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The
population gathers around the place de dance at Sirbi, Maramures
(Rumania).
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I had before
the eyes the local society of Sirbi in Maramures in 1973, which paraded
every Sunday on the main place, showing to the observer its division in
age and sex groups, clothing emblems, signs of recognition, disjunctions
and conjunctions between parents and relatives, permitted and prohibited
spouses. But this collective parade was nothing like an inorganized whirl
or alternate strolls which are so frequent in places and streets of Mediterranean
cities. Its attention was entirely directed towards a significant place
and a significant time for the ceremony of the day, the place of dance where
young people were to meet, not mutely, sighing or grumbling, like dancers
in modern discotheques with excess sound system, but in joyfully shouted
interpellations, the strigaturi, or in songs and texts fixed as if
life and opera were as one. A simple and ordinary ceremonial ? A great
ritual ? I could not determin it at once. 
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