Berlin, Warsaw and Krakow - part 3, Krakow - folk dancing

We felt more at home in Krakow straight away. This is because most of the city stayed intact in the war, and it feels right; it feels like a liveable, cultured, parks-and-libraries kind of environment. For example, all around the old town, the walled city, there is a park. We had a picnic lunch there one day and then stayed for a beer. There are so many people about! Mums' groups with toddlers and pushchairs, old ladies walking and chatting, people reading books and magazines, young people texting away and meeting their friends - it seems to be a happy city. In the park there are statues and flowers and fountains and loads of benches. There is a big display about Pope Francis' visit to Poland.

While we were walking to get to our hotel, we stopped to hear a concert in the park - some sort of competition - and we realised that something Warsaw lacks, in our experience, is music - street music.

We have noticed Poles reading in cafes and pubs. I always notice people reading. It seems to be quite usual to go out and read in public - nobody thinks it is somehow sad - (except A.).

We gate-crashed a folk festival in Krakow - went past a big hall and heard the music, so we went to see what was happening. I took some notes.  - "One act follows another. The current troop is children dressed in shades of beige - girls in dirndl skirts and beige blouses, boys in beige waistcoats and trousers. Lots of twirling and running on the spot. Next lot - girls in red bodices, circlets of flowers and plaits. Pairing off and rushing about in a circle. Clapping in pairs. My ex boyfriend would have called it an "effing FERTILITY rite" in a particularly revolted way. The beige troop is a bit more go-ahead - different music and more original moves. However, it looks a bit bonkers. They are like "little primitives" - imagine the Rite of Spring to bagpipe music.

"Lady in flowered blouse, on stage with a mic, announcing the scores? The next act? lots of applause for the kids and their dancing instructor. A boy on his own! Mad leaping and slapping of legs. Kicking legs up and clapping (men). Looking on (women). Slight twirling of dirndls. Then two young men, leaping and slapping and twisting around like you would NOT BELIEVE. They go past us later, heads dripping with sweat.

"The communists kept all this folk culture alive - made it compulsory, probably, and it is really lovely to see it continue of its own volition. But the audience is not as interested as it might be.

"This must be the way farmers showed they were "fit" for courting purposes. The women have a more passive role in the dances. The female role is - serene. A man would value a correctly twirling, serene woman wearing neat plaits and nicely-made skirts and aprons.

"Flowery lady is making more announcements. We don't know what it's about. It's ten to ten. Is it time to go? No! Here comes a traditional band from another region. Blue and white flag this time. It's Greece! with live music! Accordion and clarinet. Drum. Loads of dancers. Dancers in lines. End dancers twirling hankies. Men wear white trousers with SKIRTS and red cummerbunds - black waistcoats, white shirts, black small hats. Men have some sort of gartered socks. The women wear white petticoats with fancy grey coat dresses. on top. They have gold patterns marking their haunches from behind. They wear white hair-coverings and black hats. They twist gaily and uniformly to and fro. I think this is meant to be a round dance but they have to squash it into a long, thin circle because they are on a long, thin stage. The music is absolutely dreadful. (I have a sound file.) In this dance the man on the end of the line does all the dancing - very complicated steps. Now the girls hold hands in a line and do the same dance - End girls have extra moves - hankie twirling. It reminds me of those flamingos which make lines in which to perform stylised "dances". This group has a few screamy fans.



"Somebody has won a trophy! Much applause. More prizes. More applause! We think EVERYBODY is going to win a prize! The announcer is speaking English - a prize for Estonia! Lithuania has a prize! So has Hungary! All prize winners are now lined up across the stage. Some are in national costume, some are not. It looks like a scene from "Shrek". Or Jack and the Beanstalk. The Greeks are back on stage! The kids are on stage! The Greeks teach everybody their slow "Zorba" dance. Back to the audience. The pace is mounting. boys and girls jostling and not getting the hang of it."

Good fun!

Modern Times

When we were children there was a TV show on Saturday nights which showed clips from silent movies. Usually the extracts just showed one comic sequence from a longer film. Last night we went to see the whole of Modern Times, a Charlie Chaplin film, which was an hour and a half long, the longest silent film (apart from The Artist) I have ever seen. The sound track was played live by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The film was an anachronism - made in 1936 when other directors had long abandoned silence and mime - but Chaplin believed his Tramp character just wouldn't work with dialogue. It also tells a tale of American life during the Depression era - unemployment and strikes, hunger and theiving, abandoned children.

It was Chaplin's story. His early life, his London childhood, was terrible, as bad as it could possibly be, with a father who abandoned his mother, his parents having at first made an uncertain living on the stage, the mother becoming unemployable and the children having to go into  the workhouse, and the mother eventually sinking into madness. The father became an alcoholic.

 Charlie was nearly always on his own; he was a street child like the character Goddard plays in Modern Times. He joined a troupe of boy dancers who went around the music halls doing clog dancing. So he survived, and then worked up a comedy act of his own.

He was clearly a talented dancer! The way he moves during the sequence where he goes mad with spanners in his hands is beautiful - it tells of a sensitive nature being wounded by brainless, repetitive work, which is exactly what he wants to say.

Then there is an amazing sequence of blindfolded roller-skating, too, graceful and thrilling.

The joy of dancing is an individual joy, and this individuality is what the Tramp cannot surrender. Here he goes into the men's room to have a smoke, but the factory boss spies on him through a huge screen (shades of Big Brother). So a political question is posed through this film - how far must men surrender their individuality to benefit the economic system? Chaplin is clearly not on the side of capitalism. He sees that if it is allowed to rage untramelled, many people will lose their souls or their sanity, and that, judging by the depression, strikes and unemployment, it doesn't do its job of keeping the population fed, and hopeful of leading decent, fulfilling lives.

There is a scene where the Tramp character inadvertently ingests a large amount of cocaine, in which his expressions of surprise are hilarious - this leads to his decisively defeating a group of jailbreakers single-handedly. Apparently Chaplin worked out the comedy sequences on set with the cameras rolling, and they took days and days.

In early films the Tramp's character was brutal and mean, but by this time Chaplin had developed the character into a sweet-natured and hapless clown. However, he does cause other people to have accidents - I'm thinking of the waiters and the In/Out doors, and the mechanic trapped in the machine.

Here you can see Chaplin going through the machine.

He also wrote a soundtrack to the film. The music we had last night must have incorporated the themes he wrote - "Smile" being one of them. I kept expecting him to sing - but when he does sing it's a gibberish comedy number. Chaplin wrote "Smile" - a classic song of about covering up your sadness and hardship - and that's what he says to Goddard just before the last shot.

Fascinating that he was one of the richest and most successful men in the world, but was making films that harked back to the terrible times of his boyhood.

I would like to see ALL of the Chaplin features. He was a wounded man and an artist.