As a country with a relatively small population (approximately 2 million), Latvia can take pride in the number of people who are practicing folk dance at amateur level. Based on 2015 information provided by the Latvian National Centre for Culture, this amateur movement counts 603 dance groups (over 12 000 dancers) and accordingly 417 dance group leaders. The main goal of dance group activities is to sustain the idea of national consciousness through the means of folk dance, which is a meaningful factor in the strengthening of national identity to progress to a modern and national country. The National Song and Dance Festival, which takes place every five years in Latvia and which is one of the UNESCO Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, is a significant tool for maintaining a national cultural environment within amateur dance. The festival combines artistic, national social and other functions of significance to social development. All above-mentioned conditions determined the research problem – how to develop dance group leader lifelong education programmes more successfully, in order for these to purposefully integrate participants of various levels of professionalism. The research aim is to analyse existing lifelong education contents available to dance group leaders, along with the challenges and risks they pose. The study predominantly makes use of empirical methods – lifelong education programme participant surveys and their analysis; analysis of the artistic performance of dance groups.
<p>As the idea of the national significance of the festival in the life of each inhabitant of Latvia developed, starting from 1960 the School Youth Song and Dance Festival became an independent movement. The School Youth Song and Dance Festival is included into the UNESCO celebration and event calendar, by marking its 50th anniversary and recognizing the role of this tradition in preserving and inheriting the general Baltic song and dance tradition. Therefore the Latvian School Youth Song and Dance Festival has become a significant culturally historical event of a global scale. The article analyzes the preconditions for development of such a dance festival, by emphasizing the contribution of the 10th School Youth Dance Festival (2011) to the development of this tradition. Yet the key benefit lies in the fact that the Dance Festival ensures the inheritence of the tradition in all generations, it enhances the interest of the society in traditional culture and, in the globalized times, maintains the national peculiarities of a small nation.</p>
To this day, the name of choreographer Leonid Yakobson is known only among the dance professionals. However, his ballets and dance miniatures, along with the surprising choice of imagery and ballet language, testify that
The greatness and harmony of ancient Greece has had an impact upon the development of the Western European culture to this day. The ancient Greek culture has influenced contemporary literature genres and systems of philosophy, principles of architecture, sculpture and drama and has formed basis for such sciences as astronomy and mathematics. The art of ancient Greece with its penchant for beauty and clarity has been the example of the humanity’s search for an aesthetic ideal. Despite only being preserved in its fragments, the dance of ancient Greece has become an example worthy of imitation in the development of classical dance as well as the 20th century modern dance, inspired by the notions of antique dance by Isadora Duncan. Research in antique dance helps sunderstand the historical relationships in dance ontology, axiology and anthropology.
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