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The Others and Othering in Visual Representations of Soviet-Era Song and Dance Festivals in Estonia “as an ideology for improving the physical vitality and preserving the cultural heritage of the people” (Kuutma 2009: 304; cf. Kapper 2016: 98-99). The first dance celebration is thought to have taken place in 1934 going by the name of the First All-Estonian Gymnastics and Sports Games.” While this event gave prominence to gymnastics, it also included performances by 1,500 folk dancers. According to dance scholars, the First Estonian Games included characteristic elements of dance festivals: “There were folk dance groups from all over Estonia, the dances were performed in national costumes and dancing patterns were created on the stadium grass” (Arraste et al. 2009: 308). Since 1955, dance festivals have been held in a stadium created for this purpose in downtown Tallinn. ‘The tradition of organizing song and dance celebrations at the same time was established in 1947 when the first festivals in Soviet Estonia took place. Though several song and dance festivals have been held separately since, the two celebrations have come to constitute a whole. Held approximately every five years and lasting from three to four days, they bring into the nation’s capital tens of thousands of singers, dancers, and spectators of all ages from all over the country and across the border.’ Nearly all performers take part in the festival procession from the city centre to the song festival grounds. The tradition of festival processions dates back to the first celebration in Tartu (Vahter 1965: 30). For performers and spectators alike, song and dance celebrations are an occasion for wearing national costumes. If such clothes could still be habitual during the first song festivals, they disappeared from everyday usage gradually, only to return as symbols of national culture (Kuutma 2009). Since the 1920s, people in national dresses have been one the most persistent elements used in posters and other visual representations of song and dance festivals (see Ojaveski et al. 2002; Arraste et al. 2009). Song and dance festivals are very much a sensory and bodily experience that participants seek to relive from one celebration to the next. Though professional musicians and choreographers put together the programme and are included in performances, amateur choirs and dance ensembles make up the bulk of singers and dancers. Similarly to many other regularly repeated collective celebrations, these festivals nurture the sense of “a bounded group of people connected over time to a bounded place” (Noyes & Abrahams 1999: 79; cf. Handler 1988). It is a tradition that “brings the group together and communicates about the society itself and the role of individual in it” (Kuutma 1998). As essentially modern phenomena, song and dance festivals are venues for the articulation of national symbols and 7” Arraste et al. 2009: 306-308 gives an overview of events that could be regarded as predecessors of the modern dance celebration. $ The 2014 festival is said to have been the largest in history, featuring 33,000 singers, 10,000 dancers and nearly 154,000 audience members (Kahu 2014). 507
