|
Folk Dance Federation of California, South, Inc.
DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET |
|
CLICK AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE
It's not how you dance. It's why you dance.
I have written about dance and music's power of healing, only to find a living example of that during the last "Statewide Folk Dance Festival" in San Diego. In talking to my longtime friend Ivan (John) Filcich, I found out that Dennis Boxell, a longtime folk dance teacher who brought and taught us numerous dances we enjoy almost every week, is living in a nursing home and requires oxygen twenty-four hours a day
He writes, "Medical doctors have twice told me I wouldn't make it. So far, I've proved them wrong. I'm sure the power of music and dance is part of it, and good friends. Besides, I haven't finished my work yet!"
What he is doing as he sits in a wheelchair in front of a computer and inhales the life-sustaining O2?
He is working on the main purpose of his life, learning and sharing the beauty and power of dance, particularly Balkan folk dance. Dennis is compiling his lifetime work of collecting songs and dances of that distant region we all learned to love through its music and dances. With the aid of a computer, sound and video software, and the Internet, he is converting decades of research into digital form by producing audio and video discs.
A long time ago, in November 1962, John Filcich brought Dennis to the "Kolo Festival" where, to great aclaim, he presented his "original five dances," now familiar to folk dancers in the whole United States. Those dances, "Bavno oro, Belo lenže (Vranjanka, a.k.a. Iz banju ide), Ravno oro, Sitno žensko, and Tresenica are still with us. They are only a tiny portion of the dances Dennis taught over his long teaching career. I am sure that every time you dance in one of the groups you will do at least one of Dennis's dances.
Getting back to the subject of my previous article, that music and dance cues all ill, Dennis made me aware that I forgot to include probably the most important thing that contributes to your well-being – the friends you dance with. Good friends are the catalyst, the glue that binds music, dancing, and good health together.
Dennis is unable to dance today but has his music and friends scattered throughout the world.
Printed in Folk Dance Scene, "DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET (47), August 2009.