Happy 90th Birthday to Hungarian folk-dance icon Sándor Timár!

Have you ever been to a folk-dance house in Hungary? If the answer is yes, you probably know the feeling of pure joy felt by not only the professional dancers but also ordinary people who spend their free time after work by learning Hungarian folk dance just for fun.

This, among many other things, is what we can thank Sándor Timár. The choreographer, dance teacher and founder of the Csillagszeműek Dance Ensemble is celebrating his 90th birthday on the 2nd of October. This article would like to present some of the major points of his career.

In his early life Sándor Timár, who loved to do folk dance, started to travel across Hungary to collect and record various folklore songs, music and dances of Hungary and Transylvania. It’s also partly his credit that the Hungarian folklore survived.

A major point in his career came in 1958 when he was appointed to be the leader of Bartók Béla Dance Ensemble, which he guided successfully for 22 years.

Nők Lapja writes that this is where he met his wife, Böske Timár. Also, another major event occurred during these times: the first public folk dance house opened his doors in 1973, on the promotion of Sándor’s idea that folk dance belongs to everybody, not only to people who are part of folk dance groups.

From 1981 a new era began.  Sándor Timár became the artistic director of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble. According to tancelet.hu, the period of foreign tours started here. Besides North America, where the folk-dance group had four tours, each lasting for three months, they put a particular focus on Japan. Sándor and Böske have made visits to the East yearly, for many decades now, teaching Hungarian folk dance in universities. Until the age of 80, Sándor Timár was there more than 50 times! Luckily, this tradition has never stopped; the Timár family still travels to Japan every year to hold dance workshops. The Japanese also show that their love of Hungarian folk dance is strong. A former student of Sándor, Kenneth Tse founded a Hong Kong-based Hungarian folk dance club.

The couple founded the Csillagszeműek Dance Ensemble in 1993 (the name of the group which means „starry-eyed”, came from a popular Hungarian folk tale).  Based on Sándor’s own Timár-method, they believe that children should start dancing from an early age, thus putting Hungarian folk dance on the same level as the Hungarian language itself. The emphasis is on self-expression and on mastering the improvisational nature of Hungarian folk dance.

This is the secret that made the folk-dance group famous with now over 1000 members. 

Folk dance classes are not only available in Budapest and Eger; Csillagszeműek also has four locations in the UK where they welcome Hungarian families living in Great Britain.

Csillagszeműek always aimed to promote Hungarian culture outside the borders of Hungary. They have taken part in several international dance festivals in numerous countries of Europe, and countries even further, like India, Brazil, South-Korea, Japan, Canada, just to mention a few.  They are the ones still representing the choreographies and the spirit of Sándor Timár to this day.

Throughout his career, Sándor Timár was honoured with numerous merits and state awards: Kossuth Prize, the Europe Prize for Folk Art and the Hungarian Heritage Award, for example.

Happy 90th Birthday Sándor Timár!

In order to properly celebrate the special birthday, Csillagszeműek prepared a series of performances which represent the oeuvre of their master. Still, due to Covid-19, they will make these online content. The first show will be available on Friday at www.csillagszemu.hu

Read alsoTraditional Hungarian folk dance types – VIDEOS

Written by Réka Bogár

Source: www.táncélet.hu, www.csillagszemu.hu, Nők Lapja