The Polonaise originates from a dance danced among the people called hoppy. Depending on the region, it was known as: walked, pedestrian, old-fashioned, rogered, passed, dreptany, slow, round, slow, goose, grand or simply Polish dance. It was danced by rural folk and petty nobility at weddings, during the eulogy. Over time, it was also adopted by the courts, initially as a form of parade of the nobility before the king. And around the 17th century it became a representative national dance admired by foreigners and also danced outside our country. In Italy it was performed under the name la Polacca, and in France la Polonaise, and it is the French who are credited with the origin of the name of this dance. At the beginning of the 18th century, the form of the polonaise crystallized as a three-measure dance, danced with a "Polish step," resembling the basic step of the mazurka, but performed much more slowly and without jumping, using numerous figures, improvised by the dance leader.
From the beginning of the 19th century, the polonaise was widely recognized as the oldest national dance, whose form cultivated among the upper classes was an ennobled version of dances that had been present in Polish society for centuries. The polonaise's period of greatest splendor and, at the same time, greatest popularity lasted throughout the Saxon period until the decline of the Napoleonic era. At balls, the polonaise was danced for up to half an hour and even several or a dozen times. The elaborate forms of the polonaise were developed by dance teachers and taught in convent schools, cadet corps and at pensions. Around 1815, the polonaise began to decline rapidly in importance. Over time, it found itself on the margins of dance culture, only starting ceremonial balls. This tradition, moreover, with varying intensity in different historical periods, continues to this day.
Polonaises were written by great Polish composers such as: Frederic Chopin and Stanislaw Moniuszko, as well as foreign composers such as Piotr Tchaikovsky and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Polonaise is also preserved in carols: W żłobie leży, Dzisiaj w Betlejem, Bóg się rodzi, Serca ludzkie się radują or the German carol O Tannenbaum. Among musicologists, there are opinions that it was not until the 18th that religious texts were arranged to previously known dance melodies.
The custom of celebrating the prom polonaise is linked to the advent of matriculation exams, which were first introduced in Prussia on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1812. After 1815, they were also conducted in the Grand Duchy of Posen, as well as in some schools in the Kingdom of Poland. From 1834, the Prussian matriculation examination in oral and written form was compulsory for those seeking admission to university. In 1849 this exam, under the name "matura" - was introduced in Austria, and in 1869 in Russia, which eventually covered the entire Polish lands.
Prom balls probably appeared around 1834 in the Polish lands under Prussian rule, marking the period of preparation for matriculation. In Prussian schools of that period, dance was present in general education. This also applied to Polish lands, especially the Grand Duchy of Posen until the liquidation of autonomy, where, in accordance with a century-old school tradition, and the social etiquette of Polish society, the polonaise was still used.
After 1849, prom shows and balls also became popular in some provinces of the Austrian Monarchy, including Galicia, where the polonaise was still popular in social circles. The situation was somewhat different in the Russian partition, where the teaching process and the matriculation exam itself were heavily Russified. On the territory of the Congress Kingdom, dancing the polonaise was forbidden for a certain period.
After independence and the announcement of the so-called "Jedrzejo school reform" in 1932, two types of middle school exams were introduced - the so-called "small matura" at the end of a four-year middle school and the "big matura" at the end of a two-year high school, which were customarily accompanied by balls. A year later, the "Poland and its Culture" program was introduced to schools, which included the study of folk dances (elementary schools) and national dances (junior high schools). As a rule, the school year ended with student dance showdowns, replaced in high school graduating classes by a joint dancing of the polonaise.
In 1948, with the advent of the new school education system, the teaching of the polonaise was abolished. After 1956, the old customs began to return. And so the beautiful tradition of starting proms with dancing the polonaise continues to this day.
In 2019, the polonaise was added to the National List of Intangible Heritage as a symbolic expression of community across differences.
Text: Joanna Radziewicz
Photo: wikipedia.pl- public domain
Sources:
1. wikipedia.pl
2. intangible.nid.pl
3. Nowak T.: Polonaise- genesis and history of performance and dance practice in Polish folk, court and social culture. Institute of Music and Dance
4. Nowak T.: National dance in the Polish cultural canon: sources, genesis, transformations, Warsaw 2016.
