DANCE SCHOLAR WAYNE B. KRAFT TO PRESENT 2003 SELMA JEANNE COHEN LECTURE    

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Sept. 26, 2003) -- The Fulbright Association announced today that Fulbright alumnus Wayne B. Kraft, researcher, choreographer, and performer of Transylvanian village dancing, will present the 2003 Selma Jeanne Cohen Lecture in International Dance Scholarship on Saturday, Nov. 1, at the Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Kraft, professor of German at Eastern Washington University and director of the Erdély (Dance) Ensemble, will speak on "Transylvanian Dancing in the Final Hour.”                                                                                                                    

"My presentation will reference the ‘táncház movement’—a folk dance revival movement that has brought village dancing to an international urban following over the course of the past 30 years.  The revival movement has come full circle and returned to the villages where folk dance groups seek to conserve a heritage that is no longer, strictly speaking, a ‘living tradition,’” said Dr. Kraft.              

Transylvanian village dancing includes highly improvisational men’s and couple’s dancing.  The couple’s dancing accelerates through various tempos with an exhilarating partnering dynamic, according to Dr. Kraft.   During his lecture Dr. Kraft and his wife, Ildikó Kalapács, will demonstrate in brief vignettes couple’s dancing from several representative traditions.  Dr. Kraft co-founded the Erdély Ensemble with Ms. Kalapács.   Dr. Kraft has taught at Eastern Washington University since 1968.  He received a Fulbright grant in 1986-87 for work at the Gutenberg (now Válászút) Ensemble in Budapest where he was a member of the ensemble and conducted research on performance mastery of Hungarian dance cycles.  Since his Fulbright award, Dr. Kraft has continued his study of Transylvanian village dance with leading Hungarian researchers and choreographers at workshops in the United States and in Hungary.  He also presents on folk culture and has anthologized and translated Hungarian regional song cycles.  

Dr. Selma Jeanne Cohen, preeminent dance historian and founding editor of the International Encyclopedia of Dance, endowed the dance lecture at the Fulbright Association’s annual conference to highlight dance scholarship in a multidisciplinary, international forum.  The Selma Jeanne Cohen Fund for International Scholarship on Dance was created in 1999.  Previous lectures have been given by Leslie Friedman, dancer, choreographer and artistic director of the Lively Foundation in San Francisco in 2000, Robin Marshall Grove, senior lecturer in the Department of English with Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia in 2001, and Gretchen Ward Warren, professor, School of Theater and Dance, University of South Florida in 2002.   The Fulbright Association is a private, non-profit organization that supports and promotes the Fulbright Program, an international educational and cultural exchange initiative created in 1946 by legislation sponsored by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.  There are now over 200,000 Fulbright alumni worldwide.