TRADITIONAL YUGOSLAV DANCE IN A CHANGING SOCIETY (SOCIAL CHANGE, EASTERN EUROPE, FOLK ARTS)

Yugoslavia is a culturally complex area consisting of Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Slavic Moslems who are differentiated by language, religion, and cultural traditions. Before World War II, a great majority of the people lived an agricultural lifestyle in local isolation. After World War II and the Socialist Revolution, centralized planning initiated the many rapid social changes inherent in development.;This study examines some of the influences that accelerate change using traditional dance and the Smotra Folklora, Folklore Review, as a focus. At such a festival the influences of tourism, folkdance enthusiasts, visiting Yugoslav-Americans and Yugoslav worker-migration can be seen as contributing to the continuing valuation and even the marketability of traditional dance.;Because of a wartorn and suppressed political history, Yugoslavs have significantly valued their folk arts which were often their only outlet for cultural and political expression. Since the Slavs first settled the Balkans in the sixth century, dance and music have been continuous expressions of their culture while enduring nearly unchanged in form until the twentieth century. Today this results in the preservation and further development of traditional arts by institutionalizing, standardizing and adapting them to technology. Traditional arts remain desirable, cultural links between the past and future and help to form the present cultural expression.