Poetry in Dance
The stag is a universally recognised, archaic cultural-historical symbol, whose annually renewed antlers represent eternal return. The stag, standing by the gate to a golden path, beckons us to follow him into our own spirit world. He is the demon, the shaman, the wizard, the fairy, the King of the Dead, able to call any hunter into another world, a new world.
We, the hunters of the 21st century, who are hoping to traverse the void from subordination to freedom, experience the Song of the Stag as a mythical memory. Thirsting, we look to the heavens for the images of earthly stories and occurrences, that through them, we might enter our own sacred spaces. In order to cross that symbolic bridge, we must leave behind what we know: our homes, our loved ones, our people. They may bear witness to our transformation when we return, having evoked the old rituals and found ourselves reborn.
The tales told here are of the quest of humankind, its ever-changing condition, its desires, the metamorphoses of man and woman, the turning points of heart and mind, the state that exists between death and rebirth, timelessness. What sustains the shared roots sleeping deep within us is walked in the steps of a dance, is written in lyric phrases, is sung in choral song. Is remembered. Is pronounced.
For change is a gift, the path to discovering ourselves, the hope of finding our place in the universe!
Death, birth, transformation, love, time, and faith: all are eternal human questions. So that humanity might gain the ability to recreate itself, “it will nevermore drink from cups and jugs but from the clearest springs.” The Beginning and the End are one: it is this dramatic quality that breeds the strength to sustain our past, encoded in our folklore, as our only hope of redemption and spiritual renewal.
With the creative strength of poetic dance, with the theatrical truth of the motion of birth and death, we proclaim a tale of sacred transubstantiation, of finding strength in faith, and, as heirs of the poet Attila József, of the communal soul that pervades the world:
„It drinks from the waters of the sky,
Light emanating from its glinting antlers–
The reflection of its pronged glory,
Is the universe of stars eternal.”
The performance is a joint production of the Hungarian Heritage House, the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble and the National Dance Theatre.