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Folk Dance Federation of California, South, Inc.
DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET |
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It is hard to stay ahead of technology.
In one of my previous articles, I wrote about the progress and the devices we use for our music programming. Over the years, we went from bulky vinyl records that spun at 78 RPM (That is: revolutions per minute for those who don't remember): and held a single song song per side to LP's that ran at a slower speed of 33½ RPM and held half a dozen songs per side. They were replaced by tape cassettes on which you could record the songs for an evening's program. With the tape cassette, it was hard to find a particular song and you had to wind and rewind the tape back-and-forth to find that song to play. To make searching a bit easier, we used white, short, cassette tapes with one song on each side.
All of this is gone, only to replaced by CDs and recently, by computers that can spew any song in any order just by the pointing of a mouse.
When our teachers arrive in town, they bring syllabi with detailed step instructions. They sell their teaching videos, or graciously allow us to video their teaching so that we can review and remember the dances after they are gone.
If you browse the Internet, you will be surprised by the plethora of dance melodies and step instructions you can find. You can download many of the songs and print out the dance instructions.
But, we are not done yet!
During my recent Web browsing I discovered a website formed by a handful of German dance fanatics who want to share their knowledge and experiences and keep alive the traditions and dancing to pass it on to the next generation.
On their website, https://www.dancilla.com/wiki/index.php/Dancilla/en, you can find a staggering amount of more than 30,000 dances, 1,000 videos, 1,000 song files, 1,000 dance instructions, articles, pictures, and much more. So, if you forget a dance, sign on and play a video with this group doing the dance. Best of all, everything is free.
I can envision our groups in the future when, instead of looking down at the leader's feet, they look up to a big screen onto which the dance videos are projected.
I wonder if this is progress! Are we slowly losing the human touch and the real meaning of folk dancing?
Will we become just like robots and always follow the same steps with the same styling of the same leader on the screen? I hope not!
Printed in Folk Dance Scene, "DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET (23), June 2007.