dance

[Judith R Cohen <judithc...>]

about "Sephardic music", it's true, as Yoram suggests: in theory if one
can use that term as a generalization, one could say "Sephardic dance".

I still think it's very different. 

For example: staying with Judeo-Spanish music, which is the main,though
not the only, focus of the performance group in question:

the same narrative ballads are sung by both Moroccan and Eastern
Mediterranean Sephardim, in certain cases (not all); but with different
melodies and a different musical style. It's a JUdeo-Spanish ballad
because it's been used as an identifying feature by both groups in a
socio-cultural-linguistic-musical context where this song and indeed
THIS LANGUAGE don't exist outside the Sephardic community (in the case
of northern Morocco, amend to "this language in this form" i.e. haketia
as opposed to standard Castilian).

In contrast, by and large, the dance forms Sephardim have done are the
same as those in their surrounding culture - a Moroccan Sephardi will
not dance like a Sephardi from Rhodes.

But ok, if you like, the entire complex of what Sephardim have danced, I
suppose could be called "Sephardic dance" as opposed to - what?
Ashkenazi  dance? But in that case, it would refer to a number of
DIFFERENT dance styles, of which any one group would be unlikely to know
another's (always with exceptions, travlling, living in a different
community etc etc.) , not to any one identifiable form.

If one person, again , no matter how skilled and knowledgeable a person
that is, adapts various aspects of these various forms into a
performance of  songs, most of which ARE NOT IN FACT EVEN DANCED TO
(only the weddings songs are danced), then sorry , it still isn';t
"Sephardic dance": it's a personal creation adapted from different dance
forms Sephardim have used in the diaspora.

No matter how much Alex (and many others) likes it (and now matter how
lovely it is) and no matter how much he (and I) respect the creator of
this performance, and now matter how long the latter has lived in Israel
or how well she does her research, none of which is in question in this
case. Admiring something doesn't make it something it isn't, and isn't
insulting it by saying so. Judith

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