Szalagavató (ribbon pinning prom ball)

Last week, Dráva Völgye Középiskola held their Szalagavató, something I had previewed when I first went to the school's website and found pictures of what looked like an actual Jane Austen Beauty and the Beast get down with the big-ball-gown ball. And now I've seen it firsthand. Students prepare with a choreographer dance teacher for over a month, rent hooped dresses in rich, solid colors, and dance, in circles and pairs, before an audience of teachers, friends and above all family.

It is a completion ritual, and it turns out to involve a pre-graduation ceremony. Before the ball, students and families stood for a ribbon-pinning ceremony, in which the name of every graduating final year student is read, and during which dance, song, and poetry recitals occur. This took about an hour and a half. A long hour and a half, if you want to know the truth. When Roosevelt students graduate, each name is rhythmically pronounced, with a one second pause before the next name is read. Here, each name was read and thirty seconds pass before the next name. Two things slowed this down for me still further:

One. Hungarian audiences are so respectful and quiet! When Roosevelt students graduate, families and friends compete to make noise, often with an air-horn assist. At this event, there were maybe four times when sections of the audience broke out in polite clapping, and the rest of us would swivel in our seats to see what was going on. The rest of the time, silence, stillness, pride and honor only.

Two. The music. I have never heard such morose sounds at a celebration. Each class chose its own music, and each selected something with a grave, melancholy purr. Each of these chosen songs was also in English, which allowed me the further emotional register of despair. While watching one group solemnly, slowly, one by one, receive their class ribbons in the utter stillness of the gym, I listened to the lyrics of "Mad World," repeated over and over until everyone had been pinned:

All around me are familiar faces Worn out places Worn out faces

Bright and early for the daily races Going nowhere Going nowhere

And the tears are filling up their glasses No expression No expression
And in my head I want to drown my sorrow No tomorrow No tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying Are the best I've ever had
           Satöbbí, satöbbí.

It's a beautiful song in its way, but why choose this way as a testament to your passing towards adulthood? I asked a similar question to one of the students, and he pointed out that this part of the Szalagavató was sad for students, because they would be soon be leaving friends for whom they feel deeply.

It makes emotional sense. Nevertheless, I am going to allow the possibility that this is one of the many things I haven't cognitively put together yet.


When the ribbon pinning was concluded, the young women changed into their gowns and returned for a beautiful dance with their partners. What I saw I wanted for our own students in Seattle: careful attention to the elegance of dance, an event moving teenagers towards a unified harmony, disciplined training in dance and movement, the pride of such an enduring event before loved ones. In Seattle we'd likely bend the gender lines that here enforce strict male-female pairings, but I think they're worth bending.

I have provided one two minute clip of the ball below (far below). Please notice the music as well, which I think is gorgeous.

So, while American teens might be pinning corsages and dining and attending a school-sanctioned free-for-all in outfits too fancy and fluffy to wear even to a wedding, then renting rooms for illicit behavior in the company of friends, Hungarian teens...

Things are maybe not so different. After the ball, the young women changed their clothes for a third time. The remaining students moved into the school atrium where they then could dance at will to a band installed for the evening. This looked much more like dances I remembered. It started off slowly, with no one but an occasional pair of teachers taking to the dance floor. But eventually, the floor filled. I will note that far more paired dancing occurred, boy-girl or girl-girl, than would happen in America, and dance training was proudly manifest. (And thank you to Virgi and Gréti, Otí and Szandi for pulling me in, too!) But there were also congo lines and circles of kids, much as I've seen elsewhere (on cruise ships maybe?). Students danced until eleven.

Thereafter, it was to the pubs, for who knows how many hours. In Hungary, the drinking age is 18 years old, but teenagers buy a buzz far earlier. From what students report, the worst that happens to underage teens trying to buy alcohol is that someone will say, Sorry, I can't sell it to you. But I don't think even this mild rebuke happens often. So students went to the pubs, surprisingly numerous in this town of 12,000, and danced, got wasted, and did whatever Hungarian teenagers do when they're away from their guardians. So while American teenagers attend a school dance and then corouse elsewhere, here too.

But wouldn't it be cool if our American kids at least knew how to dance first?

Below are pictures and videos of the nights events.

Máté bears a pillow of ribbons.

In the gym, students stand for over an hour to either pin ribbons or be pinned.

Anna and Kitti dance between class pinnings.

Below is a video of the ceremony. You will hear one name read in the full half minute.