Abstract

This text addresses the issue of Polish national dances as a cultural canon, taking account of the origins, determining features and key moments of that canon and also how it has evolved. The question of national dances, present in Europe for more than three centuries, has been considered by Polish scholars studying the history and provenance of dance since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and by musicologists since the end of that century. Stanisław Głowacki set dance within the context of cultural canons, and Mieczysław Tomaszewski numbered it among the media through which nationality can be expressed. For the purposes of this article, I have employed the concept of the cultural canon elaborated by Andrzej Szpociński, understood as a renewable part of tradition bearing non-dance content and binding for all the members of a community or society.

I discuss primarily the development of the cultural canon and the first genres of national dance (polonaise, mazur and cosaque). I then turn my attentions to the change that occurred around the turn of the nineteenth century, as a result of which the cosaque was eliminated from the canon and replaced by the krakowiak. I go on to discuss the incorporation of the kujawiak and the oberek in the canon and unsuccessful attempts made to promote highland dances as part of the canon. I indicate the significance of the functions of national dances, changes to which have usually brought about modifications to the canon as well (the significance of the performance of a polonaise during the age of absolutism and of national dances in the pre-Romantic and Romantic era, changes in dance genres at the start of the twentieth century, and the transferral of national dances to education and to stage performance). Auxiliary terms included stereotype, myth and phantasm.