The study introduces the work of the first two significant personalities of the Hungarian
ballet and their age. Examines the main characteristics of the romantic ballet from
aspects of different sciences.
Federico Campilli (1820–1889) is a very interesting, double personality from the aspect
of criticism: as a dancer, as a choreographer, he was not first-rate, but the dance
was led by a very strong (sometimes too strong) hand by him. The book gives insight
into the 40 years of his work at the Pest Hungarian Theater, later National Theater
and the Royal Opera House. The actuality of the study is the Ferenc Erkel anniversary
in 2018 and the Frigyes Campilli anniversary in 2019.
Emília Aranyváry is not only the first Hungarian officially registered, internatio-
nally significant ballet dancer, soloist, but also our first female choreographer.
As a dancer, she could compete with any Viennese prima ballerina, toured in London
and Vienna. In the summer of 1854, her own choreography was presented: “Recruiters”
in the National Theater. The period of her operation in Hungary is considered to be
the first golden age of Hungarian ballet art.
The research of Campilli and Aranyváry has a certain history in the Hungarian literature
on dance history, but at the same time, no comprehensive publication has been published
on these two personalities. This book is based on a collection of contemporary press
articles by Györgyi Pónyai, which give a certain picture of the two artists. Although
Campilli was not a top artist, he plays a significant role in creating a real ballet
de corps and implementing the style. Aranyváry as a ballet artist and as the first
Hungarian female choreographer would deserve much more attention. In her case, we
do not even know the circumstances of her birth and death. In the book, we get a comprehensive
picture and new data as a synthesis-like research on her operation in Hungary. During
the biography research of Emília Aranyváry, we have defined new directions. According
to the original ideas, we collected data from guest performances in Kolozsvár, Bucharest,
and we have found some unpublished press articles, but in the meantime, after the
Kolozsvár and Fiume researches that did not produce results, the Italian line seemed
to intensify. She seems to have spent the end of the life we have known in Italy,
where she has performed regularly. The picture to be made of her is still in difficulty,
because besides his father’s name and profession we do not know anything about her
family. In addition to the two Aranyváry depictions known so far, we have found a
third-one, with which we can have a somewhat more complete vision about her person.
In addition to the Campilli-Aranyváry press collection (Pónyai Györgyi), which forms
the basis of the research, and in addition to the Hungarian and international sources,
we present a comprehensive picture of the aesthetic features of the Western European
romantic ballet and the characteristics of its dance language (Anna Mária Bólya) about
the innovations and pieces that could reach Hungary. (Zsuzsa Kővágó) The beginnings
of the ballet in Hungary were also examined with the methods of musicology and theory
of art (Ákos Windhager), and we explored some reasons of the non-humanity of the ballet's
dance vocabulary, the possible roots of the phenomenon, from the point of view of
Richard Shusterman's soma- esthetics (Anna Mária Bólya) and recent psychology researches
(Ágnes Györffy). In summary, we have tried to give a synthesizing multi-faceted picture
of the romantic ballet language and its inclusion in Hungary, which can give an initial
pattern to the new-generation interdisciplinary dance research, which has a series
of conferences on the initiative of Ákos Windhager. We introduce an innovative method:
imple- menting virtual spaces to the dance research and science popularization. Attila
Gilányi and Anna Rácz created the 3D content about Emília Aranyváry in the Hungarian
National Theater. The virtual reality content will be public, with the permission
of the HAA Research Institute of Art Theory and Methodology.
