argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Ethnochologist
Oier Araolaza @oaraolaza 2014ko abenduaren 29a

“Have you decided what you are going to learn?” Plasta. Thus come the most momentous questions, without warning or warming. oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo They make you see and check in the mirror the grain you have just discovered on the front and, in that situation of life or death, remind you of the difficulties of explaining that you cannot go to the institute and that you also have to make the second most important decision of life. I remembered Oscar Matzerath on those occasions. Oscar stopped growing while he was a child. He knew it!

When I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd been 30 years old. Before, it was not possible for me to identify my vocation, because I didn't even know that this trade existed in the world. At one point I had news of a trade with a strange name and understood the point that it was the trade I had dreamed of. Joy and grief were the two circumstances that led to my discovery. The joy of having discovered my calling was frustrated with the feeling that it was too late for me. When I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, no one asked me anything about it anymore.

On 17 January we will pay tribute in San Sebastian to the great ethnologist Jean Michel Guilcher. He has carried out in-depth and systematic studies on the dances of Lapurdi, Zuberoa and Baja Navarra, and his work is an inexhaustible source of knowledge. Of Breton origin, he has investigated the traditional dances of the French State in its long and fruitful life. Guilcher was over thirty years old when he spent his time researching dance. Long and fruitful life, yes, it was born on 24 September 1914, and it has turned a hundred years in September of this year. Jean Michel Guilcher, with the help of his children, continues to work and run his ethnological work.
Ethno-choreologist. That's what I'd like to be when I grow up. Dance researchers are ethno-theologians who research dance from anthropology. We've met ethno-choreologists in these areas, although they didn't use it. It's been a dozen years since I met ethnology, and recently I've begun to think that maybe it's still on time.