Národní tance na Moravě – Danze popolare di Moravia (1890–1912)

In the nineties of the 19th century, Leoš Janáček also fully found himself in these tendencies. He studied and described folk dances in Moravian and Silesian localities, arranged dances into orchestral and piano versions, and managed to combine the results of this activity with the social activities of Czech associations and corporations in Brno. 

The institutional support for these efforts was provided by the National Theatre, the Vesna Association, the preparation of the Czechoslovak Ethnographic Exhibition (1892-1895) and, in the first years of the 20th century, the Moravian Women's Shelter in Brno. At first, Janáček did not find the necessary information about folk dance in printed collections - after all, even František Sušil assessed his largest collection as insufficient in this regard. The fundamental turning point came in the summer of 1888, when the composer encountered an original folk dance performance near his birthplace. He himself captured this turn aptly in his study of Wallachian and Lachian Dances, when in January 1891 he wrote:

"I was only looking for songs, but I found much more! I admit that up to that time I had regarded the dances with a kind of undisguised contempt. I no longer liked the name, much less the way of dancing. What I saw in it was a piece of foreignness that relentlessly gnaws a piece of our idiosyncrasy. So I cannot share with you my joy when, by mere chance, in a Wallachian village, still only little touched by the modern spirit, I discovered both noble, graceful, and at the same time distinctive movements of dances previously unknown to me! ..."