AESTHETICS OF UKRAINIAN FOLK TRADITIONAL DANCE : SEMIOTIC APPROACH
Abstract
The aim of this article is to study the aesthetics of Ukrainian folk traditional dance through the prism of semiotic analysis.
The methodological basis of the study includes the works of scholars in the field of choreography (A. Bohorod, V. Verkhovynets, A. Humeniuk, K. Kinder, S. Lehka), art history (B. Vodianyi, O. Smoliak, A. Sokolov), aesthetics (V. Lebedev, L. Smorzh), and semiotics (J. Cooper, Y. Lotman, Ch. Morris).
The results of the study confirmed that traditional Ukrainian folk dance is the bearer of essential aesthetic values. It is aimed at ensuring the process of aesthetic communication of a person with the most important ideals of his/her life, encoded in pliant symbols of choreographic action created by expressive movements, gestures and poses, thus giving the possibility to experience aesthetic pleasure (consolation), and to enrich the person’s spiritual world. This characteristic is caused by the ability of folk dance to assert the ideals of beauty through the correlation with the perfect vitality of nature, sublimity, greatness and power through personification with the magical power of the deity, comic, as an affirmation of life optimism and self-acceptance through laughing at personal drawbacks. This is an aesthetic form of expression of those mental characteristics that are originally inherent in the Ukrainian people.
The novelty of this study is that for the first time the aesthetics of Ukrainian folk traditional dance is studied using the semiotic method. Based on it, the analysis of the aesthetic content of Ukrainian folk traditional dances is carried out on examples of the «Bunny, bunny, you are gray-haired» haivka (spring dance song), recorded by O. Smoliak in Ternopil region; the «Roman» pair dance and humorous «Shevchyk», recorded by V. Verkhovynets in Kyiv region.
Practical significance. The semiotic approach to the analysis of the aesthetics of Ukrainian traditional folk dance presented in the article can become the basis for further theoretical developments in the study of Ukrainian choreographic art in the variety and richness of its aesthetic content.
