The Dance of Mongolian Horsemen

Aduuchin , the dance of the ‘Mongolian horsemen’, was composed in the 1960s by the Mongolian choreographer Ts. Sevjid. It epitomises the Mongolian national dance ( Mongol ündesnii büjig ) repertoire, both by its evocation of the horsemen of the steppes, and by its style, which combines the movements of local dances with Russian ballet technique. The riding gestures in the dance are perceived as typically Mongolian, so much so that a movement in the ‘Gangnam Style’ video, by the Korean pop singer Psy, has been seen as an international ‘theft’ from Mongolian dance. However, my archive research has established a concealed link between this dance and the Polovtsian Dances by the Russian choreographer Fokine (1909). Through the prism of an anthropo-history of dance, this article examines choreographic circulations and porosities throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the way in which some salient gestures are stabilised as vectors of collective identity

Ballet · Choreography · Contemporary dance · Dance · Evocation · Gesture · Movement (music