Dancing
Carnival is a time of dancing, music and social gatherings, while whole its tradition seems to be more visible in the past than nowadays, in 21st century, when parties go on regardless the season of the year. In the 20th century carnival was integrally combined with a wide concept of the dancing, which, depending on a situation, could have various meanings. English word “dancing” in Polish tradition are not only once popular balls, revues and knees-ups, but also a whole idea of meetings, and sometimes even a certain type of a place, so something like modern “club”. Among stocks of Polish digital repositories we can find objects corresponding to all meanings of this word, wonderfully illustrating the best moments, but also bringing closer the abundant social life culture of past century.
At the very beginning it is worth to dish up materials from the Multimedia Library of NN Theatre – mainly because of the presence of a spoken word story by Janusz Mamcarz, attendant of many dancings, who emphasizes their social meaning and the difference between feasts of those type and modern parties. In the same library we can find also a dramatic and funny excerpt from a newspaper from 1932 about events hailed as a bloody dancing, by the way including a mention about particular popularity of dancings in villages. Other interesting publications can be found in stocks of the National Digital Library POLONA, which, apart from the poster promoting the dancing, shares also some photos of dance clubs from Eastern marches (Jaremcze, Morszyn Zdrój). One of the most interesting aspects of dancings are definitely their attendants, dancing styles, music, performers and fashion from before years. In this case succours among others: the Digital Museum of Photography showing for example a woman in a dancing pose and a dancing couple from 30s; the Mazovia Digital Library presenting program of a Cafe Dancing Adria so the pictures of performing stars and amazing archival advertisements from December 1932; whereas in the Digital Repository of the Łódź University we can read a culture study work about Social and cultural life of Łódź citizens during 1870-1914 considering descriptions of balls, knees-ups, and other ways of spending free time. In the Digital Library of Silesia there is a tidbit – stage pieces of Stafan Kiedrzyński from 1930, including among others a comedy Wine, woman and dancing.
