I love youtube - the amount of material and information (and entertainment) one can find is endless. The last few years, for my great passion, Greek music and dance, there has been a literal flood of uploads. However, like the game of passing secrets one by one among a group of people, a lot of misinformation (unwittingly or deliberately) can be conveyed. Take this upload for example. In Greek the tag says "Poustseno or Lytos [dance type] of Florina from a wedding of Aloniotes in Canada in 1985.[ Alona is a village west of Florina, well known for its fine dancers]. A forgotten recording/documentation by Dennis Boxell that I found by chance....in this way, the old timers can remember and the youngsters can learn". I love the sentiment expressed in this last line, but otherwise this tag is full of misinformation. This in fact was an Easter dance held by the Alona Society ("Aristotelis" I believe) in Toronto several years prior to 1985. The video recording was made by Dr Tim Rice, currently director of the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA and at the time a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto. Tim very graciously allowed me to make a copy of the original circa 1983or 5 and several years later I gave a copy to Dennis Boxell who sometime later, himself, seems to have given a copy to Yiannis Prantisidis in Greece, who then included a highly edited copy in his DVD attachments to his book "O Horos stin Elliniki Paradosi ke i Didaskalia Tou", which is what we are seeing here on youtube. I guess in the big picture it is not that important but I would prefer to give credit where credit is due.............But no matter, this documentation from a generation ago shows some of finest examples of the dance Puscheno (aka Lytos or Levendikos), especially the smooth and embellished style of the mountain villages, one is likely to encounter on youtube. As an aside, I had the great pleasure many years ago of meeting the first lead dancer of the older men in the first Puscheno, Ilias Gratsos, in Toronto. I was told by another Toronto Macedonian that the first two leaders of the second Puscheno are brothers - the thinner of the two had arranged for Tim Rice to come and film the dance event and encouraged the older generation to be the first up on the dance floor. youtube/watch?v=LsrVS7gK0nc
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:40:32 +0000
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