Re: dance

[Jonathan Zimet <jdz...>]

         Peace!     You (all) don't seem to disagree about the substance; 
only the terminology.   People talk about "American Music"  and that people 
like Aaron Copland "do it."  ((And that term is even more loaded -- USA 
people exclude Canadian, Mexican, Central, South etc. from it !)}
         This has all the same elements of multiplicity (and then some) as 
"Sephardic" or "Ashkenazi music."   For ex, I doubt many USA people knew 
the hymn "Tis a Gift to be Simple" ... before Aaron Copland put it into 
Appalacian Spring.   And you have folk festivals (not composed 
"folk-singer" songs) where people representing various regions or types of 
music (say, Appalacian, Cajun, Blue-Grass) share their various types of 
"American" folk music.   And these share many fewer historical/cultural 
elements than Sephardi.  So Copland (and other creative musicians, 
scholars, etc.) are "creating" American music just as much as Judith Brin 
Ingber studies, assembles-creatively and depicts "Sephardic dance"
         Or "Israeli dance" -- part of its beauty is its multiplicity in 
one rubric ("U Pluribus Unum" in a non-USA context).  It includes Romanian, 
Yiddish, Yemenite, Kurdish, Greek, Arabic, cosmopolitan Western rock, etc., 
etc., [not that I'm so fond of the latter influence], and people find use 
of the term "Israeli dance" very helpful to defining their thoughts and 
activities.
         I think a term like "Sephardic dance"  is exactly a "collection of 
different dance styles."  True, many lay people are ignorant that 
"Sephardi" can mean: just-Spanish-Port;  or all of Jewry associated with 
the Babylonian/Arabic hegemony;  etc.    But that stems from the multiple 
usage of the term due to multiple historical causes .  I think one problem 
people have here may be  the confusion of "Sephardic" with 
"Sephardic"   ;-)   --  and calling the larger set "Sephardic dance" is but 
a symptom of this other issue and history.
         Jonathan

At 09:14 AM 12/8/02 -0500, you wrote:
>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".   . . . .
>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.