Dawn Moon

This performance of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble presents the folk tradition of the Carpathian Basin from the perspective of the masculine principle. It is a “rebirthing” of rituals narrated in the language of folk dance, folk music, and folk poetry.

Dawn is the time of daybreak, which arrives full of anticipation each day after the darkness of night. Ageless and immortal with unlimited prospects, dawn has become a universal symbol of hope in our cultural knowledge.

Moon is the planet of the night, a symbol of beauty and light that plays a unique role in most belief systems, including the Hungarian one. Its magic function lies in the cyclic changes that imply a connection with birth, death, love, fertility and other secret forces of nature.

While Sun in the symbol of power, spirituality and creative masculinity, Moon is the receptive feminine part which is more closely connected to the material world than to the spiritual one.

The symbolic nature of all of the above three phenomena rely on collective ideas. Despite the rapid changes of the last few decades to which most sociologists refer to as “social amnesia”, these symbols are still capable of conveying a meaning in today’s society.

Dawn Moon is a rediscovery of the long forgotten system of symbols inherent to traditional dances, an exploration of the archetypical meaning of certain moves and spatial forms.

The performance wishes to present and revive formerly pervasive motifs and underlying ideas that have by now been cast into oblivion.

Inspired by the language of folklore, Dawn Moon portrays matriarchal forces including the secret and sensual world of the female spirit and female instincts. It offers a chance to contemplate the masculine principle of the Sun from the Moon’s perspective, to reflect on our attachment to the past as well as on our attitude to the present. Dawn Moon speaks about love, desire, birth, death, weekdays, and profane or sacred feast rituals.

Dawn Moon signals the moment of anticipation; the anticipation – before the rising of the Sun…

Words are either cited from folklore collections or from texts by Gábor Mihályi.