DANCE AS COMMUNICATIVE CODE IN ROMANIAN COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE RITUALS

The goal of the present research is the interpretive description of dance as a communicative cultural system. The research is an ethnographic analysis of dance as a meaningful code within a particular cultural setting. The setting is the complex of courtship and marriage rituals in a village in northwestern Transylvania, Romania. I argue that dance is a cultural system with a set of organized rules which are learned and shared. This set of rules is a code, a system of signification, through which dance meaning is transmitted.;The ethnographic analysis reveals a gender hierarchy that is present in social, economic, and ritual spheres. There are also factors, both ideological and material, which promote cooperation between the sexes, particularly within the household. The resulting tension in the adult social role between gender solidarity and household unity is reflected in the dance.;The Sunday dance event is a major courtship ritual. The movement code of the dance differs for men and women. Each group selects movement signs from the larger overlapping repertoire of non-dance movement to heighten sex differences in the courtship dance. In wedding dances, the social transitions of the bride are iconically represented. The dance code is a multivocal system of signification. Movement signs of the dance code are revealed through Effort/Shape analysis. Through the signs of the dance code, the village gender hierarchy is both expressed and mediated.;Using the framework of an ethnography of communication, the research is directed at both the ethnography of the dance as a communicative event in the society and the analysis of the system of movement signs which makes up the dance code. Dance occasions are analyzed with respect to the broader conceptual context of gender relations. Elements of the dance code are analyzed using the system of Effort/Shape, that part of Labananlysis which focuses on the qualitative rather than the structural aspects of movement. Combining these two approaches allows for an interpretation of the meaning of the dance text within the cultural context of gender relations.