Erdély.ma

Letters to London

The director-choreographer and scriptwriter László Diószegi presented the piece as follows: "Thirty years ago, in March 1986, the premiere of the show Fairy Garden took place in the Pesti Vigadó. I had created a half-time dance piece about the chances of the survival of Hungarian culture in Transylvania, about Hungarian-Romanian coexistence, about the threat of the Ceausescu dictatorship. It was not appropriate to talk about this under the Kádár regime, because under the communist regime the fate of the Transylvanian Hungarians was an internal affair of "sister" Romania. However, in the late 1980s, the "party centre" - however much it wanted to - could not sweep the issue of the two million Hungarians who had been torn into Romania under the carpet. However, raising this sensitive issue from the point of view of the dictatorship, and depicting the real picture, was not without risk, even with the abstract language of artistic works. Although the work was not banned due to the confusion of the Hungarian party leadership, representatives of the Romanian Embassy in Budapest were offended when they withdrew from the screening. However, the audience, for whom the work was made, greeted the heartfelt piece with a quarter of an hour of loud ovations.

The last thirty years have brought many changes. Our folk songs and folk dances are the same, but in our lives and in our pains, this generation has not passed without a trace. Transylvanian Hungarians and folk art are perhaps in even greater danger today than they were thirty years ago. Today, our centuries-old treasures, the Hungarian people, are not threatened by Romanian nationalism or communist dictatorship. These were easily recognisable, obvious dangers, which could be successfully confronted with unity, strong faith and determination. Today, much more insidious processes are emerging. Globalisation, which offers prosperity, wealth and well-being, is eating away at our centuries-old treasures in such a way that we hardly notice their irreversible loss.

It is all the more timely today to speak in the language of art about this creeping, menacing threat that is consuming our values. That today it is not Romanian nationalism but the tragic ageing of the population in the villages and the emigration of young people that is causing the closure of Hungarian schools. About the fact that the American 'money-making society', completely alien to the world of Transylvanian villages, is spreading irresistibly in our country too, and is swallowing up the wonderful human world that was one of the defining features of millennia of European culture, one of the bastions of the East. It is about the fact that our centuries-old community celebrations, christenings, military baptisms, balls and kalakas are being replaced by shoddy imported occasions that turn our values into shoddy business deals. The fact that our young people, dizzy with the hope of making money and acquiring it, work from dawn to dusk in 'Anglais', 'Italis' and 'Spens', and dare not admit to themselves that the money they have made can only make them happy at home, for two weeks a year.

So this is what the new Fairy Garden, "Erdély.ma" "Transylvania.today" is all about. The show is a reminder and an alarm. It shows both our beautiful past values and our troubled present."