Dance of the Ancient Stone

By: Angelina Lekaj

The Old Stone Dance is a popular motif of the folk dance, preserved from generation to generation, originating from the oral tradition of the Mirdi people since the 1600s, according to the testimony of a long interview with the elderly Domgjonan Prend Paci. This motif came to our days around 1986-1987 and was presented for the first time at the National Folk Festival in 1988. Since 1968, the National Folk Festival in Gjirokastër has been held in Albania every five years. In 1985, after graduating from the University of Fine Arts in Tirana, I started my artistic activity at the Rrëshen Palace of Culture, as a choreographer of the Mirdita district in the period 1985-1990, and I was especially concerned with researching the values ​​of Mirdita folk dance.

The choreography of a dance is a complex art, after a few minutes it is played on stage, it requires a large number of people, starting from the source group of the dance, to the group of its final realization, the orchestra with instrumentalists, music directors, choreographer, set designer , ethnologist, props, etc. The merit of the realization of this choreographic work belongs to the whole mass of people, where every participant from this mass of people knows the work from the point of view and personal experience. While I had the main responsibility for its realization as a choreographer.

Over the centuries, this dance motif remained in the memory of generations and came to our days thanks to the work we did to bring it back to the stage. At that time, the Choreography Branch at the Academy of Arts conducted various folklore expeditions in different areas of Albania, from North to South. I continued this experience after starting work. After my appointment in Mirdita, I fortunately fell in the footsteps of this motive, which I will describe below. During a folklore expedition in Fan, the research expedition team; I, poet Gjok Beci and ethnographer painter Lin Loci went to Domgjon, where I happened to meet the old man from Domgjon, Prend Paci.

Prendi was born in Domgjon in 1903. He was a man who had great life experience, the school of life and natural intelligence.

As soon as we arrived in the village of Domgjon, we saw an old man sitting quietly under the shade of a tree. I felt it was the most appropriate time to talk to him. I separated from the two colleagues who went to the House of Culture in the center of the village and greeted the old man, asking if I could meet with him. Full of kindness and enthusiasm he accepted. I sat down on the floor in front of him and the conversation started first with everyday topics from life in Fan, his family life, his old age, then we moved on to memories of various life experiences from childhood. In that conversation I focused my attention on holidays and their motives. Not interrupting the conversation, I asked him from time to time briefly: Did you have a close relationship with your grandfather? Have you ever met your great-grandfather? What did the elders tell you in your childhood about the holidays at that time? I asked him a series of successive questions throughout the conversation which brought his memory to minute detail, and in the course of the conversation he told me that in his childhood he had heard from the old men about a festival connected with the spring of water which was being exhausted at that time. from time to time. Due to the need for water, the people of that time thought about how to preserve the source so that it does not run out. One day they gathered all the inhabitants and discussed that everyone should bring a quantity of sheep's wool and baskets of (voe) eggs. He mixes the sheep's wool with the eggs. With this mass of mixture they built a wall around the water source and, pressing it hard with their feet, compacted the wall around the stone. This type of action turned into the water festival ritual.

During the confession, the old man easily demonstrated with his body language the movements that were made on this occasion. According to this ritual, they sang and danced around the stone. To the question of what musical instruments were used, Prendi gave this answer: With heralding and triumphal shouts, where the rhythm was also accompanied by stones, cattle rattles, pots, pans, in a word, with everything people could produce sounds and create the rhythm of the dance .

I discussed the theme of this ancient dance with Gjok Beci, Lin Loci and Mark Paci, director of the House of Culture in Fane, and we suggested Mark to bring it as a dance motif from the source group of Fani for a competition between the artistic groups of the areas of Mirdita , in the Rreshen Palace of Culture.

The merit of the amateurs of that time: Gjergj Shytit, Fran Laska and Fran Pershqefa, as well as the group of dancers of the House of Culture in Fan, is that they brought this motif to the competition, which the choreographer of the district, Angjelina Lekaj, transformed into a complete choreography for the National Folk Festival, with all the complete parameters, as judged by the specialists in Tirana as suitable to be presented by the folk group of Mirdita in the National Folk Festival of 1988.

Demonstration of the construction of the Gurra spring by the dancers gathered side by side with arm-to-shoulder calls, dressed in the old costumes of the pirusts, who had a red belt at the waist and shijak/wool clothing designed by the costume designer and painter of the Palace of Culture, Lin Loci. The music was made with traditional instruments such as poca, kusi, spoon, stone, tsifteli, fyej, cowbell bell... etc., under the direction of Mark Gjoka, Music Director of the Palace of Culture in Rrëshen. Props, traditional instruments, buliera, sheep's wool, etc. were brought by Mark Paci.

The dancers demonstrated the construction of the wall around the spring, pressing it hard with their feet and accompanied it with the gurgling of water and the triumphant herald calls. At the end came the celebration of the construction of Gurra, danced by all the dancers together, girls and boys with water jugs... in different choreographic structures; in a circle, side by side, in twos and threes...

This dance motif is first performed by the dancers of the house of Culture in Fan, directed by Gjergj Shyti. This resource group brought the dance to the folk art selection process according to the Festival procedure, in the Palace of Culture in Rrëshen. After my approval as the choreographer of the Mirdita district, we invited the international specialist of Albanian folkloric ethnochoreography, Ramazan Bogdanin, to give his opinion. Professor Bogdani was an ethnomusicologist and ethnochoreologist at the Institute of Folklore, he appreciated this dance as an echo of antiquity.

The Ancient Stone Dance was performed at the Festival by the elderly dancer from Fani, Gjergj Shyti, and the young ones Hil Gjaci, Terezina and Vera Buraku, as well as by the dancers of the Palace of Culture in Mirdita: Gjergj Lleshaj, Gjon Karagjozi, Fran Gjergji, Sul Cara, Ndre Toma... etc. At the Festival, this dance was evaluated as the choreographic masterpiece of the Festival.