5. The Polka as a Czech National Symbol
© Daniela Stavělová, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0174.05
Wikipedia defines the Polka as follows: ‘originally a Czech dance and genre of dance music familiar throughout all of Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic’.2 Many people outside the Czech Republic will probably believe that the Polka was born somewhere in the Czech lands; some might even have heard that a maidservant devised the Polka in her free time on a farmyard.3 But what if it comes from Poland after all? ‘Not at all; the Polka is ours!’, say the French. ‘We gave it the form in which it became world famous, and no one is really interested in what preceded this’.4 As explored below, encyclopedias from different countries fail to give clear evidence about whether or not the Polka is a Czech dance.5
It is not intended that this chapter provoke arguments about the Czech origins of the Polka. Nor does this chapter aim to offer more evidence in favour of its roots and social derivation. This has already been analysed in great detail by Czech music historian Zdeněk Nejedlý.6 Rather, the questions it addresses are: why do the Czech people keep taking the Polka for a Czech folk dance and national dance, and where does this myth come from? What makes the Polka Czech? Is there any distinction between a Polka and a Czech Polka? Is there any difference between ‘folk’ Polka and ‘national’ Polka? This chapter discusses how the Polka came to represent the Czech values of modern times, and how it also coexisted with regional patriotism, on the one hand, and Pan-Slavism, on the other.
![](image/Fig.5.1.jpg)
Fig. 5.1 Polka, watercolour from Petr Maixner, published in the ethnological journal Český lid, 12 (1903), p. 93. All rights reserved.
The Polka has been the subject of expert debate in the Czech lands ever since it appeared, as is described in detail by Nejedlý. The huge amount of sheet music that exists for the Polka and the numerous records in nineteenth-century fiction, newspapers, memoirs, and other sources testify to the widespread popularity of the Polka among all strata of society. The Polka appeared in the nineteenth century, and was at its height of popularity in this period. However, it has remained popular and enjoys a preeminent position among Czech cultural practices, as it is considered to be national heritage. No-one in the Czech Republic would doubt these days that the Polka is a Czech folk dance: for example, it is performed by the whole village in Bedřich Smetana’s famous nineteenth-century opera, The Bartered Bride. Even those Czech people with no interest in opera whatsoever will have seen this piece at least once in their lifetimes.
Nejedlý draws upon a number of historical sources that present reliable evidence about the historical context of the Polka and its origin.7 The Polka is thought to have emerged from Czech patriotic circles initially established in smaller regional towns. This chapter investigates the historical and descriptive dimensions of Nejedlý’s work, in order to consider the Polka as a social phenomenon, as part of a broader analysis of the development of the Polka as a Czech national symbol. Indeed, it took some time for Czech society as a whole to accept it as such, and for the Polka itself to take on this ideal form. What was the basis of the Polka as a dance, and which of its features were seen as characteristic of the Czech national movement? What other conditions were involved in its establishment as a Czech symbol? Questions like these make us think of the Polka not only as a dance but — first and foremost — as a process running hand in hand with socio-cultural and ideological-political contexts — in other words, the Polka is a text growing out of these contexts. By admitting that the Polka was established as a Czech national symbol, we have to ask questions such as when, for whom, how, under what conditions, and for what reasons was it established as a Czech national symbol? A further question is why the Polka achieved its status as the Czech national dance. Or was it the other way round: did the Polka first become popular, and only later become Czech?
Dance as Cultural Text
In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to define the conditions in order to reflect the whole context. This holistic approach to dance requires a notion called cultural text,8 according to which dance is defined as a coherent and dynamic aspect of culture, bringing together the ethnochoreological and anthropological approaches to the subject. According to cultural text theory, the socio-communicative meaning of dance fills the process with the quality of text. Dance texts are not only choreographic structures, but also integral functions that combine social interaction with the concrete dance elements, depending on the type of communication involved. In this process of communication, dance does not work separately: it includes non-choreographic features such as gestures, facial expressions, music, speech, costumes, social rules and knowledge of the surrounding space. These components have a hierarchical structure, being interactively interlinked within a meaningful dance process with variable social contexts.9 Dance as a multi-dimensional cultural text is not separate from other texts belonging to a particular social group; all the texts remain in mutual dependence, retaining an active relationship with the wider socio-cultural context. There are numerous examples of dance being a constitutive part of various activities — not only in entertainment, but also in politics, military life, and so on.
Dance is a symbol that possesses power and is able to bring about change. It is accepted as such and performed by dancers as a kinesthetic, affective and mental representation; not only does it reflect society but, more importantly, it produces some kind of meaning any time it is performed. It is important to realise that dance is always part of some context or other, and, therefore, it depends on socio-cultural conditions, aesthetic rules and on the role it is expected to play.10 The power of dance is expressed in an active dance act, and it is crucial to understand that this involves the whole performance, including the performers and spectators, rather than simply the dance itself. Having such power, dance can be used to structure, support or even modify the social system according to the ideology of the particular group and to its socio-political interests.11
The notion of folk culture12 as an ideological concept that appears alongside growing national consciousness is not an unknown pheonomenon. In such cases, folk culture establishes the existence of the nation through language and common history, often manipulating traditional symbols in order to import the past into the present. However, the presence of foreign influences, and their contamination with local features, tends to be erroneously interpreted during reconstructions of the past. Symbols, therefore, likewise tend to be manipulated in political processes. My research, through this approach, aims to discover:
- which socio-political group determines and selects ‘authentic’ and representative products of traditional culture;
- for what purpose they do so;
- what selection criteria they use to do so;
- and what characteristics are applied in order to create an ideal symbol.
The New Myth about the Czech Nation
The Polka is known to have played a crucial role in establishing Czech national identity. The dance may have arisen from Czech patriotic circles whose members were men of letters, active in public, political and cultural life. These people had an important role in the national movement and their literary works helped to create the Czech nation and its identity. Their goal — as Vladimír Macura puts it in The Czech Dream — was to shape Czech identity in a manner typical of the revival period.13 They knew identity was a cultural fact; it became valid only after it had become a cultural fact, and, as such, had been incorporated into the network of other cultural facts, past and present. There would always be dance involved at the social events, discussions, parties, and balls held by these Czech. As early as the 1830s, dance had become an important tool of national promotion;14 a genuine boom in national promotion arrived in the 1860s when the choreographic, musical, literary and visual aspects of the Polka were being established.
The establishment of the concept of the Polka against the background of the Czech national movement is comparable to the creation of myths. Roland Barthes has argued that myth is a combination of false evidence, and a kind of language. In his Mythologies, Barthes describes myth as a semiological system, and suggests that it is most important to look for significations. In this system, myth is a type of speech, and, therefore, anything can become a myth. Myth is subject to discourse rules. Its definition is not based on what it says, but how it speaks.15 Thus, any object can mutate from its closed, mute existence into an oral state, ready to be accepted by society as something embellished, something adapted to a certain type of consumption, something that has been given a clear social status that complements the pure material it was in the very beginning. What gives the Polka the status of myth is the contradiction between the signified — which was, in a certain period of time, its musical-choreographic structure and cultural origin — and the signifier, which is the name of the dance, which was expected to be a symbol of Czech national identity.
Initially, the name ‘Polka’ — referring to Polish origin — did not cause any confusion. It was only later that it was found rather contradictory, when it became necessary to justify the name at a time when the Polka was supposed to demonstrate attitudes and political beliefs.
As noted above, the name of the dance16 emerged from the patriotic Czech intelligentsia who — in using the name Polka — expressed their sympathy with the Polish revolutionary movements of the early 1830s.17 The fact that the name is feminine in grammar is no coincidence. It refers to Amazonia, a woman in arms, a popular symbol of European culture for several centuries, which became especially topical in mid-nineteenth-century Czech society. The literary historian Vladimír Macura considers that the appeal of Amazonia lies in the double-sided nature of the motif, combining typical feminine features — such as humility, tenderness, sensibility and charm — with opposing masculine attributes, such as defiance, power, pugnacity, courage and might.18 As the nineteenth century saw the revival of Czech culture, this general stereotype of ‘female warriors’ became a new symbol of revolutionary change to the existing order. The semiotics also changed as the focus shifted from a real person playing such a role, to the expectations, ideas and meanings given to the symbol. Not surprisingly, there were a number of dances newly designed for national or social events in the nineteenth century that had names that were feminine in grammar: for example, Sousedská, Skočná, Dupavá, and Slovanka.19 Significantly, a female warrior was frequently found in fiction and therefore understood as part of a long historical tradition. The symbol had its roots in Czech mythology (where female warriors such as Šárka and Vlasta appear) and did not clash with the contemporary ethical and social position of women.20
Another argument in favour of the Czech origin of the Polka and its role in the creation of Czech national identity was the fact that Slavic traditions were high on the agenda. Czech identity was frequently defined by the Czech intelligentsia as something extraordinary. No wonder that the strategic emphasis on the unique Czech character included not only the European aspect — which was sometimes strongly rejected — but also the Slavic context to which the Czech world can refer. It is important to distinguish the two contexts, as the European context included German culture and institutions to which the Slavic attributes stood in opposition. Czechs are different from Germans, belong to a different, Slavic world with a different past and — most importantly — a different future.21 The Slavic tendencies are visible in how the Polka was established: first, the name; second, the way it was visualised by Petr Maixner in his collection of allegoric drawings showing Czech dances.22 Dances like Skočná, Hulán, and Obkročák are shown by a couple dressed in folk costumes with gestures characteristic of folk dance, whereas the Polka has different features. The couple’s stature is comparable to that typical of contemporary ballroom dancers; they are dressed in pseudo-folk clothes: her hair is styled in a long ponytail, she wears wrap-up sandals and a town dress with imitation embroidery; he is dressed in a festive black coat called a čamara which, again, had a certain symbolic meaning for Czech people.23 Clearly, the Polka is given the status of a national dance: whereas the other three dances have features typical of Czech folk traditions, the Polka comes out of patriotic town circles which promoted Slavic ideas.
The Polka myth was established as part of the political and ideological discourse of the intelligentsia who developed the concept of Czech national identity. The conflict between the signifier and the signified is even more profound when further investigation reveals the historical actualities of the signified. Discrepancies may have existed between, on the one hand, how the Polka was really performed, how it was danced (and by whom and on what occasions), and on the other hand, how society (who exactly?) spoke and thought about it on the other.
Polka Fever in the Czech Lands
It is important to realise that the rhythms and choreographic structure did not carry the major symbolic meaning of the Polka in the beginning. There is no recorded evidence to suggest that anyone in the 1830s really thought about what they danced; what mattered was that a dance called the Polka demonstrated the attitudes of the town bourgeoisie — which had just began to develop — by introducing simple pleasure without the conventions typical of previous ballroom dances. These patriotic circles intended to achieve internal independence as a liberal ‘new bourgeoisie’, rather than to strongly promote Czech patriotism. In addition, the Polka was something they had created themselves, as opposed to the Waltz, which initially had helped to foster the unconventional spirit of young townspeople but soon came to be considered as something foreign. The Polka, therefore, was exactly what the town bourgeoisie demanded: it demonstrated their worldview no matter what its constituent elements were.
The fact that the Polka had not yet become a specific political or national symbol might well have enabled its massive expansion throughout society. Although the expansion began in the Hradec Králové region, as a number of reports prove, it is very likely that the Polka had become popular in other Czech regions — both urban and rural — well before it virtually engulfed Prague in 1838.24 There is evidence for this in the list of twenty-three Czech dances (without descriptions) from the Litomyšl county, made when Ferdinand V was crowned King of the Czech lands in 1836.25 Its title is in German — Verzeichniss der auf der Herrschaft Leutomischel üblichen Volkstänze — and it included the following dances:
Třinožka, also called Drimajka — Wopice — Kráwa — Slepička — Mráz — Nadiwajna — Woštěpačka — Zeman — Trakač — Baborak — Polka — Drátař — Sekejn — Furiant — Kocour — Salat — Placawá — Kozel — Trám — Kdyby moje byla — Jsem rad, že jsem dostal mladou ženu — Šupák — Hulán.26
Except for some of the dances, whose names are difficult to decode, they are all found in later collections of folk songs and dances. The fact that this list of folk dances — the oldest printed one — includes the Polka supports the hypothesis that, wherever there were active patriotic circles in small towns, the Polka had so much value that it was automatically adopted by villages as well. Also, it may well be that the choreographic structure of the Polka as danced in towns had so much in common with village folk dances that the name was given to a practice that had been there for some time. In any case, the regions of East Bohemia, the Central Labe Region, and the Jizera Region were the venues of major patriotic promotion. Towns with a population of over one thousand had various cultural unions, in addition to intense trading activity and good transport possibilities.27
By 1838, Prague had been engulfed by the Polka in dance halls and elsewhere. Josef Kajetán Tyl’s 1839 article entitled Pražané ve Hvězdě [Prague people at the Hvězda Park] supports the fact that there was no ball, no social event, no outing, without the Polka, and it was danced both inside and outside, by the young and the old, Czechs and Germans alike.28 ‘Instead of saying Good Morning or Good Evening, people will greet each other with “Have you heard of the Polka?”, or “Have you danced the Polka?”and the answer is: “Oh, the Polka currently occupies all my free time”’, wrote Josef Proksch — who later became Smetana’s tutor — in his diary, going on to say that the Polka had come to Prague from some of the rural areas.29 Writer Václav Vladivoj Tomek gives a nice example of this in his memoirs. Although he went to live in Prague, Tomek stayed in touch with his home town of Hradec Králové as he regularly went there to spend his holidays. This is his account of his visit in February 1837 to a ball in Prague: ‘Little nimble as I was, I was still one of the best dancers of the ball: for I could dance the Polka, which was little known in Prague back then, although it was very popular in the Hradec Králové region. Not even half of the dancers at the ball could dance the Polka’.30
But what were the characteristics of the Polka in the 1830s and early 1840s, what were its music and choreographic features, and what was the difference between the Polka in the town and in the village? There are almost no contemporary descriptions of the dance or detailed reports about how the Polka was danced in the Czech lands, except for accounts that say it was similar to some other dances to which it may have been related or with which it might have shared features. In addition to Josef Jaroslav Langer’s account of the Czech krakowiaks (see footnote 16, above), another person who asserted that the Polka was close to Třasák [shake-dance]31 was the poet and collector of folk songs Karel Jaromír Erben,32 who, in the magazine Česká včela [Czech Bee], wrote his account of the summer in 1831 when he visited Třesovice in the Hradec Králové region:
The pub was very crowded; it was almost impossible for us to take a seat at a table. In the middle of the room about ten couples were dancing right next to each other in a modest circle, with some more couples dancing gently in the circle. The dancing was moderate and pleasant to watch. The dancers were skipping lightly and with no rustling in a regular two-four time to a simple tune — to spice things up, the band played it in G at one time or in C at another. ‘What is the dance called?’ I asked my friend. ‘And what is its place of origin?’ ‘It is only danced here in Třesovice’, replies Mr B, ‘and in other villages of this county, and so it is called Třasák’. Keen lovers will remember that the tune is identical with the one once known as Polka throughout the Czech lands — thus, the Polka is nothing but a new name for Třasák, the latter gradually becoming almost identical with Gallopade; therefore many dancers or even composers do not see any difference between the Polka and the Gallopade.33
A description of how the Polka was danced in towns is given by Ivan Izmail Sreznevsky who stayed in Prague in the 1840s; in order to be invited to Czech balls, he had to be accepted into the Czech intelligentsia by showing he knew something about the Polka.34 In a letter to his mother living back in Charkov, Ukraine, Sreznevsky gives an account of how the Polka was danced in Prague, expressing hope she would like this ‘Prague Waltz’:
Polka is the same as the Waltz, only a lot faster, in 2/4 time. It is either played piano — which is very quietly, or forte — very strongly. This is extremely attractive for the dancers. Let Ms Fanny and Anna Andreevna have a go: the position of hands is different than in an ordinary Waltz: the gentleman has the palms of both his hands under the lady’s elbows and the lady’s arms hold the gentleman’s so that her palms touch his elbows. Is that clear? Sometimes this version is danced: with one arm akimbo, the gentleman uses his other arm to embrace the lady, like in an ordinary Waltz; the lady has one arm akimbo, too. You need to dance very, very quickly.35
Although Sreznevsky does not report on the step parametres, he gives some important indications. Interestingly, Sreznevsky compares the Polka to the Waltz, which is no coincidence, as the Polka’s close relationship to the Waltz is commented on in later accounts of the Polka, in the guides by dance masters Henri Cellarius and Eugène Coralli,36 who taught in Paris. In their descriptions, waltzing — turning in couple position — was one of the figures used in the Polka, and it was this that made it different from other ballroom dances at that time. In Sreznevsky’s account, the Polka is different from the Waltz because of its 2/4 time, very quick speed, and dynamic contrasts in the accompanying music.
Ethnochoreologist Egil Bakka, who has conducted research on dances which later became the Polka in the Nordic countries, highlights the relationship between the Polka in its early stage and the Waltz in his article on ‘The Polka before and after’. He argues that the first dances called Waltzes in Norway were in 2/4 time, and the label Polka was adopted as one of the names for a type of dance in which the couple turns round regularly while going in a circle in two metrically different stages. Apart from the official Polka, the most popular dances of this type included Hamborgar (as in Hamburg Waltz), Hoppvals, Skotsk and the Galop.37 This supports the hypothesis that fashionable new dances may have been adopted in different ways in different socio-cultural contexts. The fact that the Polka mingled with the Waltz and they later became separate dances again was due to other factors that gave the Polka the role that it was expected to have in different contexts.
It is feasible to say that in the 1830s, the Polka became a symbol in the patriotic circles of small rural towns, whereas in the wider social context of the Czech-German society living in the Czech lands — no matter how it was danced — it remained more a demonstration of a newly developing town society with democratic principles, rather than a symbol of Czech nationalism. It was not only in the Czech lands that the former lower classes managed to carry out independent activities; the Polka played a major role in this process. In France, for example, the poet Théophile Gautier reports that there were arguments about how to dance the Polka in Paris in 1844, with different opinions evident in the different social classes in France: the conservative aristocratic circles preferred the slower speed typical of ballroom etiquette, whereas democratic younger generations were in favour of the livelier version which — they said — expressed spontaneous joy. As Gautier put it, there was a clash of aristocratic and democratic principles.38
Whose Polka?
The need to define the Polka in its choreographic and musical aspects became urgent once the Polka was adopted as a symbol of the mentality of patriotic activists. In the early 1840s, as a more self-confident group of nationalists emerged (František Ladislav Rieger, Karel Havlíček Borovský, František Palacký), there was a stronger political edge to national promotion. New Czech associations — or social meetings called Beseda in Czech — were established, which had been preceded by the first Czech balls. Most of the patriots knew very well how important it was to hold meetings where they could sing, recite poems, and dance. Although dance was considered only as entertainment by some people, they knew it had the potential to bolster their national vision and attract great masses of people.39 No less importantly, as the promotion of this vision reached its peak, the Czech language could not possibly be the major symbol or manifestation of nationality. German maintained its preeminent position as the language of officialdom, trade and culture, and many Czech patriots knew German better than Czech because grammar schools, comprehensive and specialised secondary schools as well as universities taught only in German up until the early 1860s. The process of making patriotic society more Czech was a difficult one, and non-verbal tools had to be used. Therefore, cultural items such as clothing or dance had the potential to play a crucial role.40 It is therefore no coincidence that some famous politicians or writers, such as J. K. Tyl and F. L. Rieger, helped organise the first Czech balls.
Josef Kajetán Tyl gives a thorough account of the message and purpose of these events in the magazine Vlastimil:
You may have heard about them or even been to one of them, dear readers. Well, they have made a lot of noise in Prague and elsewhere for the last four or five years. It is a little bit funny to hold Czech balls and social events in the Czech lands — it sounds as if the French or Turks held their own events here from time to time — though the name is convenient and important. You know very well there are people — and there were even more of them not long ago — who do not actually know who they are. They were born in Bohemia, received education here, and eat Czech bread now; but they fail to think they are Czech and to support the Czech traditions; some of them are even proud and glad to deny their Czech blood. In order to make such people wake up and make them think they are expected to always use their natural language so that the true Czechs can enjoy themselves without looking down on these ‘semi-Czechs’, we have set up these Czech balls, social events where people dance and do other noble things such as singing and poem-reciting. These events were first held in Prague in 1840 and 1841, and their nice design made them so popular that more and more people sign up for them and they have so far spread across the country.41
J. K. Tyl thought the Czech world was isolated from all disturbing ‘foreign’ influences: revolutions, combats, female emancipation, social conflicts, and so on. His rejection of such foreign influences can be seen in his play called Jiříkovo Vidění [Jiřík’s Vision], and, indeed, he rejected the Waltz fever that set in at the beginning of the nineteenth century, countering this Germanic influence by renaming the Waltz the Houpavá [Swing Dance].42
However, the Polka enjoyed a special status at balls and social events, where it was declared to be genuinely Czech — at the first Czech ball it was performed four times, whereas the Waltz was played only three times and the Gallopade only twice. This was because the Polka was the only dance that could be differentiated from the contemporary cosmopolitan repertory of ballroom dances. By being accepted as a Czech product, it fulfilled the idea of nationalism that puts nation as the highest of human values. It was part of the concept of Czech patriotism that strictly distinguished between we and they, thus differentiating between the Czech country and foreign countries and states.43 Still, it was necessary to come up with convincing proof that the Polka really was of Czech origin. And since its existence in a society consisting of various nations had not proved this, evidence was sought in Czech folk traditions. In order to say the Polka was national in the sense of political, its folk or rural origin had to be proven. The news that the Polka had existed in Czech villages long before it was first given that name and that it had mingled with dances peculiar to these places (Třasák, Maděra) helped to form a group consciousness of belonging to a nation. There was a debate44 about the origin of the Polka in the early 1840s in the press, and it was part of the ideological-political discourse running in magazines like Květy [Flowers] and Česká Včela; this discourse was a critical institution of the national movement. Rather than its musical and choreographic features, it was the discourse based on we as opposed to the others that gave the Polka a symbolic position in society.
Tip Toe-Heel, Entire Foot
The first printed compositions of the Polka from the late 1830s played an important role in the process of myth-formation. These versions were thought to best represent the Polka — i.e., what was accepted by society and matched the contemporary dance standards. At the same time, they helped to spread this official, representative version of the Polka. The the first printed compositions of the Polka were by F. M. Hilmar, a teacher working in Kopidlno near Jičín, and it was there that he played with a band in the early 1830s. He recalls that the local people danced Maděra, or Nimra, whose motifs he used in his accompanying music.45 The Polkas he printed soon became popular with the guests of national balls, and social events like besedy or merendy, since they were exactly what the organisers thought a dance should be, and they played the role they thought a dance should play. The best known Polka, called ‘Esmeralda’, from 1838, soon gained popularity in the Czech lands and beyond.46 From its musical structure, it is evident that Hilmar was inspired by the melody that accompanied the dance, called Maděra; for example, the frequent semiquaver figures with a group of semiquavers at the end of the movements, which could have given the Polka the small-stepped feel when played more slowly.47 In Hilmar’s Polkas, these figures had various positions, always at a different quaver of the bar; triplets were frequently placed in the first quarter of the bar, followed by sharply scored quavers in the second bar.
We do not know how Czech people danced Hilmar’s Esmeralda, but it may help to think about the origin of his music that accompanied the folk dance called Maděra. There are no descriptions of dances from that time, but the collection of folk songs and dances by Vycpálek, made mainly in the 1880s and based on old people’s memories, says a great deal about their active dancing careers, i.e. from the 1830s to the 1860s.48 For example, Maděra is accompanied with the melody Strejček nimra koupil šimla from the Rychnov region in East Bohemia:
![](image/Fig.5.2.jpg)
Fig. 5.2 Maděra in the collection of folk dances from Josef Vycpálek, České tance (Praha: B. Kočí, 1921), p. 105, CC BY.
![](image/Fig.5.3.jpg)
Fig. 5.3 Maděra cpálek in the collection of folk dances from Josef Vycpálek, České tance (Praha: B. Kočí, 1921), p. 106, CC BY.
There is an interesting comparison to be made with dances that Vycpálek places in the same category as Maděra and, apart from a similar rhythm and melody, they have almost identical dance descriptions:
![](image/Fig.5.4.jpg)
Fig. 5.4 ‘The Russian Polka (Double-Polka)’ in the collection of folk dances from Josef Vycpálek, České tance (Praha: B. Kočí, 1921), p. 106, CC BY.
What Maděra, the Russian Polka and the Double-Polka have in common is that they are usually danced with Polka steps based on the heel-tip toe motif — ‘tip toe-heel, entire foot…’, go the lyrics of a folk song. So in two bars the entire Polka step includes a changing step with a slight swing whenever the foot touches the ground, in addition to a heel-tip toe or a tip toe-heel motif.49 The swing demands a free tempo, which is necessary if the melody is broken down into semiquavers. In addition to a slow tempo, all examples share a slight swing in the step choreography.
Another dance worth noting is Tramlam-Polka, though it has a slightly different rhythm, as this dance is the ‘renamed Třasák’. The name comes from the French word trembler (‘to shake’, or třásti in Czech) and it was used in Paris in the late 1840s for the Polka Tremblante, but the notation contains an obkročák dance motif50 with a shake or even a jump whenever the dancers are ready to step forward, as it helps the couple turn round:
![](image/Fig.5.5a.jpg)
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Fig. 5.5 ‘The Double-Polka’ in the collection of folk dances from Josef Vycpálek, České tance (Praha: B. Kočí, 1921), p. 94, CC BY.
![](image/Fig.5.6a.jpg)
![](image/Fig.5.6b.jpg)
Fig. 5.6 Tramlam-Polka in the collection of folk dances from Josef Vycpálek, České tance (Praha: B. Kočí, 1921), p. 107, CC BY.
The names of dances also reveal interesting facts. Maděra, for instance, refers — through its name and the note of the researcher who recorded the dance—to Hungarian origins (or Maďar in Czech); the Russian Polka must have had something to do with Russia.51 Whatever their origin, the swinging step and the heel-tip toe motif seemed to become symptomatic and do not clash with Josef Kajetán Tyl’s ‘Polka with little steps’ (see footnote 45, above), especially when danced to the music of Hilmar’s ‘Esmeralda’.
Pas Bohémien, or ‘How Gypsies Dance’
The promotion and focus on certain values during the establishment of national identity, and the stronger pressure on a more national consciousness, led, in the early 1840s, to greater promotion of the Czech Polka abroad, as it was intended to represent and promote the Czech nation. The Czech press took on that role, and magazines such as Květy and Česká Včela reported on how enthusiastically the Czech Polka was accepted in Paris. The reports feature one particular name, that of Johann Raab,52 a dance master of the Prague Estates Theatre; a Paris correspondent of the Wiener Theater-Zeitung in 1840 reported Raab’s guest performance of a piece called The Golden Axe at the Théâtre Ambigu, during which Raab danced the Polka. The report also featured in Květy:
The dance admired by the Paris audience so much is no Polish Polka but the favourite Polka danced by our dance-loving boys and girls. Polka, the Czech national dance, when performed by Raab, caused general surprise and gained noisy admiration. The French will now hopefully say they know how ‘Gypsies’ dance!53
We do not know how Raab danced the Polka. The only thing we know is that — as in Prague in 1838 when the performance was first held — he and his partner performed dressed in Czech folk costumes (see Fig. 5.7) accompanied by his own composition of the Polka.54 The audience in both cases responded — as the press put it — with enthusiastic ovations.55 It seems unlikely that the audience was attracted by this very artificial musical composition coming from the category of cosmopolitan Galops; rather, what made an impact on the audience here was the folk feel to it, emphasised by the costumes and the contemporary social role of the dance.
Raab made another visit to Paris in 1844, giving more lectures on the right Polka. Although the press in Prague produced some enthusiastic reports on Raab’s representation of the Polka, some of the Paris media reporting in 1844 on the Polka’s arrival in Paris are surprisingly much more tentative.56
The introduction to the guide La Polka,57 for example, fails to give a clear background as to the origin of the Polka, alluding to an exotic story of how, on his way from Africa, Hippollitus the painter had to make a stop by the river Danube somewhere near Belgrade: dressed as an Egyptian prince and accompanied by a local Hungarian man, he visited a local dancing event. He saw the local people dance with spurs on their boots and bagpipes playing; the dancers turned round every now and then by taking a round turn without letting go of each other. The author went on to analyse the Polka and its origins, taking into consideration how it was danced by Hungarians, Russians, and Poles: he concluded that the Polka was danced in the whole of Germany, particularly in ‘La Bohême’, which could refer to Bohemia (or the Czech lands), or the regions where Roma Gypsies lived, since the French word carried both of these meanings. The Polka’s arrival in Paris is depicted metaphorically as the arrival of a inconspicuous Pole in a town that soon welcomed him with enthusiastic acclaim.
The French were not overly concerned with the origin of the Polka, since their ‘Polka nationale’ had left the village for the town in order to become genteel, and was soon accepted as French. In turn, the first performances of the Polka at the Paris Opera by Coralli (see Fig. 5.8) in a kind of folk costume did not contradict the notion that the dance could have come from virtually anywhere.
![](image/Fig.5.7.jpg)
Fig. 5.7 Title page by J. Brandard of the score for The Bohemian Polka by Hermann Louis Koenig, 1847. Lithograph. The bare feet of the woman, and the man’s earring, may hint at gypsy style. Source: The Bartered Bride, Royal Opera House programme, 10 December 1998, p. 25. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bohemian_Polka.jpg#/media/File:Bohemian_Polka.jpg
![](image/Fig.5.8.jpg)
Fig. 5.8 Eugène Coralli and Mlle Maria dancing in particular costumes at the Paris Opera, picture in the guide La Polka enseigné sans maître par MM. Perrot et Adrien Robert (Paris: Aubert, 1845), p. 10. Private archive of Dorota Gremlicová, all rights reserved.
Three years later, the dance master of Paris, Henri Cellarius, the author of the dance guide The Drawing-Room Dances, published in 1847, said the Polka was simply French because it was the good French taste that made it into something that the world would accept.
The kind of Polka Raab performed and taught in Paris remains to be investigated. It is interesting to note, however, that the guide La Polka58 contains Polka figures of ten different kinds (e.g., waltzing) including a description and a drawing of pas bohémien. Both the description and the drawing (see Fig. 5.9) make it clear that it is a heel-tip step combined with a changing step.
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Fig. 5.9 ‘Pas bohémien’, picture in the guide La Polka einseignée sans maître par MM. Perrot et Adrien Robert (Paris: Aubert, 1845), p. 58. Private archive of Dorota Gremlicová, all rights reserved.
Cellarius describes this dance, too, although he suggests that it should be abandoned. Instead, he prefers a simple Polka with the basic motif of a changing step with impromptu variations in a fast tempo di Marcia, which he says makes the Polka even more lively and spontaneous.
What, or who, for that matter, was pas bohémien associated with? Was Raab a messenger in Paris describing the (Hungarian) Maděra, Russian Polka, and so on, as coming from the Czech rural areas, or from patriotic Czech social events held in towns? If so, it is very likely that he exported Polka in the form that was performed at dance events held in Prague in the early 1840s. With clever advertising, he could make a fairly good living in Paris. No less importantly, Raab helped the Polka return to the Czech lands, as the magazine Květy reported in 1842:
Having made an irresistible appeal to so many minds and legs in the drawing-rooms of Paris and London since last year’s Carnival, the Polka — our wonderful countrywoman — has now returned to the place of her origin, although not as a village woman wearing a close-fitting costume but as a lady dressed in a long silk dress, and is now known as ‘polketa en colonne’. Travelling across Europe, she was accompanied and guided by Mr Raab, an expert on dancing. Giving lectures to all keen dancers in his flat, this dance master is now busy emphasising all Polka’s virtues in a way which gives you a good grasp of this dance within six hours — that is at least what is offered to the general public in Mr Raab’s special Czech advertisement.59
![](image/Fig.5.10.jpg)
Fig. 5.10 J. Raab and Mlle Valentine dancing Polka at the Théâtre Ambigu Paris. Private archive of Dorota Gremlicová, all rights reserved.
Dance as a National Programme — Polka on the Go!
The early 1860s brought favourable conditions for social activities independent of the state. Czech national associations were being established to a huge extent in Czech towns: almost every town had its Beseda. Sokol, a physical culture association with a tradition lasting to this day, was founded in 1862; there were open-air meetings, camps which brought together the small-town bourgeoisie and farmers as well as workers. There was a new element to the political life of the Czech nation, and it was supposed to unify society under the banner of a national movement. It was a Quadrille dance called Česká Beseda printed in 1863, danced a year before by the famous poet Jan Neruda at a public ball. It is no coincidence that it was Neruda who helped the author of the music, Ferdinand Heller, and the dance master Karel Link to establish the dance. Being a promoter of social events, Neruda realised how well dance could help revive and strengthen national consciousness. Arne Novák, for example, reports on Neruda’s adoration of dance in general:
Neruda, called jokingly and reproachfully a dance master, had little understanding for music, which was everything for Smetana. It was in dance that Neruda found the impressive power that laymen associate with music, one that tears humans out of reality, bringing them closer to the primeval soul of the universe.60
Also, even before Česká Beseda appeared, Neruda had published his first essay on dance in the magazine Obrazy života in 1859; called ‘České národní tance’ [Czech national dances]. The paper even deals with some of the theoretical aspects of dance.61 Later, Neruda proposed that the journalist Alfred Waldau should produce the first comprehensive paper on dance in Bohemia.62 All this testifies to his real interest in dance and to his endeavour to grasp its national message. He studied dance in detail and understood the potential that dance could have in society under some specific conditions. His essays on the national message of dance have no doubt effected how the Polka was understood; Neruda considered the Polka the Czech dance.63 He claimed that the Polka’s liveliness and natural joy reflected the nation’s renaissance and its triumphant arrival in towns from Czech villages — as shown in Balada o polce [The Ballad of Polka] with the refrain of Polka jede! [Polka on the go!] — symbolised the influx of renewed strength from folk rural regions into towns, and helped better communicate the concept of national identity.
![](image/Fig.5.11.jpg)
Fig. 5.11 Portrait of Jan Neruda by Jan Vilímek from České album, sbírka podobizen předních českých velikánů (V. Praze: Jos. R. Vilímek, [n.d.]). Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_Vil%C3%ADmek_-_Jan_Neruda.jpg#/media/File:Jan_Vil%C3%ADmek_-_Jan_Neruda.jpg
It is evident from his poems that Neruda was very critical about national identity. He said, with bitter scepticism, that the Czech nation was ‘a soulless goose, lacking manly courage, a non-nation, a mere group of scoundrels, more of a dreaming, sleeping, dead-alive nation than one that is waking up’.64 The motif of dreams and sleep is actually a frequent metaphor for national paralysis during the period of national revival. By initiating the patriotic movement, the sleeping nation was woken up; the direct participants in the process of emancipation considered themselves awakened whereas those who refused to demonstrate their Czech identity publicly were sleepy. Neruda thought it necessary to visibly demonstrate a sign of identity; therefore he wore a čamara, a festive black coat with a symbolic meaning, and thought it absurd that anyone who spoke Czech and was obviously Czech failed to declare this by carrying any visible sign.65 Dance, he thought, was one of these visible signs. The meaning he associated with dance is obvious from a number of his newspaper columns, and Neruda understood dance was a source of energy, awakening and introspection:
A great role is played by dance rhythm. It is the rhythm that mirrors our own identity, unconscious, far from our egotism; in sounds we hear ourselves and identify with them, becoming fiery, wildly fast, less dignified, nicely merry just like the sounds. We give up our personality, enthused by the sound and movement of our whole being. Without music, dance would have no such ideal feeling to it, and we would feel no variety of moods.66
The lack of expression in dancing is something Neruda associated with a lack of national enthusiasm. In his study of 1869 O tanci [On dance], Neruda says, with disillusionment: ‘And what about our dance? Dancers only walk rather than dance in Quadrille and Beseda, shuffle rather than dance in Polka and Gallopade, both of which need a fast tempo; there are hardly any good dancers, perhaps fast ones, those with healthy lungs or those who ignore their tuberculosis’.67
Therefore, Neruda’s participation in the establishment of Česká Beseda was a key factor as Neruda made sure that this Quadrille contained dances selected carefully, according to their potential to carry a message. By being modified into something that would meet certain expectations, the dances were manipulated in their symbolic value, and, at the same time, it was important to think about the form that could be accepted by society at that time. The Polka enjoyed a fairly large place within Česká Beseda; it appears in two different forms there, modified into a Quadrille dance, which may have been what society wanted most — there is also the Polka’s return from Paris as ‘polketa en colonne’:
![](image/Fig.5.12.jpg)
Fig. 5.12 Polka, from a booklet describing the dance Česká Beseda (Česká Beseda, ed. by J. Fiala, J. Prokšová-Evaldová, M. Malá, J. Vokáčová, and H. Livorová, p. 10), CC BY.68
![](image/Fig.5.13a.jpg)
![](image/Fig.5.13b.jpg)
Fig. 5.13 Polka, from a booklet describing the dance Česká Beseda (Česká beseda, ed. by J. Fiala, J. Prokšová-Evaldová, M. Malá, J. Vokáčová, and H. Livorová, p. 6), CC BY.
The first of these two forms is a Polka in a slower tempo in the Hilmar-style and with the heel-tip motif called Double-Polka. In the other form, the couple steps forward with a changing step in various dimensional formations to a livelier marching tempo. In other words, this is a meeting point of two musical and choreographic types of Polka — one that was composed by village teachers at a slower tempo, the other more down-to-earth, played by military bands, based on Gallopades. And, as they are modified into Quadrilles, they come to play a representative role in Czech patriotic circles.
Having been printed, Česká Beseda easily spread across all social classes both in towns and in rural areas, and soon became a universal instrument raising awareness about national cultural values. Dancing Česká Beseda meant showing publicly one’s national consciousness.
However, the Polka began to lose its initial significance,69 and it was Neruda again who called for its return. In his column ‘O taneční hudbě’ [On Czech Dance Music], printed in the daily Národní listy in 1885, Neruda exhibited his anxiety about the weakening national consciousness and lack of enthusiasm in society. He called for the return of the times when the Polka had engulfed the dance halls of Prague, making people look forward to the future with joy and take an active role in social life:
It is high time we had our own Prague king — not a king of Waltz, but a king of Polka. Ever since Komzak held the position of a civilian bandmaster, there had always been two kings on the Prague throne, Svoboda and Procházka. You would hardly find more loyal subjects than the people of Prague. Every time notices stuck on street corners announced that Svoboda and his band of artillery soldiers were about to give a concert on one of the islands of Prague introducing a new Polka, the island would always be overcrowded. Everyone would look forward to the new Polka, tension was growing, and as the desired music started the entire crowd would break into merry whispering. Suddenly, all went quiet. Heads nodded in time with the music, every single foot would pound on the ground, every single face would brighten up, smiling.70
He may have realised the power of a dance that is able — under certain conditions — to wake people up and bring them together in the name of an ideal. As enthusiasm for the Polka was decreasing in Prague, Neruda called for its renaissance, as part of a wave of new energy and enthusiasm for the national programme which — he thought — society failed to demonstrate visibly enough.
In the meantime, the Polka had lost some of its ability to be a symbol, as simplifications to its choreographic structure had made it more similar to other cosmopolitan drawing-room dances accompanied by numerous musical compositions. The form had become simpler: the couple danced around the room in one step in an increasing tempo. Patriots inevitably saw such modifications as a weakening of the national features of the dance, and therefore new symbols were sought. There was more and more demand for older folk dances of Czech origin and of various forms. ‘Why do we have so many Polkas and Waltzes?’, asked the composer Leoš Janáček in his article of the same name published in the daily Lidové noviny in 1905, commenting on the simplification of something that had changed from more structured choreography into mere couple-turning:
The reason why we have about 300 different dances in Moravia is that neither Waltz nor Polka had been special folk dances; instead their choreographic motif (turning) was only one of the motifs in the more structured dances. Now, this has changed: only two dances are danced — Polka and Waltz — but they may be accompanied by a terrible amount of musical compositions.71
Some of the guides to national dances published on the occasion of the Czech-Slavic Ethnologic Exhibition do not put the Polka among these dances.72
What Makes the Czech Polka Czech?
In the 1860s, the Polka was given the position of an ideal national symbol in the works of Bedřich Smetana: in particular, his opera The Bartered Bride, which was composed when the composer was asked to produce a national comic opera. It is important to realise that the dances of Polka, Furiant and Skočná were included in the opera as late as its French version, composed three years after the Prague premiere of 1869 for the purposes of guest performances on international stages. The Polka included in the performance was supposed to be danced and its spontaneous joy was meant to reflect the life of Czech villages.
![](image/Fig.5.14.jpg)
Fig. 5.14 Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, title page of the first edition of the piano reduction (1872). Bedřich Smetana, La Fiancée vendue. Avant Scène Opéra No. 248 (Paris: Premières Loges, 2008). Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BarteredBridePianoReduction.jpg#/media/File:BarteredBridePianoReduction.jpg
This chapter does not seek to analyse the links to and dependencies on the folklore background, nor to discuss the concept of national music, which is dealt with by numerous essays anyway.73 Instead, it investigates the ways in which Smetana used his experience with Czech patriotic ballrooms, and which features of folk tradition he thought were representative of Czech national Polka. Even though the musical form of the Polka is dealt with here, the significant point is that it was produced for the purpose of dance.
The Polka as present in The Bartered Bride is a summary of the previous changes to the formal content of the dance and its concept. What was reflected here was Smetana’s experience with performing Hilmar’s Polkas — which he frequently performed during the student meetings called merenda — as well as his familiarity with the dancing conventions of that time. His Polka in The Bartered Bride brings together several of the typical Polka types — Hilmar-style graceful Polka in a free tempo, třasák-style [shake-dance] rhythm figures leading to Polka tremblante, as well as a special rhythmic structuring similar to the Galop in a very lively tempo. However, these are absolutely not quotations of folk motifs, but a special principle of the metro-rhythmic structure, with the 2/4 rhythm as a basic sign. He used this to clearly distinguish the Polka from the ‘foreign’ Waltz in triple metre and to build upon Skočná melodies typical of Czech folk songs.74 Smetana’s Polka in The Bartered Bride is a product of artistic work, but its role as a national symbol, which it was assigned due to the overall effect of The Bartered Bride, made a substantial contribution to the social discourse at a time when national identity was being established. Consequently, this Polka became the final product of the hunt for an ideal form of Czech Polka as a national symbol.
Summary
The Polka came to manifest the Czech values of modern times, which also coexisted with regional patriotism, on the one hand, and Pan-Slavism, on the other. It helped create national consciousness at a time when the attribute national could only be given to items that originated in local Czech villages, disregarding the fact that even these places were faced with various cultural influences, with some features migrating out and others being brought in. First and foremost, the name of the dance carried political meaning; the Polka as a cultural product fulfilled this goal to a lesser extent. When the Polka was being established as a Czech national symbol, some external signs played a major role as well. The choice focused not on those that would be of genuinely local origin, but on those that could be accepted as Czech by society at that time. In the process of manipulating with signs, the main purpose was to distinguish them from the foreign ones; in other words, from those able to directly harm anyone called ours. Therefore, the heel-tip step and the swinging changing step, supported by the appropriate metro-rhythmic structure and tempo, became the representative features of the Czech Polka, and they went on to play this role despite the conventions of dance halls developing in a different way. This helped deepen the clash between the signified and the signifier, and further improved the ideal form of the myth of the Czech Polka, which was the product of the endeavour of Czech patriots and artists. By reaching its ideal form, the myth started to deviate from the Polkas danced by society — from Polkas linked to particular places, Polkas of a local, regional or even cosmopolitan nature. The meaning and social use of the dance kept changing; the myth of the Polka had become a constant value of Czech national culture. Even the myth, however, must be seen as a fusion of social, cultural and ideological-political, as well as artistic, perspectives.
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Fig. 5.15 Video: Final in the regional competition for Česká Lípa in Czech Polka for children, ballroom style. ‘Česká polka — finale Česká Lípa dupen 2012’, 1:37, posted online by Lenka čermáková, Youtube, 22 April 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYiaywtlQxU |
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Fig. 5.16 Video: Dance TV from the Czech Television showing clips of Polka, many group choreographies, and teaching the dance. ‘Polka’, 14:35, posted online by An000b, Youtube, 24 October 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiIxtj0wtcA |
Additional Video Resources
Video: Dance instruction for basic Polka. ‘Základní taneční — Polka’, 1:46, posted online by tkclassic, Youtube, 5 October 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Ceds7iX5U&feature=related
Video: A Polka choreography with many couples dancing to a brass band, seen from above. ‘Taneční — polka’, 1:11, posted online by 162591419, Youtube, 24 December 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjEso6JyBX0&NR=
Video: A program on Polka in a series broadcast on Česká televize. ‘Taneční- Polka’, 0:49, posted online by broxwille, Youtube, 14 October 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNeXUhE6-a4
Video: Young people dancing Polka to accordion music in a dance school. ‘TANEČNÍ VRDY — Polka III’., 0:36, posted online by brunetkabbb, Youtube, 21 October 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg_J5Gm2NMY &feature=related
Video: ‘A rather messy Polka’, with young people dance the steps on different beats of the music. ‘tročku chaotická polka’, 1:35, posted online by snowboardackaaa, Youtube, 23 November 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRzbKWpiLkc
Video: A dance course where the instructor teaches and demonstrates Polka. ‘2. závěrečná prodloužená cún česká polka’, 0:27, posted online by Tuan Lai, Youtube, 11 December 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5KeZqPuZzg
Video: Dance competition for children dancing Polka. ‘Taneční soutěž — polka’, 1:38, posted online by adejkak, Youtube, 28 September 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR6Hg408Dbs
Video: Folk dancers in traditional costumes dance Polka with figures. ‘Czech Polka’, 1:56, posted online by pjacko1017, Youtube, 25 April 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AunRWB_dmiM&feature-related
Video: A couple dancing a Victorian-era Polka in period clothing. ‘Polka/Excerpt from How to Dance Through Time, Vol. 5, Victorian Era Couple Dances’, 0:58, posted by DancetimePublication, Youtube, 12 March 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajxfQk_zbjM
Video: Vejvodova band plays the well-known Polka tune Rosamunde (music only). ’Škoda lásky — Vejvodova kapela’, 2:49, posted online by rudolfo6666, Youtube, 14 May 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyI9Pj4CEdE&feature=related
Video: Karel Gott, famous Czech singer, performing a Polka with dancers on a television show. ‘Škoda lásky’, 1:45, posted online by benetomm, Youtube, 25 December 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x6KOE0HowA&feature=related
Video: Recreational folk dancers in America dancing Doudlebska Polka. ‘Doudlebská Polka’, 3:53, posted online by Roy Butler, Youtube, 15 November 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9gmBrAwtPo&feature-related
Video: Dancers in German costumes dancing Doudlebska Polka. ‘Doudlebská Polka — Tyrolsko’, 2:30, posted online by born2danz, Youtube, 17 August 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf7O7Lzt8Oo&feature=related
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Wikipedia contributors, ‘Polka’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 March 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polka
Zíbrt, Čeněk, Jak se kdy v Čechách tancovalo, 2nd edn (Prague: Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury, hudby a umění, 1960).
——, ‘Zprávy o polce v první polovici věku 19’, Národní listy, 197 (1894), 45.
1 This investigation was conducted under the research initiative of the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences AVOZ 68378076. The first version of the text was published in Czech: Daniela Stavělová, ‘Polka jako český národní symbol’, Český lid, 93 (2006), 3–26.
2 Wikipedia contributors, ‘Polka’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polka
3 Jan H. Brunvand, American Folklore: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2006) p. 1207.
4 Argus, ‘Chronique’, La Semaine des Familles, 18 (11 October 1884), pp. 159–60.
5 The doubts about whether the Polka is Czech or not are partly based on the name, which seems to refer to Poland, but, in any case, the Polka has never had a clear choreographic structure as it combines the features of cosmopolitan drawing-room dances (the Écossaise, the Galop, the Waltz).
6 Zdeněk Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana 4. díl. Česká společnost (Prague: Hudební Matice Umělecké Besedy, 1925).
7 Ibid. In his book, Nejedlý relies on intensive research into the press, including magazines and papers such as Květy, Česká včela, Dalibor, Bohemia, Wiener Theater-Zeitung; he also draws upon diaries, memoirs, and letters written by individuals involved in the national movement, such as V. V. Tomek, J. J. Langer, J. K. Tyl, I. I. Sreznevsky, and K. Vinařický. In turn, Nejedlý provides a detailed analysis of the musical form of the Polka in compositions by Czech teachers and others, while his book includes a list of the Polka’s dance compositions.
8 The concept of ‘cultural text’ was introduced by Yuri Lotman in his work on cultural semiotics; see Ann Shukman, ‘Lotman: The Dialectic of a Semiotician’, in The Sign. Semiotics around the World, ed. by Richard W. Bailey, Ladislav Matejka, and Peter Steiner (Ann Arbor, MI: Slavic Publications, 1980), pp. 19–206.
9 Anca Giurchescu, ‘The Power of Dance and its Social and Political Uses’, in Yearbook for Traditional Music, 23, ed. by Adrienne L. Kaeppler, Dietmar Christensen, and Stephen Wild (2001), 109–22 (p. 110), https://doi.org/10.2307/1519635
10 Ibid., p. 110.
11 Ibid., p. 113.
12 This concept was introduced in the Czech area in 1778–1779 through the work of the German philosopher J. G. Herder’s (1744–1803) Volkslieder and, in particular, through his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784–1791) which was soon adopted as a manifest of the Slavic enlightenment. Herder stressed the role of traditional songs as proof of a nation’s existence as well as differentiating between Volk and Pöbel (nation and plebs). The aesthetic values attributed by him to the production of the singing people, opposed to the crying plebs, made the word Volk acquire a more emblematic meaning. Inspired by Herder intellectuals leading the Czech national movement started discussing national songs, dances, etc., where the term ‘national’ signalled the emblematic features of their country’s traditional culture.
13 Vladimír Macura, Český sen (Prague: Knižnice dějin a současnosti, 1998).
14 This was a time when a group of patriotic members of the intelligentsia attempted to persuade the members of their ethnic group that they belong to a nation which has its value and the right to the same attributes as nations that had existed for a long time. See the work of the Czech historian Miroslav Hroch, Vnárodním zájmu (Prague: Knižnice dějin a současnosti, 1999), pp. 15–16.
15 Roland Barthes, Mytologie (Prague: Dokořán, 2004), p. 107.
16 There is an important example of how the patriotic circles sang and later danced Polish folk songs based on famous Czech melodies — the songs are included in F. L. Čelakovský’s collection called Slovanské národní písně of 1822–1827. In J. J. Langer’s 1835 article which appeared in the magazine Časopis českého muzea, an important periodical of the Czech national movement, we read: ‘…people began dancing and singing in the following way: dancers and their partners make a row; the singer in front of the musicians, the rest behind him; when the singer has sung the first half of the Krakowiak dance, every one repeats it; then comes the other half. Then other dances (Třasák, Břitva, Kalup) are performed in the same way: once the dance is over, everyone stops, and someone starts a new song etc. In a place in the Hradec Králové region, the pattern is different and called Polka, and it may be more like the genuine krakowiak’. Translated from the Czech by David Mraček. Josef Jaroslav Langer, ‘České krakováčky’, in Bodláčí a růže (Prague: Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury, hudby a umění, 1957), p. 211.
17 Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, p. 338
18 Macura, Český sen, p. 81.
19 See Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, p. 341
20 Ibid., p. 87.
21 Ibid., p. 66.
22 This was published in the ethnological journal, Český lid, in 1903, at p. 92.
23 Čamara [chamara] refers to a man’s festive black coat with a collapsible collar and a number of buttons on the lace. Originally, it was part of a Polish garment. In the Czech lands, it was worn especially in the second half of the nineteenth century as an expression of Czech patriotism and of an inclination towards the idea of Slavic reciprocity.
24 Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana.
25 Hannah Laudová found the list when searching the archives for evidence on a popular festivity held at Invalidovna, Prague, and Brno-Lužánky on the occasion of Ferdinand’s crowning ceremony. The records of the Czech and Moravian governing bodies gave H. Laudová numerous details on the preparation and background of these festive events. The Brno Province Presidential Office produced a file called Krönungsceremoniel S. M. des Kaiser Ferdinand V. und I. M. der Kaiserin Maria Anna zu Prag im Jahre 1836 which contains a list of guests attending a wedding ceremony in Litomyšl and a list of dances that were planned to be performed. There is evidence that the dances were carefully rehearsed for this purpose. See Hannah Laudová, ‘Další pramen ke studiu českých lidových’, Český lid, 44 (1957), 273–74.
26 Hannah Laudová, Další pramen, p. 274.
27 Jiří Kořalka, Češi v Habsburské říši a v Evropě 1815–1914. Sociálně historické souvislosti vytváření novodobého národa a národnostní otázky v českých zemích (Prague: Argo, 1996), p. 92.
28 Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, p. 348.
29 Ibid. Translated from the Czech by David Mraček.
30 Ibid., p. 359. Translated from the Czech by David Mraček.
31 The name of the dance Třasák is derived from the Czech word ‘třásti’ — to shake.
32 Karel Jaromír Erben, ‘Ještě něco o polce’, Česká včela, 11 (1844), 304.
33 This source had not been known until Jiří Horák drew attention to it in his paper on Erben’s collection of Czech folk songs: Jiří Horák, ‘Erbenova sbírka českých písní lidových’, Národopisný věstník českoslovanský, 7 (1912), 6–7. In recent years, the importance of Erben’s findings was highlighted by Martina Pavlicová, Lidový tanec v Českých zemích. Sondy do historiografie, ekologie a metodologie (Brno: FF MÚ, 1992), pp. 24–27.
34 When in Prague, Sreznevsky wrote frequent letters to his mother in Charkov, and these were published by V. Lamanskij as ‘Putěvi pisma I. I. Sreznevskego k materi jego’, in the journal Živaja Starina, cited after Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, p. 345.
35 Cited in Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, p. 345.
36 His way of dancing the Polka is depicted in a guidebook by MM. Perrot and Adrien Robert, La Polka enseignée sans maître, par MM. Perrot et Adrien Robert, d´après M. Eugène Coralli de l´Académie royale de musique (Paris: Aubert, 1844).
37 Egil Bakka, ‘The Polka before and after the Polka’, Yearbook for Traditional Music, 33 (2001), 37–47, https://doi.org/10.2307/1519629
38 Cited in Nejedlý, Beřich Smetana, p. 353.
39 Dorota Gremlicová, ‘Tanec a český národní program’, Národopisná revue, 11 (2001), 93–95.
40 Mirjam Moravcová, ‘Národní oděv roku 1848’: Ke vzniku národně politického symbolu (Prague: Academia, 1986).
41 Cited in Čeněk Zíbrt, Jak se kdy v Čechách tancovalo, 2nd edn (Prague: Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury, 1960), p. 294.
42 Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, p. 356.
43 Stanislav Brouček, Jiří Cvekl, Václav Hubinger et al., Základní pojmy etnické teorie, Český lid, 78 (1991), 273–57.
44 This debate was started by a story about the discovery of Polka by a servant Anna Chadimová-Slezáková who danced in 1830 a curious new dance in the courtyard of the house she has been working in the small town of Kostelec nad Labem, which was later called as Polka. It became so interesting for onlookers that the local teacher Josef Neruda put it in scores and the servant had to teach the people how to dance it. See in Alfred Waldau, Böhmische Nationaltänze (Prague, 1859), pp. 40–41; Zíbrt, Jak se kdy v Čechách tancovalo, pp. 319–21. This story was soon put in doubt by the argument that a social dance cannot be invented by one person as well as it has to grow up from the society. See Václav Antonín Crha, ‘F. M. Hilmar a jeho vztah k polce’, Dalibor (1860), 100.
45 Ibid.
46 Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, p. 362.
47 Little steps and a free tempo were often highlighted by Czech patriots: for example, in his article entitled ‘Moje procházka s dvěma umrlýma’, Josef Kajetán Tyl complained that the dancers: ‘…began to change the nice playful Polka with little steps into ”greyhound” gallopade’. Cited after Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, p. 346.
48 Josef Vycpálek, České tance (Prague: F. Topič, 1921).
49 The tip toe of the foot means here to touch the ground with the end of toes, especially with the big toe. A tip toe-heel or heel-tip toe motif is considered as the typical changing of the heel and tip toe in touching the ground as a flex and pull of the foot.
50 Obkročák — the name of the dance motif is derived from the method of dancing in a straddle position.
51 The person who recorded Maděra said: ‘Maybe the name comes from Hungary?’ and he quotes the person whom he interviewed about the dance: ‘Whenever a person from Hungary came along, he had this dance played’. With respect to Russian Polka, he gives this quote: ‘Most probably from [Russian] soldiers’.
52 The question is to what extent a German dance-master knew about the patriotic message of this ‘mission’. He did say in Paris that he was a connoisseur of the Czech Polka, which he said he had found in Czech rural areas and had cultivated for the drawing rooms, but it may just as well be that he had purely utilitarian goals, as teaching the right Polka was an extremely profitable job in Paris in 1844: the trick was to use clever advertising to promote his instructions. This way, he could earn quite a fortune. See Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, pp. 352–54.
53 Cited after Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, p. 357. The connotation of the French term bohémiens which indicate the Roma led to the confusion with the Czech country Bohemie (la Bohême) which could be thus understood as a place where the Roma live. Translated from Czech by David Mraček.
54 The composition was published as Neue Polka in Prague in 1839 by the M. Berry Publishing House, together with a Polka by Hilmar of the same name and a few more dances in a collection of Galops. It has a sophisticated form; the initial part is in 3/4 time, the other 2/4-time part contains a trio and a coda, as was usually the case with such early Polkas.
55 Cited after Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, pp. 357–58.
56 Ibid.
57 Perrot and Robert, La Polka enseignée sans maître.
58 This was a guide for the general public, instructing them how to learn Polka even without a dance master. The guide used the same method that the dance master Eugène Coralli was using in Paris at that time.
59 Cited in Zíbrt, Jak se kdy v Čechách tancovalo, p. 325.
60 Arne Novák, ‘Bedřich Smetana a Jan Neruda’, in Studie o Janu Nerudovi, ed. by Arne Novák (Prague: F. Topič, 1919), pp. 112–26 (p. 114).
61 Jan Neruda, České národní tance (Prague: Nová osvěta, 1956).
62 Alfred Waldau, Böhmische Nationaltänze (Prag: Verlag Herman Dominikus, 1859–1860).
63 It was reflected by ethnochoreologist Martina Pavlicová, ‘Postavy z dějin české etnochoreologie (Jan Jeník z Bratřic, Václav Krolmus, Josef Jaroslav Langer, Jan Neruda)’, Národopisná revue, 2 (1992), 156–64.
64 See footnote 60.
65 See Macura, Český sen, pp. 42, 44.
66 Jan Neruda, ‘O tanci. Rozjímání dle velmi učených lidí’ in Dílo Jana Nerudy VIII. Studie krátké a kratší I. Uspořádal M. Novotný (Prague: Kvasnička a Hampl, 1923), pp. 165–89 (p. 199).
67 Ibid., p. 166.
68 Cited in the second edition of Česká beseda s nápěvy se slovy všech jednotlivých písní a popis tanců, ed. by J. Fiala, J. Prokšová-Evaldová, M. Malá, J. Vokáčová, and H. Livorová (Prague: Komenium, 1947).
69 Gremlicová, Tanec a český národní program, p. 95.
70 Jan Neruda, ‘O taneční hudbě’, in Studie vážné i humoristické II (Prague: F. Topič, 1919), pp. 155–59 (p. 158).
71 Leoš Janáček, ‘Proč máme tolik polek a valčíků? in Fejetony z Lidových novin, ed. by J. Racka, A. Nováka, V. Helferta, and L. Firkušného (Brno: Krajské nakl. v Brně, 1958), p. 72.
72 Tomeš Geisselreiter, Návod k tančení Národních tancův, upravil Ph. Mg. Tomeš Geisselreiter. 1. a 2. díl (Prague: Fr. A. Urbánek, 1895).
73 See Mirko Očadlík, Tvůrce české národní hudby Bedřich Smetana (Prague: Práce, 1949); Jan Racek, Idea vlasti, národa a slávy v díle B. Smetany (Prague: Hudební matice Umělecké besedy 1947); Rudolf Pečman, ‘K problému národní hudby v Evropě a v českých zemích’, Opus musicum, 9 (1977), 8–13.
74 Nejedlý, Bedřich Smetana, pp. 362–84.