International Jamboree : Ethnic Dances, Music Promise a Lively Day at the 17th Annual Folk Festival at UCLA

Travelers digging for their cultural roots in foreign countries this summer can expect, among other tourist fare, various encounters with “real” ethnic folk dancing and music.

Chances are--TV and radio having done their homogenizing work--the seekers will be served a generous portion of canned choreography, squeaky-clean and videotapeable.

Meanwhile, more fortunate stay-at-homes can enjoy the genuine article Sunday at Music-and-Dance-on-the-Grass, the 17th annual international folk festival sponsored by the Associates of Ethnic Arts at UCLA.

Bright costumes, elaborate headdresses, ancient folk instruments and fancy footwork will hold sway from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center on the UCLA campus in Westwood. Admission is free.

Festival organizers expect about 6,000 visitors, many of whom have attended the festival in years past. According to UCLA Coordinator Jorge Estrada, the first 50 spectators to walk through the gate will receive a free ethnic-music recording from A&M; Records.

The rest may feel just as lucky: With the sun shining and spring breezes blowing (in 16 years the festival has been rained out just once), the events take place on three stages on the grass and in the recreation center, the wide variety of ethnic music and dance reflecting Los Angeles’ growing cultural diversity.

Pursuit of Authenticity

Just what is “genuine” ethnic folk dancing? Answers vary, but it may be easier to say what it’s not. For starters, it’s not dance performed solely to entertain tourists; not traditional forms altered to suit modern tastes; not dance offered mainly to promote a product.

In contrast, the performers at Music-and-Dance-on-the-Grass--some UCLA study groups composed of teachers and students and about 20 professional troupes--are single-minded in their pursuit of authenticity.

The festival--what Sophia Poster, president of Associates of Ethnic Arts, calls “our gift to the community”--is a worldwide panorama of traditional dance and music painstakingly researched in the countries of origin, accurately recorded on tape, film and paper, and, finally, lovingly performed by artists who’ve made dance their lifework.

“These people are almost monomaniacal,” KPFK announcer Mario Casetta said, describing some of the troupes and their directors. Casetta, host of a twice-weekly ethnic-music program airing Mondays and Wednesdays at 9:30 a.m., will be master of ceremonies in the amphitheater.

A day at the festival is “like having a cultural trip around the globe,” he explained. “You’ll see dances that you’d be hard put to see two or three of in an entire year,” he said, “but to see them all in one day, and in one location, is really mind-blowing.

“People should be encouraged to bring children,” he added. “Children don’t get much of a chance to see beautiful things from other cultures and other peoples.”

Why does dance inspire such devotion, such “passion,” as Sophia Poster calls it? Anyone who’s ever rocked at a disco or swayed to Glenn Miller knows the answer. When all the scholarly words have been consigned to thick textbooks, what’s left is man’s most basic expression of emotion--and just plain fun.

“Dance is a primitive, hypnotic experience that arouses joy in people,” said Poster, 70, explaining that she devotes at least two nights a week to Balkan dances--a region including Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. Balkan circle dances are especially appealing because the dancers don’t need a partner.

‘Sense of Communion’

“When you dance in a circle holding hands,” she said, “there’s a sense of communion. Also, it’s an informal dance structure, so you can step out and rest for a while, then come back in and dance some more.”

In fact, she said, “there are probably more people doing Balkan dancing in Los Angeles than there are in the Balkans.” The reason? Poster thinks many countries are more interested in modernizing than in preserving traditional culture. In Los Angeles, however, minority ethnic groups are eager to preserve their heritage.

So you won’t miss your favorite ethnic group, get a program at the information desk, near the entrance where the shuttle bus leaves its passengers. Information to the parking areas will be provided by staff manning the campus kiosks, such as the one at the entrance to the campus on Sunset Boulevard.

Each group is scheduled to perform for 30 to 40 minutes in one of three locations: the 1,000-seat outdoor amphitheater, the Buenos Ayres Room or the Upper Meadow. Also in the Upper Meadow, half a dozen groups will lead “participation” dances, encouraging onlookers to join in and teaching them the steps.

Meanwhile, people flow freely from one area to another, stopping to buy and eat ethnic food, dancing or watching, or just sitting on the grass.

Mexico to Egypt

Scheduled for the amphitheater are 13 groups from such disparate cultures as Mexico, Japan, the Middle East, Greece, Polynesia, India, Hungary, the Andes Mountains region (Bolivia and Peru), China and Egypt.

Seven groups will perform in the Buenos Ayres Room (Associates board member Carolyn Brent emceeing), including the Ebony Choraliers, traditional American spiritual singers.

Ten groups are scheduled to dance on the grass in the Upper Meadow, introduced by Maidie Taylor, a dancer and ethnomusicologist at UCLA. Persia, Kurdistan, West Africa, Bali, Scotland, El Salvador and Nigeria are among regions represented.

One of the most exciting professional troupes is Ote’a, a Polynesian troupe of 20 women and 10 men, both dancers and musicians. Jack Kinner, the troupe’s director, said his dancers, half of them of “island origin,” will be performing Tahitian dances at 2:15 p.m. in the amphitheater, wearing what Kinner says “everyone calls grass skirts, but are actually made from the bark of the hibiscus tree.”

A Courtship Story

“We’re doing a fishing dance, also called an ote’a , where everyone moves in unison to percussion instruments,” he said--in this case, wooden drums. “Also an aparima set, which is danced to stringed accompaniment. It’s a suite of songs that tells a wonderful story about courtship, revelry and drinking.”

Another unusual group is the Aisha Ali Dance Company, presenting Egyptian dances. “Aisha Ali is unusual because her group doesn’t do just belly dancing,” Casetta said, “which is fairly common in the Middle East. She also teaches tribal dances from different ethnic subgroups within Egypt” and has been to that country many times to do research.

“She runs out into the desert to oases, to all sorts of little villages, and she drags along equipment and records everything.”

Casetta is hoping that Aisha Ali will perform a Gawazee Dance, which he thinks is “really kitschy and fun. The Gawazee women are a group of women, almost like a tribe, who travel up and down the Nile on pleasure boats entertaining people.

“You have to see their costumes to believe them--they’re not what you’d think of in the Middle East. They look like something out of a 1930s revue: short skirts, high heels and funny headdresses that look like already-folded turbans with spangles and little glitter things. They use ancient steps, but it looks like a vaudeville of the Nile.”

Fancy Footwork

Casetta also recommends looking for Balkan dances, which have some of the fastest, fanciest footwork and often are set to unusual time signatures, like nine-sixteenths. Some of the women’s costumes from some Balkan countries are sewn with gold coins, representing the women’s dowries.

The information desk also is the place to buy scrip, which you’ll need to pay for ethnic foods being served by caterers and chefs from local restaurants. Now is also the time to reserve a plate of what has become the festival’s most enduring tradition, Anthony Ivancich’s Yugoslavian roast-lamb dinner.

Ivancich marinates a whole lamb the day before, filling the cavity with green peppers, onions and garlic and rubbing the outside with more garlic, salt and pepper. Then he embeds even more garlic slivers in the meat.

At the festival, he roasts the lamb slowly over coals for five hours on a spit over his family’s barbecue, which he says is traded between aunts and uncles whenever a family gathering requires a similar traditional dinner.

There’s only so much lamb, 50 pounds being the maximum weight before lamb becomes mutton, so put your name on the list when you enter. Ivancich will serve the lamb about 2 p.m., with potatoes and green salad. If lamb isn’t your favorite, however, there will be other ethnic food--Greek, Indian, Japanese, Mexican and Ethiopian.

Festival admission is free. Parking is $3 (there’s almost no street parking) at UCLA parking structures 3, 4 and 5. Free shuttle buses run to Sunset Canyon Recreation Center.