With the participation of current and former dancers, the Hortobágy Folk Dance Ensemble of the University of Debrecen celebrated its seventieth anniversary in the oDEon Theater with a large-scale gala show.
The Hortobágy Folk Dance Ensemble of the University of Debrecen was founded in 1953 and has operated without interruption ever since. For a long time, most of the dancers in the art group were “agrarian” students, but nowadays dancers from almost all university faculties join the group.
Regular participants and actors of university festivals, and national and county events. Since its existence, the dance group has won the title of Excellent Group three times, received the Level Award several times, and achieved outstanding results at numerous domestic and foreign festivals.
In addition to education and scientific research and development, quality leisure time, sports and culture are part of university life. “Agrár” has always been known for supporting these activities with its infrastructure and sometimes financially. The area of the agrárium includes the maintenance of agricultural traditions, and the preservation of folk culture, and music and dance clearly belong to this
– said László Stündl in his festive greeting.
It is a great pleasure to be able to accommodate this dance group with a long history since its foundation, this intention will not change in the future, in fact, our plans include a development that will provide much more dignified conditions for the group’s operation compared to the current one
– stressed the Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Science and Environmental Management.
Over the past decades, the ensemble’s repertoire has been constantly expanding, so their shows include dance material from almost all areas of Hungarian dance traditions, which was represented by the jubilee gala program organized on Saturday, in which – among others – András Béres, Lajos Jeremiás, Fanni Lakatos, Miklós Rábai, Dániel Rozsályi and Zoltán Zsuráfszky’s choreographies, new and old compositions.
The program traditionally ended with the shepherd dances of Hortobágy.
The Szeredás Népzenei Együttes provided the background music, and the Sáránd Dalárda also participated in the program.
The founder of the band, Zoltán Bertalan, who passed away in 2020, and a former student at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Debrecen, was also remembered in the evening.
(unideb.hu)
