The Polska

Historical context as inspiration for the transformation and augmentation of a living tradition

This work is grounded in the traditional Swedish folk music practice, spelmansmusik. Like many other traditional music cultures, spelmansmusik and dance are interconnected practices influenced by music and dance forms passed down and adapted over centuries across the European continent (Ramsten 2003; Gustafsson 2016). This relationship between dance and music has undergone ever-changing performance contexts: from sixteenth-century court dances; to rural ceremonial wedding dances; to the choreographed national-romantic ballets of the nineteenth century; the folk dance teams movement emerging in the twentieth century; the folk revival of the 1960s and 1970s seeking to reconnect dance with practices and repertoires of rural society; and the emergence of a dance house movement intending to revive a social dance practice linked to the ongoing revival in folk music. Today, the social folk dance practised with live music thrives at folk music festivals, fiddlers’ meetings (spelmansstämmor), and concert venues in the Nordic countries and exists in parallel to folk dance groups with more historically informed or staged folkloristic approaches (Nilsson 2011). With the folk music revival came a demand for courses and education, and since the mid-1970s, folk music performance programmes have been introduced at several higher music education institutions in Scandinavia. Folk dance has also been included in higher dance education in Sweden since the 1980s, which has led to the development of folk dance pedagogy and contemporary dance works by choreographers influenced by their background in folk dance (Öberg and Ruth 2023). 

The polska style

Most of today’s Swedish folk dances are based on documentation of single tradition-bearers recorded by amateur collectors during the twentieth century (Helmersson 2012). In 1947, fearing the local polska dance was dying out, dance enthusiasts Johan Larsson and Ingvar Norman gathered dancers and fiddlers for a documentary film (Video 1) in the small town of Orsa, Dalarna, Sweden. The film is a staging of a dance event in old times, in the old village hall and with all participants in traditional clothes. The purpose of documenting the dance practice can be noted by the camera gradually focusing on the dancers’ feet. The film is without sound, but the fiddler seen in the film — Gössa Anders Andersson (1878–1963) — is well documented in over one hundred recordings and is one of the twentieth century’s most influential musicians in Swedish folk music. The film’s seconds of joint dancing by the older couple Back-Kersti Eriksson (born 1886) and Erik Sköld (born 1873), together with the recordings with fiddler Gössa Anders are a great inspiration for this work — their timing, qualities of movement, tone and tonality. The polska didn’t stop with them, and their performance shines through layers of time, space, and later interpretations. These archive recordings represent performances with the recorded sound of Gössa playing and the visual recording of the dance. Our exploration of auditory and visual renderings of dancing and playing establishes an imaginary layer of how the dance in the historical film could have sounded and, conversely, how the sound of Gössa Anders’ playing could have been visualised.

Svikt

Scandinavian folk music researchers have highlighted the importance of understanding rhythm and metre in relation to movement. The concept of svikt plays a crucial role in this context. Svikt was first defined by Norwegian ethnomusicologist Blom (1981; 1993) as the vertical movements of the body’s centre of gravity resulting from the weight-carrying leg’s stretching and bending movements. Therefore, svikt patterns arise owing to the elasticity of the gait during the dancer’s footwork, and svikt cycles correspond to the rhythmic and metric elements of music and dance types such as waltz, polska, springar, and halling. Svikt has become a central concept for characterising Scandinavian folk dance styles and describing how dances connect to the music’s metre (Bakka 1991). Blom’s findings, based on his observations of Norwegian traditional dances like the Telespringar, have been replicated in studies using optical motion capture (Haugen 2014) and force plates that register the dancers’ steps (Mårds 1999). Such measurements are relevant for how svikt patterns can be attributed to musical beats (Kvifte 1999) and the physical experience of force and weight shifts during dancing.

Describing the dance

The following description of the polska dance is intended for understanding how the sonifications and visualisation connect to the mechanics of movement during the dance, and should not be interpreted as a definite account of how the dance should be danced, nor as valid ethnographic descriptions of this polska dance. The perspective is my own as a musician observing the dancers Ami Dregelid and Andreas Berchtold, for whom I play. To this end, I also include short phenomenological accounts of my experiences of these interactions. These include wordings borrowed from the dancers Dregelid and Berchtold, including my interpretations of terms invented by them. Video 2 of our performance, including mocap data animations, illustrates these descriptive accounts. 

Traditionally, the roles of couple dancers have often been related to gender. In contemporary social folk dance, gender-neutral terms that are more functional for understanding the joint effort in the couple are often used. In line with this, the following account uses the terms left dancer (LD) and right dancer (RD), decided by the dancer’s positions in the couple during the side-by-side promenade part of the dance. These positions correspond to the traditional terms kavaljer (male) and dam (female).

The dance consists of two main sections, promenade (försteg) and turning (omdansning), that the dancers alternate between.

Promenade — Försteg

The dancers walk side by side, arms holding, resting on each other’s shoulders or backs. They walk around the room in a larger circle, shifting their weight on beats one and three of the three-beat cycle of the polska. The walking results in a vertical oscillation, or bounce of the dancer’s centre of gravity — svikt. Between walking mainly with the left foot on beat one and the right foot on beat three, the right foot swings on its way towards beat three. This motion helps to articulate another svikt on beat two, resulting in three svikts for each measure. The dancer Ami Dregelid refers to this as swinging the ‘air-leg’ (luftben), the leg currently above the floor.

As a musician, I interpret svikt as the dancers articulating the beat by balancing their body gravity, just as the fiddler articulates the beat with balanced bow movements. Watching the svikt connects to the rhythmical timing of the music as played by Gössa Anders; the slight lift in each svikt before landing on the next step connects with up-beats in the music, e.g. in the short tone in long-short melody rhythms on the third beat of the polska; the dancers’ concise weight shifts with Gössa Anders’ clear articulation of the first beat; the small bounce on the second beat with the alert timing of the slightly asymmetric metre. This connection is somatic and immediate, felt in how the arm weight relates to up–down bowing in accordance with the gravity of the dancing body and as a cue for the articulation and timing of notes.

Turning — Omdansning

The dancers rotate or spiral forward around a shared axis, face to face but slightly side-shifted, holding with both arms around the partner’s back and upper arms. The dancers turn a full circle in one measure, alternating stepping on each of the music’s three beats (LD steps on beats two and three and RD on beats three and one). The svikt pattern in the rotation differs from the promenade, with two svikt per measure instead of three. The first svikt describes one vertical oscillation during beats one and two, and the second svikt is faster, with one down–up movement during beat three. The turning takes the form of a springing rotation, with the dancers taking turns stepping forward and backward around each other. When one dancer takes a step, the other follows the rotation, standing on the heel or ball of the foot. Although the dancers have different stepping patterns, both the rotation and svikt is thereby synchronised as if the dancers are forming one unit — what Dregelid calls a four-legged dance-animal (dansdjur). The turning follows the metre so that the second beat is articulated through an acceleration of rotation speed.

The intricate movements involved in the turning are fascinating to watch. There are many layers of movements to follow, such as the feet, legs, backs, shoulders, and heads. One can choose to follow one dancer’s movement or watch the couple as a unit. One particular step pattern involves an accelerating left foot on the second beat by the left dancer, followed by a firm landing on the one by the right dancer. The view changes based on the dancers’ proximity, direction, and angle as they move towards, away from, closer to, or further away from the observer in the room. The physicality in the shifting provides the turning with a firm resoluteness of bodies with real weight moving and pushing their balance. It creates a feeling of unstoppable thrusting, throwing, and catching, yet with a delicate balance. The continuous movement offers many entry points to connect the phrasing of the music to the ongoing rotation. This way of rotation inspires firm note and beat articulations using distinct bow speed and direction changes.