Dancing

[Bob Wiener <wiener...>]

Roger/Ronan,

I can't answer your questions, but I did study Israeli dance with Fred Berk at 
Brooklyn College.  Although it was a gym class, he taught it quite seriously.  
Fred taught us the basic steps (demonstrated by others) which we repeated again 
and again.  He taught us the structure of dances -- the number of parts and 
their elements.  He even had us do dances both forward and backward.  And he 
required term papers.  (As I recall, my paper was on dance in the Torah.)

I don't know many of the 5,000+ Israeli dances, but I do feel that I have a 
good grasp on the vocabulary of Israeli dance, all thanks to Fred.

One downside is that the respect Fred Berk transmitted for dance and the 
realization that most Israeli dance is choreographed made me reluctant to "just 
follow" others when it was clear that different people were doing dances 
differently and so I had no clue as to which way was the original choreography 
and which way was just made up.   (Sorry for that long sentence.)

I would be curious as to comments as to the "folk" nature of Israeli dance.

Bob

P.S. Ari, I guess that you are allowing this thread free reign because you
feel that it's sufficiently connected to Jewish music.  I suppose that my
last question could be applied to Jewish music.  I know that we have had recent 
posts on Carlebach and Gebirtig music being adopted as traditional and changed. 
 (Off to put the girls to bed, so apologies for the disjointed
post.)

----- Original Message -----
From: "r l reid" <ro (at) panix(dot)com>; "r l reid" <ro (at) rreid(dot)net>
To: "World music from a Jewish slant" <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 6:39 PM
Subject: Re: Dancing


>
> WRT Jewish dancing, in my attic ransackings I've come accross
> a number of Fred Berk albums, who taught dance at Brooklyn
> College.  One such is from 1973 on Tikva: "Chassidic Dances"
> with Dance Instructions.
>
> I've wondered as to the common opinion of people who know
> this music and dance as to the place his work holds.  Top
> notch documentation?  Naive?  Overly Israeli influenced?
> At this point, an authentic style unto himself?   A good
> observer who translates it well into a booklet?
>
> Where does his work stand?
>
> roger/ronan
>
> --
> r l reid ro (at) rreid(dot)net
>
> Libertie, egalitie, a glezl tey.
>
> ---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org 
> ---------------------+
>