Toronto’s Hungarian community comes together this weekend (June 24 – 26) to celebrate its heritage with music, dancing, crafts and food, all centred around the Hungarian Canadian Cultural Centre at 840 St. Clair Avenue West.
Last week, I checked in on a rehearsal of the Kodaly Ensemble, one of the principal groups performing throughout the weekend. Group president Andrew Komaromy, above in gold shirt, advised me to arrive at the Centre around 8:30 to ensure that his class was properly warmed up. It was a cool spring evening but down in the basement rehearsal space the air was thick with humidity. Komaromy joked that he needed to change his wet shirt before I started taking pictures. Another instructor, a friendly young woman, suggested that I should come back every week because apparently the quality of the dancing improved when the camera came out.
The ladies’ skirts were certainly twirling and I can only imagine how terrific the dancers will look in full traditional garb this weekend. Kodaly consists of a four-piece live band and about 60 folk dancers divided into various age groups. Komaromy says the dances are generically referred to as Csárdás, although technically that name describes a step rather than a style.
Komaromy, 25, devotes at least two nights a week to the group and additionally works as youth director for the centre. When I ask him what inspires him to devote so much time to his culture he says, “As the world becomes more modernized and homogenized and globalized it’s important to know what your roots are and to hold on to your identity. And heritage and various cultural activities are ways to do that.”
Kodaly holds an extra special place in Komaromy’s heart: his parents met in the group three decades ago, around the time Toronto’s Hungarian community was starting to splitter and assimilate into the general population. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 brought approximately 40,000 refugees to Canada, the majority of them settling downtown around Spadina and Bathurst Streets; in the 1970s and ’80s Bloor Street West was a mecca for Hungarian restaurants, most of which are dearly departed.
“I’m a geographer,” says Komaromy, “and when I was studying at Ryerson I looked up where the Hungarians are and we’re pretty much scattered throughout the city now. So there’s no real hub per se, which is why the Hungarian Canadian Cultural Centre is so important.”
Photos by Christopher Jones
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