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The longitudinal study described in this chapter presents an ideal opportunity to examine ethnographic and historical dimensions in relation to a specific dance event, and also to reflect upon the context of the pioneering academic development of dance ethnology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in which the research was pursued. Several histories intersect in this personalized narrative: influences upon research, such as the changing means of documentation available to the dance ethnographer, the emergence of a sociopolitical Romani cultural identity during the years in which the study was conducted, and generational interpretations of a continuing annual dance event. My initial purpose was to document dance events in their social contexts among the Roms living in Skopje, Macedonia, in 1967.1 This became a foundation for a methodology with multilevel contacts in multiple time frames. Tangible visual data provided a comparative view in continuities and changes of a dance event within the continuities and changes of the social , cultural, and political fabric of an otherwise marginally recognized population. The study became a historical record, but given the involvement of dancing bodies in particular spaces, it also provided a 175 8 Romani Dance Event in Skopje, Macedonia Research Strategies, Cultural Identities, and Technologies    basis for uncovering layers of social history that had been implicit through the dancing occasions. Dance Ethnology as a University Discipline “Dance ethnology,” “ethnochoreology,” or “dance anthropology” had not yet appeared as a university academic subject within a dance curriculum when I was a graduate student in the early 1960s. The founding of the Department of Dance at UCLA in 1962 under the umbrella of a College of Fine Arts with three other departments—music, theater, and art—was in itself an innovative curricular development. The college within the university environment provided a major step toward recognizing dance as an arts discipline, with its own body of knowledge. Prior to 1962, various dancing classes (folk dance, social and square dance, modern dance, tap dance) were offered as “body activity” classes within the Department of Physical Education, which trained students as teachers for sports programs. Within the newly established Department of Dance under the leadership of Dr. Alma Hawkins, a visionary in dance education, an undergraduate or graduate student could focus on dance and dancing (albeit creative dancing) and earn a Bachelor of Arts and then a Master of Arts in dance. The emphasis in the curriculum was to produce a broadly educated dancer/performer/choreographer/ teacher who could pursue a profession in dance or in advanced dance education. One of the required courses of all dance students was the history of dance, but the emphasis here was on a survey of “art” dance seeped in Western cultures of Ancient Greece, medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque dance styles leading to dance as a performance art in contemporary times. Also in the earliest years of the 1960s only a beginning and advanced “folk dance” class offered a preliminary experience of “social” dances from an international array of countries, but mainly examples from northwestern Europe. I entered this new Department of Dance as an older graduate student with a set of experiences differing from that of most Americanborn dance students: first as a child in Los Angeles growing up in South Slavic “ethnic” communities (Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian) that offered dancing and music at most every community- or family-sponsored social event (almost a weekly occurrence), and then as a young adult performing in Skopje, Macedonia (then part of Yugoslavia), with the 176    professional Tanec Folk Dance and Music Ensemble.2 After a period of looking after my two young children, I returned to academia into the newly formed graduate dance program of UCLA, to expand my knowledge about dance and to prepare myself for teaching dance in higher education. I realized with Allegra Fuller Snyder, a colleague who had also just returned to academia, that there was a major lack in the literature about dance beyond ballet, modern dance, and Western history of dance. We were seeking a broader knowledge about dance in other parts of the world and to learn about the social and ritual contexts of dancing.3 Among readings, the most satisfying was in a newly published and seminal article by Gertrude Prokosch Kurath.4 I was inspired, for Kurath had recognized the Yugoslav-based Jankovi¢ sisters and their contributions to the description of dances, their creation of a dance notation system, and their attempts at structural analysis. Kurath’s article expanded my thinking toward possible...

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