Carnaval de Lanz – Basque [Traditional]
| Links: | |
| Pronunciation: | CAHR-nah-vahl deh lahntz |
| Translation: | Lanz Carnival |
| Region: | Navarre Community, northern Spain |
| Aliases: | Zortziko de Lanz, Lantz Zortziko Zorziko, Carnival |
| Choreographed: | Traditional |
| Introduced: | Thierry Bouffard* |
| Type of Dance: | Circle/Chain/Line: non-partner |
| Category: | Village Traditional/Living |
| Formation: | Individuals in a Circle (Jautziak) |
| Skill: | Easy (but “spinny”) |
| Energy: | Lively |
| Hand Hold: | Individuals |
| Leads to: | R w/ R |
| Meter: | 2/4 |
| Pattern: | QQS SS |
| Tune: | Lantzeko Ihauteria Zortziko de Lanz |
| Date Taught: | 2/6/2024 |
| Teacher: | Bill |
| Posted: | January 31, 2024 |
| Updated: | February 11, 2024 |
Carnaval de Lanz is a traditional Basque dance done in the mountainous village of Lanz in northern Spain, during, of course, the Lanz Carnival, in the days preceding Ash Wednesday. The Carnaval celebrations enact the age-old confrontation between good and evil. The villagers were plagued by highway bandits, disrupting trade with neighboring France. They decided to chase down the most fearsome bandit, Miel Otxin. On a Monday, they battled, captured, and then paraded the beleaguered Miel Otxin through the village. On Carnaval Tuesday, they did more parading, which culminated in a fun-for-the-whole-family burning at the stake of Miel Otxin (but they aren’t savages—they shoot him first!) while the music played and the delighted villagers danced around the fiery flesh. There are other characters such as Zaldiko, who represents something like Miel Otxin’s horse, and both Zaldiko and Miel Otxin go around pushing over the town beggar, Ziripot, while the blacksmiths, Arotzak, attempt to put horeshoes on Zaldiko. Txatxo represent the people of Lanz, and they harass onlookers. More detailed recountings are below.
Watch the short documentaries below (in Spanish, but I have Google-translated the video descriptions for you, and you get the concept to go with the visuals).
Each year in Lanz, on the days before Ash Wednesday, celebrants dress in colorful and character costumes with pitchforks and jingle bells to reenact the events, with, of course, much music and the celebratory Carnaval de Lanz dance at the end, as Miel Otxin burns.
The precise origin of the celebration is unknow, but it seems to be an ancient tradition dating from the Middle Ages. Carnivals were banned under right-wing Spanish Nationalist rule after the Spanish Civil War of 1936. In 1964, citizens of Lantz researched and restored the festival.
Dance notes claim that Lanz is on the French side of the border in Basque Country, but under current borders, it is well on the Spanish side in Navarre Community (perhaps because the person who introduced the dance to USA was of French background?) The dance is neither French nor Spanish, because it is from the indigenous Basque people, whose cultural history predates the borders and the Europeans. Inevitably, Basque music and dance has been influenced by all manners of peoples who have traveled through or attempted conquest. French and Spanish influences, by virtue of “closest is mostest,” are dominant.
Lantzeko Inauteriak (Carnival Celebration)
Since the sixties, to be precise, since 1964, with some minor changes and interruptions, Carnival has been celebrated after the long ban. The celebration lasts for three days and the participants of this strange entourage walk from street to street. Finally, they go around the square to dance to the tune of the whistle and the atabala [drum].
The party starts on Sunday. On that day the children dress up and go through the town making a special parade. Year after year the route, costumes and characters are repeated. Adults do the same on the other two days.
An event that is not considered is begging. That is disappearing and it takes place on Carnival Sunday (Igande Iyotia), in the evening. Eggs, mushrooms and other products are collected.
During the Monday carnival (Astelehen Iyotia) the animation is evident in the streets from the early hours of the morning. People come from schools, different associations and even individually to the town with cameras in hand and gather in front of the bar to see the start of the procession.
Meanwhile, a young man wears a Ciripot [Ziripot] costume accompanied by several men. The garment made of sacks is filled with straw from the inside. Opposite and secured by a strong wall of the inn, stands the huge Miel Otxin, as if eager for departure time. He is also dressed right then and due to his great size he touches the eaves.
Just in case, the tchachos are teasing people to leave the building, because they are taking pictures in order to capture the moment when Ciripot gets dressed. This preparation and dressing process has become a ritual over time.
The procession starts at noon. The little guys are standing left and right teasing people with brooms. The one who carries Miel Otxin moves him from one side to the other, slowly, to the rhythm of the music, in the procession performed by whistlers and atabalars. For many years Maurizio Elizalde, a musician from Baztan, a well-known musician in the area, and his friend Felix Iriarte, a drummer, have been responsible for this parade.
Several characters can be found in the sequel, one of them is Zaldiko, represented by a young man. He is responsible for repeatedly shaking the clumsy Ciripot, as a result of which Ciripot falls to the ground repeatedly. The masked men pick him up impatiently, but, barely able to breathe, he falls to the ground as well.
In this sequence, apparently, there is no specific order and in the middle there are bullies, trampling the bellies of the pedestrians with great force. Spectators gather with anticipation on both sides of the street; behind, in front and on all sides, while the little ones appear, in the middle of the mess.
Over the years, the same route is repeated. You cross the streets of the center and the main streets until you reach the square. There, they stand in the middle of Miel Otxin, while the costumed people dance the well-known Zortzi dance. After the dance everyone returns to the lodge.
In the Tuesday carnival (Tuesday Iyotia) the same event is repeated in the morning. In the evening they return to the center again, for the last time. However, Ciripot and Zaldiko are already missing.
At the end of the route, Miel Otxin is judged and shot dead by a gunman armed with a shotgun. Then the flame is prepared. There they burn the doll, or part of it, and around it they dance the Eight again. This is how the Carnival celebration ends until next year.
Eusko Ikaskuntza https://aunamendi.eusko-ikaskuntza.eus/artikuluak/artikulua.php?id=eu&ar=27079&ep=138748
The Dance
The rhythm of the dance is a consistent QQS SS, no matter which part you are doing. There are two figures, but the only difference is swapping a spin for a forward travel, or vice versa. I say “vice versa” because dancers are split on which of the two figures comes first. When matching the music to the dance, a case could be made either way, but perhaps the 2-turn figure fits slightly better to the verse of the music, because of the two-part symmetry of verse and dance. The 3-turn figure just gets by on the rhythm for either case. The dance notes and some non-village examples have a performance flourish of twizzling the heels while backing up in the 2-turn figure, but villagers don’t do this.
All you have to remember is the rhythm QQS SS and that the beginning of a figure always starts with the R foot. If you keep dancing RLR LR then LRL RL the matter of whether to turn CW or CCW is self-evident. If you ended on your R, you can only turn CW around that foot. If you ended on your L, it’s CCW.
The turn is the part you’ll have to practice. You can break it down as a winding up rock back step and then three steps to end up turned 360° and on the opposite foot to do another turn in the opposite direction. In the two teaching examples, different strategies are used. The Basque Herrigune, Leioako example uses a push-off method while the Italian Daniela Mandrile example uses a momentum spin technique. Whichever method you use, the goal is to go from one foot pointed forward to the opposite foot pointing forward in the music time of SS QQS: Rock, Replace, Spin, Spin, Step. For spinning practice, it is simpler to reverse the rhythm pattern to this SS QQS instead of QQS SS, because you need the SS first to get some momentum for spinning.
The Spin on Spinning (CW notation, reverse for CCW)
* Start with R on the ball and pointed fwd, L diagonally back at 7 o’clock on the ball. You just did a QQ of some form (Pas-de-basque or turn) to get to this point.
SS: Rock back on L (1), shift weight to R while pushing off on and bringing L around front quickly to start turn momentum (2)
Q: Land on L with your foot tangent to the arc of the turn, somewhere between 12 and 3 o’clock (depending on how much spin you developed from the push off. Daniela gets lots of spin going and lands @ 3 or more. I tend to land at 12 and get a bigger push here.) and take all the weight on the L so the R can spin around to point somewhere between 7 and 9 o’clock. Don’t actually take a step with the R; just shift weight and rotate. You are just pivoting around it as the center of the turn. Meanwhile, your body is spinning, centered about that R foot (1)
Q: Shift weight to the R ball while pushing off with the L and bringing it around for the home stretch and continuing to rotate on the R ball. (&)
S: Land on L with it pointed fwd, finishing the turn. (2) Be sure to place the L as close to the R as possible—with R toe touching L inside arch. Now you are ready to start another turn or just finish it with a SS Rock-Step.
There is no “right” way to do the turn. You just need to rock back (S) and then get 360° with the remaining S QQS of the music.
Dancing Examples
Teaching Examples
Village Celebration Documentary
From the video description:
The carnival of Lanz (Navarra), as we know it today, has its origin in the desire of the Caro Baroja brothers (Pío and Julio) to recover a festival that, with the civil war, had been prohibited by the Franco authorities. Both were documented in the testimonies of the oldest people in the town, and in 1964, thanks to the collaboration of José Esteban Uranga, they obtained permission from the Civil Governor to organize and record it in a 10-minute film: ‘El Carnaval de Lanz’ .
Eight years later, in 1972, Pío and Julio collected in ‘Navarra, the four seasons’ the customs, celebrations…, in short, the culture on the verge of being lost in a land that, for more than a decade, had been ceasing to exist. Being an agricultural and livestock farmer, and who left the towns to live in the cities. And in that effort they collect traditions, customs and festivals from many places in Navarra.
I don’t know if the images that I present to you (taken from the 1972 documentary) are the same as those from ’64. Be that as it may, the flavor that the entire documentary has and, especially, the scene of the final dance, with those older men dancing dressed in black, it is impressive.
From the alternate video description:
This link is an alternate source for the same documentary, but in a single part (bad aspect ratio), with different comments in the video description. https://youtu.be/fWP3vPCjhMs
The Lantz Carnival is one of the most important festivals celebrated in Lantz (Navarre, Basque country)
It is a traditional festival that takes place in the days preceding Ash Wednesday.
When night falls the streets of the town are flooded with neighbors representing different characters and staging the capture of Miel Otxin, an evil bandit. Among the characters represented we find:
Miel Otxin: He is an evil bandit who represents evil spirits. On Monday he is captured and paraded through the town to the rhythm of txistu and drums while on Carnival Tuesday, after a new morning and evening stroll, he is executed and burned at the stake, while the town’s residents dance the zortziko around the same.
Ziripot: Dressed in bags filled with grass or fern, this plump character walks the streets of Lanz while the Zaldiko continually knocks him to the ground along the way.
Zaldiko: Cheerful and bouncy, half man half horse, dressed in his best clothes (with a horse on his waist) knocks Ziripot to the ground.
Arotzak: It is the blacksmiths, with hammers and tongs, who put the horseshoes on the Zaldiko.
It is interesting to note that while all the members of the troupe meet and leave from the Inn, the blacksmiths do so from a private house. On the other hand, they do not take the tour with all the rest of the characters, but rather they act at two specific points of the tour.
Txatxo: They represent the population of Lantz, clad in animal skins and old, colorful clothes, carrying straw brooms and with their faces covered, they scream, harass and harass all those present in the unique representation.
The entire celebration is accompanied by txistu (Basque end-blown, fipple flute) and drum music.