The csardas folk dance caused quite a stir 200 years ago in Central Europe, according to the Hungarian expert Kalman Dreisziger. Perhaps all those skirt-swirling women and boot-slapping men brought uncomfortable visions of lusty Gypsies to aristocratic minds more accustomed to waltzes and polkas.
Times have changed. On Sunday afternoon the csardas (pronounced CHAR-dash), now much beloved, had a homespun feel as performed by the Budapest Ensemble from Hungary, directed and choreographed by Zoltan Zsurafszki. The two-hour program at Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx did not quite live up to its jazzy title: "Csardas! The Tango of the East." According to program notes, the performance took the form of a "play-party" game in which a boy and girl enact an arduous courtship. A girl is kidnapped and her suitor searches for her high and low as she endures wild, masculine dancing and rough treatment with his rival. Eventually, he finds her and the game ends, much as it began, with much merriment.
On Sunday, the overamplified musicians, on-and-off soundtrack and a fitful smoke machine detracted from the effect of casual revelry. But the strongest passages transmitted a sense of improvisation. In one scene, the suitor wandered into a Gypsy camp. Brightly attired women sat in a circle while the men lolled on benches. (As is often the case in folk dancing, sex dictated activity.) Singing guttural melodies and pounding out rhythms on whatever was handy, from their bodies to jugs, the male dancers evoked the impromptu drumming circles that dot Prospect Park on weekends. The women joined the fray, twirling around so their skirts belled out, and the men swiveled their hips and kicked out their legs in rapid patterns. One got a sense of the wild energy that proved so unsettling centuries ago.
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