Dancing to Chopin's Polonaises (Vol. 13, No. 3)

Krakusy Polish  Folk Dance Ensemble in 1812 Costumes at the Polish Church, Los Angeles

One of the most amazing memories of a lifetime of loving Chopin is the New Year's Eve Party at the musical home of Roza Kostrzewska  Yoder and Douglas Yoder, pianists, and parents of three young pianists. At midnight, to welcome the New Year 2010, all guests danced the Polonaise, to live performance by Douglas Yoder. By now, I forgot which Polonaise it was, maybe  the Heroic one, Op. 53 in A-flat Major ?  In any case, the music shook the whole house as we danced around the music studio, up and down the stairs to the living-room and the balcony. The moon was huge, in an enormous "fox hat" reddish halo, the night was cold and alive with music and love and beauty.  I wrote a poem after driving back home.  

While looking for my poem, I found an old post about this experience, described in 2012: 

"One dance captured my attention and remained in my memory: Chopin's Polonaise in A Major, Op. 40, nicknamed "The Military" (the link points to a YouTube recording by Maurizio Pollini). Yes, the same Polonaise that gave its first notes to a signal of the British broadcasts to occupied Poland during World War II. And here we are, dancing? Just after midnight all the guests at the party lined up in a long line of couples, the host sat at the grand piano and off we went. Around the living room, out onto the patio, up and down the steps, out one door, in another, all over the house... The moon was unusually bright that night, surrounded by an enormous halo, a portent of things to come. I felt a rush of pride, elation even, when we moved along with dignity, in triple meter: one long step with bended knees and two short ones. Down, up, up, down, up, up, around the house, around the world... It was so incredibly moving - a small group of Poles and their international rag-tag bunch of friends dancing to music written almost two hundred years ago and heard in so many homes, on so many concert stages. Welcome the new year, the year of Chopin! That was two years ago - and the tradition of dancing that particular Polonaise at midnight continues.

On the way back home, I drove through an unfamiliar neighborhood and saw boys playing with a bonfire on the front lawn of their small house. It was a working class neighborhood with tiny houses squished in neat rows on streets leading up to the hill of the Occidental College. The moon, the fire, the dance - I was inspired to write a haibun about it. It was recently published in an Altadena anthology, Poetry and Cookies, edited by Pauli Dutton, the Head Librarian of the Altadena Public Library:

Midnight Fire

In the golden holiness of a night that will never be seen again and will never return… (From a Gypsy tale)

After greeting the New Year with a Chopin polonaise danced around the hall, I drove down the street of your childhood. It was drenched with the glare of the full moon in a magnificent sparkling halo. The old house was not empty and dark. On the front lawn, boys were jumping around a huge bonfire. They screamed with joy, as the flames shot up to the sky. The gold reached out to the icy blue light, when they called me to join their wild party. Sparks scattered among the stars. You were there, hidden in shadows. I sensed your sudden delight.

my rose diamond brooch

sparkles on the black velvet -

stars at midnight

© 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

I wrote more verse about the Polonaise itself, but all the descriptions fell short of the delight I felt that night, so it was reduced to just an introduction to a story that has no end. The contrast of warm flames and icy moonlight was unforgettable. I added the romance, of course - poetry is not supposed to be real - though, when rooted in an actual experience, it touches a nerve in listeners. After one reading I was asked by an eager member of the audience: "So what about the man who gave you that brooch? Where is he now?" My answer? "There was no man. This is my brooch, I got it for my daughter and she returned it to me, since I go out to fancy evening parties and she does not" I said. There was nobody lurking in the shadows. . . The poem sounds better this way, though."

The repetitiveness of the "Military" Polonaise with the easily recognizable initial phrase and its steady rhythm result in music that is perfect for dancing to, not just enjoying in the concert hall.  

Kocyan plays Chopin at the Ruskin Art Club, 2010

Another, quite memorable dancing experience, with the music by Chopin, played magnificently by Wojciech Kocyan, professor at Loyola Marymount University and a genius of color and expression at the keyboard, was associated with the poetry anthology that gave rise to this blog. We held one of the early readings from the new Chopin with Cherries anthology at the Ruskin Art Club in the spring of 2010 and what a reading it was!  To weave poetry and music into a seamless whole, with each poet reading their work and the pianist providing brief interludes of a kind they wrote about - etudes, preludes, mazurkas, nocturnes, waltzes... Pure magic. 

I asked Edward Hoffman, the Artistic Director and choreographer of the Polish Folk Dance Ensemble Krakusy in Los Angeles, to come in costume and lead the Polonaise to live Chopin music played by Kocyan. Mr. Hoffman graciously led the poets and guests in a dance around the hall. Dressed in a Polish nobleman's festive outfit, a velvet "kontusz" with slit sleeves, a feathered hat and carrying a sabre ("szabla"), Mr. Hoffman transformed Chopin's Polonaise into an actual dance that it rarely was, a noble and uplifting motion around the hall. Here's Mr. Hoffman showing the proper bow at the end of the dance, with Halina Wojcik.  

Edward Hoffman and Halina Wojcik show the proper bow after the Polonaise.

Most poets in attendance have never danced the polonaise before. It is a Polish tradition: each Ball, be it a prom in high school, or a New Year's Eve Ball, starts with a Polonaise - danced in couples, following the lead couple around the hall, out to the patio, between the tables, out to the garden if there's one. The polonaise also includes special figures, including a "bridge," turning back under two rows of dancers with raised hands. It is a "walking dance" ("chodzony"), suitable for everyone - young and old. It is also very noble and elegant in character.  You can read more about history of the Polonaise in my essay on the Polish Music Center website: https://polishmusic.usc.edu/research/dances/polonaise/

Polonaise dancers in Polish nobility costumes by Zofia Stryjenska

Here's Chopin's Polonaise Op. 40 in A Major with words and in an orchestral setting, performed by the Lira Ensemble of Chicago. They are dressed in 1807-12 costumes of the Duchy of Warsaw, a short-lived satellite state ruled by Napoleon during the Napoleonic wars, before the disastrous invasion of Russia. Men in military uniforms with sabres, women in high-breasted muslin dresses with puff sleeves and shawls. Very elegant and appropriate to the "military" tone of the music. The same costumes are reproduced at the top of this blog, from a performance by Krakusy Folk Dance Ensemble. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cV588pudkU

Here's the same Chopin Polonaise played, albeit too slowly, by a young pianist and danced on the stage in 2016:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpQ0kryd83Y

Children from the Polish American Dance Company danced a polonaise at the art gallery of the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York. The caption says it is a Chopin polonaise, but I do not recall one sounding like that. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_JMzZEI0aU

International students at the Erasmus program also learned this dance. Here they are, with the currently most popular Polonaise in Poland: Wojciech Kilar's Polonaise from the film Pan Tadeusz. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iSDBTTxQMk

The same Kilar Polonaise was used for the choreography of the Polonaise Polish Folk Arts Ensemble, celebrating its 35th anniversary in Edmonton, Canada:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOpQShwGRt4

Kilar's Polonaise was also played and dance at the Old Town Square in Krakow by a "flash mob" organized by a local orchestra and Cracovia Danze historic dance group. These quasi-spontaneous events, surprise to the random audience are always fun, though the focus was on the orchestra instead of making everyone dance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAHVknRJlzg

And here's Singapore's diplomatic corps dancing the Polonaise at their Ball in 2018, pulled into the game by the costumed folk-dancers: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NliidrnmaY

The Kilar Polonaise is 7 min long, so it gives enough time to repeat figures, circle around the hall, all in the steady repetitive rhythm of its melody. But it gets tiring after a while, a bit like Ravel's Bolero. Why don't we return to dancing Chopin's Military Polonaise? Or Michal Kleofas Oginski's famous "Farewell to the Homeland" Polonaise so appropriate for all emigrants? I did not find it danced, so here's an orchestral version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWajYHs4goU

It is interesting that the Polonaise is also very popular among the Russian. Let's watch Russian youth dancing to Piotr Tchaikovsky's Polonaise from his opera Eugene Onegin. So elegant, with traditional ball gowns, and roses.  That Polonaise in the opera was danced by proud Polish nobility, the enemy of Russian heroes and heroines of the opera. But the music lost its negative association in the dance hall. Here is the Pushkin Ball 2011:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3e1OH1BpjA

A traditional polonaise in 17th century nobility costumes was danced in the Main Square of Krakow's old town by Cracovia Danze ensemble playing a chamber version of a historic polonaise  by Prince Michal Radziwill, choreographed by 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4zxwxXElmQ

Krakusy Polish Folk Dance Ensemble in Lublin costumes dancing the Polonaise.

For poets from the Chopin with Cherries anthology, the Polonaise was music to listen to and reflect about, rather than a dance to enjoy movement together and integrate the community. Here's Kath Abela Wilson reflecting on hearing and playing Chopin.

How I Fell in Love with Chopin

 

he did not own a piano

hesitant shy unsure

 

I brought him to my mother’s house

where the old upright

moved in by seminarians last winter

still leaked snow

 

frail on the long walk

uphill he carried

the polonaises

 

told me how

he’d had polio as a child

came breathless to the bench

transfixed

 

we were all long afternoon

turned to dark

white moon balanced

ebony benched the sky

 

polished sound and circumstance

power I leaned into

 

he moved into my small apartment

took my mother’s piano apart to rework it

keys scattered everywhere

for three years

it did not last

 

I had to collect them in a box

 

I don’t think it ever got back together

but I realized in that time

 

I had fallen in love

with Chopin

 

(c) Kath Abela Wilson from Chopin with Cherries anthology (2010) 

Interview with Kathabela Wilson for "Colorado Boulevard" in Pasadena (Vol. 6, No. 5)

MAJA TROCHIMCZYK INTERVIEW FOR COLORADO BOULEVARD
Short version published in March 2015: 
http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-the-artist-maja-trochimczyk/

A Telescope on the Artist

Kathabela Wilson:  As a poet, artist, writer, host, publisher, music historian, I see you as having an unusual scope and vision. How do you see yourself as a poet/artist in the world?

Maja Trochimczyk: Poetry is a window into the soul; an opening into the rift between the earthly and the divine; a unique way of communicating the beauty, and the richness, and the love, and the sorrow of the world. With poetry, first we prove our own existence, then we document the “real” world inside and around us – that has nothing to do with the “reality” created and perpetuated in the media – and then we share the joy of words creating worlds with other poets, listeners and readers. Poetry is written to be read and to be heard, t is best when performed with music. My first, and most favorite musical accompanist is Rick Wilson, flautist extraordinaire, who can set the mood for each poem and describe its trajectory with his music played on a variety of flutes. I was so thrilled to perform my Awakenings poem inspired by Susan Dobay’s painting, City Whispers, with Rick, and you, and Jean Sudbury on the violin at Susan’s salon. It was a group improvisation of the highest caliber. Unfortunately, it was not recorded:  the poem is published in the On Awakening book. Rick played for all of my readings for Poets on Site at the Pacific Asia Museum that included the Illuminata (known as “I want that crown…”) – my humorous take on the Buddhist virtue of renunciation of the worldly riches. Rick was amazing on his Tibetan flute, as he was in many other performances, for instance A Box of Peaches and the recent Woman in Metaphor reading at Beyond Baroque. As one of the original members of Poets on Site, I participated in all Poets on Site  events and have poems in ALL Poets on Site books – this is a perfect marriage of poetry, music and art, by the way. Here’s your “telescope” answer, then, the perfect marriage…

A Compass to the Poet

KAW:  Your Polish roots are strong, and have been set into our local poetic world deeply and with vital expression. What have been the influences of both, the  activities, extensions and blends.

MT: I first read poetry in Polish and my Mom had a huge poetry collection at home in Warsaw, including Rilke, Miłosz, Szymborska, and bilingual editions of Guillaume Apollinaire and Arthur Rimbaud in Polish and French.  (She was learning French until she died in 2013, 13 years after being shot in a 2000 home invasion robbery, that also seriously wounded my father who died after a protracted illness in 2001). I inherited her love of poetry. Interestingly, Apollinaire was a Pole, born Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, and French was his second language. I still do not speak much French, but when I learned English, I started to read poetry in the original: I had three favorite poets, T.S. Eliot, E.E. Cummings  and Emily Dickinson. 

When I got a copy of Eliot’s Four Quartets from the composer Louis Andriessen, my artistic mentor, I copied its lines into notes and gave them as hand-made cards to people. These were so amazing: “the dove descending breaks the air,” “the end is where we start from” and “the fire and the rose are one.”  Spiritual themes are at the heart of my poetry – as in the Meditations on Divine Names anthology I edited in 2012. Then, the memory of my Polish childhood and its loss, the pain of homelessness that every immigrant feels – these are the basic themes of my poetry. I recently completed my third book of poems based on childhood memories of my parents and my own, lived in the long shadow of the war. It is called Slicing the Bread: A Children’s Survival Manual in 25 Poems and can be found on Finishing Line Press, with selected poems published in the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, Poetry Magazine, Quill and Parchment, Poetry SuperHighway, and others.

Microphone to the Poet

KAW: You have been Poet-Laureate of Sunland- Tujunga, and continue as a gracious host of the Village Poets Reading series at Bolton Hall Museum each month. How does this factor in your life and community? What else in the community, especially Pasadena area has influenced and enlivened your work?

MT: I started writing poetry in English after I emigrated to Canada in 1988; the loss of the “ground under my feet” – my family, language, culture – was just too painful and my first hundred poems were the saddest ever written. It helped – even now I write poems or journal entries for psychotherapeutic reasons and never publish those poems or notes.  I continued after coming to California in 1996, trying to express the inexpressible in a language I started learning in my teens. When my daughter, Anna Harley Trochimczyk (USC Graduate and Ph.D. Candidate at UC Berkeley in Chemical Engineering and an accomplished jazz singer) asked me to enter the competition for the Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, I read my poems in public for the first time.

A year later, in 2008, I met you and a great poetic and artistic friendship was born. I’ve had many titles and wore many hats – Professor, Director, President – but that title of the Poet-Laureate, mine in 2010-2012, is still my favorite. (I was so delighted I wore a silly grin during most of my Passing of the Laurels ceremony, when I was crowned with an actual laurel wreath at the McGroarty Arts Center, a former home of California Poet Laureate John Steven McGroarty).

I marked my tenure with publication of two anthologies – one dedicated to the music of Chopin called Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse that saw numerous readings and concerts in the Foothills, Los Angeles and even Chicago, and another one about religion, the Meditations on Divine Names that included work of all four of former Poets-Laureate who form the core of the Village Poets. We put together the monthly readings in the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, Los Angeles’s Historical Monument No. 2, built of river rocks in 1913. The readings were started during my tenure, but the credit goes to poets Dorothy Skiles, Joe  DeCenzo, and Marlene Hitt, plus our newest addition, current Poet Laureate, Elsa Frausto. I select and invite featured poets with the group’s approval and we rotate the duties of the host. We have one Featured Poet on each fourth Sunday of the month (no readings in December) and have presented many Pasadena poets, we are all a part of the Foothills, after all.

Metronome to the Poet

KAW: You are a music historian by education and inclination. What areas have you explored, what have been your adventures, encounters and how does it  relate to your art and poetry?

MT: I already mentioned the Chopin anthology – of 92 poets and an exploration of the music and life of Frederic (Fryderyk) Chopin (1810-1849) in 123 poems. The book was born from an invitation to the Second International Chopin Congress in Warsaw in 2010 – I hold a Ph.D. in music history and Chopin is among composers that I have often written about. (I have a bibliography of my writings on the website www.trochimczyk.net/bio.html.) All Polish people are raised on Chopin whose music became a symbol of national identity in the dark times of the partitions when the country was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria for 123 years. Chopin’s music was banned by the Germans during World War II and his monument in Warsaw was destroyed. But we love him not for that, but for the deeply personal, intimate voice with which it speaks to each of us, “expressing the inexpressible” – I could say that my poetry tries to do the same. 

I wrote about so many topics and studied so many composers, from the 19^th to the 21^st century, that I became very hard to classify as a “specialist” that marks his/hers territory like the wolves or dogs mark theirs. I want to know, and I’m most excited when embarking upon a new topic. This intellectual curiosity and restlessness has taken me from the Western avant-garde (the topic of my doctorate on musical space and spatial music), that is Xenakis, Brant, and R. Murray Schafer, back to Bartok and Messiaen. This then led to birdsong and ecomusicology studies – I’m on the Board of the Ecomusicology Newsletter of the American Musicological Society. When I worked as Director of the USC Polish Music Center (1996-2004) I started publishing about Polish music –Bacewicz, Gorecki, Lutoslawski, Paderewski, Szymanowska and Chopin. I just finished co-editing Frederic Chopin – A Research and Information Guide for Routledge in New York, and a book on Witold Lutoslawski for the Polish Institute in Canada.  I’m also on the Board of the Polish American Historical Association documenting the immigrant experience.  Who knows what the future will bring.

Microscope on the Artist/Poet

KAW: What are interior qualities of your artistic  life? Why are you a poet? 

Poetry is a proof that I exist, that I feel, see, experience… I document my life in poetry: even when it is about others, I write about the way I see them. There is an enormous difference with music history: in my books and articles I write about what the others thought, imagined and did. In my poems, I write about what I think, imagine and do.  Poems come to me when I drive and I have to remember the lines until I can write them down. I call these my “freeway poetry.” I love my roses in my garden, I keep photographing them. I’m fascinated with the veins on the petals, veins on the leaves changing colors, shapes of river rocks. I even had a solo exhibition, thanks to the courtesy of Susan Dobay. I write about roses as the symbol of the core spiritual virtue in our lives: love in all of its incarnations. We do not celebrate the Valentine’s Day in Poland (or did not when I was growing up there, like there was no Halloween, but All Souls’ Day), but I wrote a series of meditations on love for my blog, illustrated with poems from my two books of love poetry, Miriam’s Iris, or Angels in the Garden and Rose Always – A Court Love Story.  Since both books were so personal, I did not want any editors to mess with them, and formed my own Moonrise Press in 2008. By now, the press issued seven books and keeps going – Ed Rosenthal, the L.A.’s original “poet-broker” was the most recently published, and Marlene Hitt, a witty and insightful poet from Sunland will be next.

Pulse of the Poet

KAW: You are a mother and also I know your professional work involves supporting and encouraging others to be creative. Can you elaborate, and show how this motivates and extends your creative work? 

MT: I love being a part of the poetry community in California. In addition to being the core member of Poets on Site and Village Poets, I belong to the group of eight Westside Women Writers, so named by Millicent Borges Accardi, our fearless leader.  I am active, sometimes, in the Southern California Haiku Study Group, and attend a variety of readings. My three children are scientists – Marcin graduated from USC with two computer science degrees and moved back to Poland, Ania is a chemical engineering and jazz singer, and Ian studies theoretical physics at UC Santa Barbara and has great hopes for the future.  They are not into poetry and are not the subjects or recipients of my poems, except for a couple of educational ones, about virtues.

These particular poems have proven very useful for my “day job” as the Senior Director of Planning and Research for Phoenix Houses of California. I occasionally organize poetry readings at our various rehabilitation facilities, with residents reading their own poems about their lives and recovery. Poetry is a great tool for therapy.  An unnamed trauma remains horrific, when you name and describe it, you put a limit to it, a border around it – you enclose it in words. That’s what I did after my parents were shot, I wrote about grief and loss. Many poems like that are not for publication during the poet’s lifetime. But you can sublimate the pain into art, and leave the details behind while capturing the essence…

For me it is that late afternoon, with the last golden-red rays of sunlight, and the nostalgic mood of the “waning of the day” – the farewell, the end of life, of time….  I talked about this and other issues in an interview with Lois P. Jones on Poets’ Café, featuring “Tiger Nights” inspired by a nightmare and a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. I wrote about the impossibility of stopping time, in the “Easter Apocalypsis” and the “Three Postcards from Paris ” (featured on Poetry L.A.)  You have to capture the moment, enjoy the here and now: like grains of sand, seconds and minutes slip through your fingers. And poof! We are gone.

A SAMPLE POEM

Moon Reality

I watched the Moon around the House 

Until upon a Pane –

She stopped –

                     ~ Emily Dickinson

Long nets of power lines

Stretch out to catch the orange

Ball of the moon that falls, falls, falls

Down to the horizon

It bounces off the mountaintops

A bright white pancake

That floats in silver sky

Above the freeway turning home

What is real? What imagined?

We are caught in the electric net

Of our own devising

Hypnotized

We stare at moving electrons in a black box

We smile at pictures

Looking straight into the eyes on the screen

We practice witticisms on the keyboard

For all to see, no one to hear

Illusion of connection

The flat pancake of full moon

Slides along the taunt wires

Over purple hills, deserted streets

I am going home

To gaze at my pale moon of a screen

Read my personal invitation

To Atlantis

SELECTED POEMS AND LINKS

Illuminata:

http://www.pacificasiamuseum.org/_visit/transcripts/50_himalayan.aspx

A Box of Peaches:

http://www.oldflutes.com/poetsonsite/ptfiles/gau.pdf

The Four Quartets: http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets

T.S. Eliot reading the Four Quartets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga8tQrG4ZSw

Slicing the Bread  http://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2014/07/finishing-line-press-to-publish-slicing.html

http://www.moonrisepress.com/divine.html

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com

PAHAnews.blogspot.com

Poets Café – http://www.timothy-green.org/blog/maja-trochimczyk/

Moonday Feature with three poems

http://www.moondaypoetry.com/maja-trochimczyk.htm

Poetry LA reading of Three Postcards from Paris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVgHby3aKJw

Easter Apocalypsis - http://www.thescreamonline.com/poetry/poetry7-4/trochimczyk.html

moonrisepress.blogspot.com

www.moonrisepress.com/rosealways.html

www.trochimczyk.net/miriamiris.html