept of new ethnicity is part of a fluid scale of ethnicity that the voice of the cultural dance articulates over time. The presentational dances performed at Canadian Ukrainian festivals today may be more representative of its community than those same dances performed eighty years ago on a government stage. The fact that the dances have evolved to become part of the sensus communis

indicates a certain level of ethnic authenticity. At the same time, however, the diaspora preserves subconsciously the manifestations of 19th century ideology, limiting the extent to which we can consider the dances a pure expression of Ukrainian-ness. Nonetheless, these elements of inauthenticity do not diminish the dances from evolving to become ethnic symbols of Ukrainian Canada. New ethnicity becomes a stage of ethnicity, a scale on which authenticity varies but remains visible in cultural performance.

Authenticity becomes more than a function of representation. Rather, it is its own variable in the gray space which is ethnicity.

Fortunately, performance offers a readable text through which we can access the diasporic subconscious - although fragmentary, perhaps the purest source of the ethnic experience. A final note:

A history of the poetics of the fragment is yet to be written, for fragments are not simply a necessity of which we make a virtue, a vicissitude of history, or a response to limitations on our ability to bring the world indoors. We make fragments.

Concluding Thoughts

I have yet to determine if my thesis about ethnicity and authenticity applies to cases of presentational dance in a different setting, much less to participational dance forms. I am not dissatisfied with my efforts, but I know that I could expand my ideas. For the time being, let me restate my case:

Because of the highly stylized nature of presentational Ukrainian dance, there are questions about its authenticity as an ethnic symbol.
To complicate the matter, this dance form has proliferated in Canada. The presentational forms have evolved, but are seen as more “Ukrainian” than the participational forms brought by the earliest immigrants.
Ukrainian Canadians have consciously chosen to adopt certain traditions, knowing that they deviate from the original. However, cultural tradition remains largely a matter of the subconscious.
We can access the subconscious through analyzing performance as language. The diaspora speaks to us through its performance. For instance, dances of the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora may indicate an ideological blind spot preserved in the diaspora’s subconscious.
Ultimately, we find a fluid scale of ethnicity in which authenticity is a variable. Representation and authenticity may not be synonymous terms.
The fragments about ideology and history that we glean from analyzing performance help us better understand authenticity in relation to ethnicity, consciousness, and the diasporic experience.
We see both authentic and inauthentic elements in the history and politics of Ukrainian Canadian dance, depending on how we define the relationship of authenticity and representation.

That concludes this week’s episode. Stay tuned for a word from our sponsors. All programming depends on the support of viewers like you. Thank you.

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