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Folk Dance Federation of California, South, Inc.
DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET |
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Last night we went dancing at Café Aman. This event happens each second Saturday of every month. If you never went, you are missing the joy of dancing to live music. And if you have never danced to live music you are missing the real feeling of folk dancing.
A live band, free of the record groove time shackles, can play a tune for a long time, giving all the dancers time to be transposed to a higher level of dancing, when you forget about the steps, forget about the styling, and just immerse yourself into the music and the movement.
This brings me to the topic I had in mind to begin with. Dancing one dance for a long time that evening made me think of the mileage average folk dancers cover in their lifetime. Being an engineer by training, motivated me to measure how much ground we really cover in our lifetime of folk dancing. Assuming that an average song is five minutes long and the typical Folkdance room is 30 x 30 feet, we cover 600 feet of ground per song. By the way, if this math sounds like a question on a SAT test, you are at liberty to skip this section and go directly to the answer. So, if we assume that in a two-hour evening we do about 20 dances, times 600 feet, is 12,000 feet or roughly 2.5 miles of dancing per evening. Dancing 50 weeks in a year adds up to 125 miles per year.
I have been dancing for the last 40 years and must have covered well over 5,000 miles. This is the length from Los Angeles to New York and back.
The image that pops into my head is a line of dancers weaving their way across the highway, led by a band of musicians, laughing, and hooting all the way. The music and the beat make the effort seem easy and enjoyable. If we just had to run the same distance in a marathon alone, we might get the same physical benefits, but the task would be boring and not fun at all.
Yes, we covered a lot of territory, not just by dancing in our small circle, but by traveling via the songs to many countries and meeting many people and cultures. Best of all, we did this with lifelong friends. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time than to dance with a group of lively and lovely people.
So, what is my advice?
Put on your opanke or your favorite dance sneakers, and join us in our circle. Turn on your folk dance odometer and add a few more steps to your folk dance journey. And most important of all, have fun. Happy miles of dancing!
Printed in Folk Dance Scene, "DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET (8), October 2005.