RE: Dancing

[Leonard Koenick <lkoenick...>]

I think that possibly we get too enrapped in recent history.  I certainly
can't speak for klezmorim who may have felt the term was derogatory, but my
parents and their friends would never have felt that way.  Klezmer music -
the terms was used by them long before the revival - was a part of our
simchas and even our daily music as played on the countless 78's.

As for what to call the dancing, use whatever you feel will be most
comfortable and will define what you are doing in a brief way.  Yiddish
dance certainly seems appropriate.  I suspect that your representative from
the Yiddish Cultural Committee is one of those who tries to appropriate
Yiddish for those who intellectualize the language.  Since Yiddish dance is
"not" appropriate, ask him why and how he would define or use  terms such as
Yiddishe kop.  Or why when he asks someone in Yiddish where he is going or
where he is from he asks something like "Where goes the Yid?

I wish you well in encouraging such dancing.  The standard mish mash of
being pulled around the room in some hybrid hora step is a horrible turn off
for me.  Maybe a community could develop various dance troupes that could
perform Yiddish Dance at events and functions that would give people much
more of an idea of what they are missing.

Leonard Koenick

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
[mailto:owner-jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org]On Behalf Of Ari Davidow
Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2001 11:07 AM
To: World music from a Jewish slant
Subject: Re: Dancing

At 10:01 AM 12/29/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I need some help.  I am working on publicizing the dance event, led by Erik
>Bendix, that will take place here in Cleveland on February 24th, 2002.  I
>was talking with the head of the Cleveland Yiddish Cultural Committee who
>took me to task for using "Yiddish Dance".  He instists that the word
>Yiddish cannot be used with
>dance.  I told him that this is what some people are calling it.  He also
>nixed "Klezmer Dance".  The phrase "Traditional Eastern European Jewish
>Dance" is correct, but unwieldly.  Who has a good suggestion, or some
>convincing rationale, for a good name?

Well, given that this is dance outside of its traditional context (weddings
and simkhas), why would it bother someone to give it a name that associates
the dancing with the correct culture? Yiddish dance, or klezmer dance, both
sound fine to me as ways of indicating to people that this is a style of
dance familiar to Jews of Eastern and Central Europe.

I mean, "klezmer music" wasn't known as "klezmer music" until the
revival--until Zev Statman and Andy Feldman used the term (from Beregovski)
on an album title. For that matter, "klezmer" was a term for a lousy
musician too incompetent to play anything but traditional gigs--badly--until
recently. Ask oldtimers at klezkamp what they would have thought of someone
who called them "klezmers" or "klezmorim" fifty years ago.

On the other hand, you also can't use too broad a brush. Old-timers,
especially at the workmen's circle or similar Jewish organizations might
have called this "Jewish" dance, just as old-time musicians with whom I have
talked referred to "Jewish" music, thinking of their own way of "Jewish" as
universal (and seeking to differentiate from, say, "American dance"). But
"Jewish" encompasses a whole world. Michael Alpert and fellow-organizers
held a festival a couple of summers ago of the various Jewish cultures
represented by recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union: Ashkenazi
crooners to klezmer to Mountain and Bukharan Jews and a few more stops on
the way. That's significantly more territory than most of us consider when
we're thinking of the dance performed by Eastern European Yiddish speakers
over half a century (and more) ago.

Just my two cents,
ari


Ari Davidow
ari (at) ivritype(dot)com
list owner, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
the klezmer shack: http://www.klezmershack.com/


---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+