Snapshot columns for the blog will look at one specific place or cultural detail against the broader backdrop of its historical (and/or current cultural) context.

If you’ve been to a performance of any kind in what I’ll loosely dub “The West”, the applause goes something like this: a polite, slow build to – if the audience is appreciative and/or enthusiastic – some “bravos”, whistles, or “woos”. If exceptionally impressed, performers will receive a standing ovation.

In Hungary, it is not like this.

My first Hungarian performance was my students’ Christmas show. The applause began as I’m used to: natural, mismatched cadence; a cheer here and there. But then the clapping synchronized – slowing to a deliberate, on-beat applause that gradually sped up in perfect unison. This happened a couple of times – back to slow, then building again – finally dropping back into natural applause.

I wondered if it was a fluke, or a uniquely Orosházi thing. Then my mom and I went to the Hungarian Opera Ballet for Diótörő (Nutcracker) over the holidays and experienced the same thing. Only this time the audience was extremely pleased, and so the sequence happened many more times.

What was going on?

The “Iron Clap”

I began pitching dance editors a story about this unique Hungarian clap. “You’ll never believe how they do it here,” I more or less said.

My ignorance was showing. Turns out this event is super common in Eastern Europe and Russia – so much so that it even has a name: Vastaps, or The Iron Clap. Well-traveled balletomanes, turns out, know it well.

The story goes that once upon a time, a literal iron curtain would descend after a performance, impeding both sound and visibility between the audience and performers. The audience would clap loudly and rhythmically to coax the conductor or performers to come back out through a little door in the center, as Vicsek Tamás, a physicist at Budapest’s Eötvös University, told Discover Magazine in July 2000.

The phenomenon isn’t unique to Hungary, or even to ballet. When Canadian hockey great Wayne Gretzky retired from the Rangers, the crowd at Madison Square Garden in New York saluted him with Vastaps.

What I love about Vastaps is that it doesn’t discriminate from the high and the modest. An audience is as likely to shower it upon talented local children as highly trained artists at the Opera House or MÜPA in Budapest.

But it is genuine. If an audience finds your delivery lackluster, whatever your stature, you will not be hearing Vastaps.