Re: Yiddish folkdancing on campus

[Sylvia Schildt <creativa...>]

on 5/9/03 5:08 PM, cohenedmunds at cohenedmunds (at) netzero(dot)net wrote:

I agree with Helen that Yiddish dance is not boring - we haven't even begun
to learn the unique subtleties of these dances (in ABQ). Erik has tried to
portray many of the stylistic nuances to us, but its not possible to learn
over a few weekend workshops - we're lucky enough to get the basic steps and
not get lost in the Sher. Maybe the dances will be more interesting to the
other recreational dancers when there is a larger core group that can
display the stylistic improvisations of Yiddish dance?

Its not like we have a bunch of videos/films from the1800's/early 1900's of
dancers in Moldavia and Ukraine (is there even
anything like that?) - nor are thereYiddish dance masters from the Eastern
European areas that come here to give workshops as they do for other ethnic
dance groups.

Like Helen, I'm also in a very isolated and small community. I hope that
soon there will be a way that we can have a video library of these dances
being taught by Zev, Michael, Erik, Helen and other specialists/scholars so
we can preserve, pass on and reconstruct the art of Yiddish dance.  I know
that Helen has done an incredible amount of written cataloguing and
research. We have videos of Erik teaching (in ABQ) that need to be
edited/catalogued and I think Lori Cahan-Simon is working on a dance-video
project. Are there videos/films of the sources of these dances out there, or
other contemporary teachers teaching them? I am pretty new to this list and
Yiddish dance- I wonder what else is out there?
Beth

----- Original Message -----
From: "Helen Winkler" <winklerh (at) hotmail(dot)com>
To: "World music from a Jewish slant" <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 6:04 PM
Subject: Re: Yiddish folk dancing on campus


> "Many of the advanced
> folkdancers I know have told me that the non-choreographed line dances are
> too boring for them - Balkan or Yiddish - even if its dancing to great
live
> music. "
>
> I think with Yiddish dancing, the style is the most interesting thing.
From
> the brief time I got to spend dancing with Zev Feldman, I realize that I
> have only scratched the surface of the style and I don't think one can
> really get deeply into it just from a workshop or two.  Without the style,
> the dances wouldn't be that interesting. Lots of the movements that Zev
> showed us were challenging-- for example, he emphasized asymmetric
> improvisations that aren't always right on the musical phrase, certain
> shoulder movements in the honga which take practise to develop, and many
> other very subtle things that are  hard to put into words.  Personally, I
> don't think Yiddish dancing is boring at all, but it is very different
from
> the kinds of dances that people are used to doing in recreational folk
dance
groups.
Helen


Have any of you encountered Swedish-Yiddish dance master Leon Blank who has
attended a couple of klezkamps? His dancing is full of subtleties and
infinite variations and people tended to follow his lead, even though he
wasn't the paid dance instructor???.

Sylvia Schildt