Lietuvių tautinis sceninis kostiumas 1940– 1970 m.: idėja ir forma
Lithuanian national scenic costume of 1940–1970: concept and shape

Summary/Abstract: The national scenic costume in Lithuania has formed in the years of Soviet occupation, but some of its forms have also spread among the Lithuanian emigrants. Most of its variants, created in the first three decades of the post-war period, were variously stylized and more distant from the authentic forms of Lithuanian folk costumes than the pre-war national costumes created in the 40s.There were several reasons for a sudden change of the costume in the first post-war decades. The most important reasons were the usage of national costume almost only for scenic purposes and the entrenchment of the contemporary understanding of folk art spread in the Soviet Union. It is important that Lithuanian national costume had not been examined enough until the Second World War, thus the artists who were designing scenic costumes and the performers wearing them often did not understand well the quality of the costumes and their coherence with historical heritage.The utmost stylization of national costume, at its strongest in the first half of the seventies, was not equally spread in all republics of the then USSR. Its entrenchment in Lithuania was determined by the taste and views of the then Lithuanian artistic personas, choreographers and part of artists, as well as people from the government.In the end of the seventies a less stylized, more based on the folk art national scenic costume model, mostly formed by Regina and Juozas Balčikonis, was established; also, first non-stylized national scenic costumes created by Dalia Mataitienė for the Lithuanian folk theatre appeared. At the conference “Traditions and present in the national Lithuanian clothing” in 1969, a pluralistic approach to the further development of national costume was confirmed, officially admitting that next to the stylized scenic national costume, copies of genuine folk dressing were needed.

• Details
• Contents