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Folk Dance Federation of California, South, Inc.
DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET |
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The UC San Diego class we were taking eventually morphed into a regular dance group and we continued dancing there until we moved up to San Jose several years later. We joined the group at the San Jose State College, and continued our quest to learn more and more of our favorite Balkan dances. Trink Praxel, a precocious 16-year-old girl, taught and led the group. I don't remember many teachers from that time, and only Tom Bozigian remains vividly in my memory as a real taskmaster. He came up several times to teach us Armenian dances that were a bit different from the dances we normally did at that time. Tom had a habit of shouting in Armenian as we danced: Ach (right), Tsakh (left), and Meg, Yergu, Yereg, Chors (one, two, three, four) as we danced. So besides learning the dances, I learned a few words in Armenian as well.
About that time Marcus (Holt) Moskoff returned from Bulgaria and started a performing group in Saratoga. We met every Sunday afternoon for a rigorous five hour afternoon that started with an hour of cultural lectures, followed by a limbering up hour, and several hours of rehearsals. Sweat dripping from our bodies we were too tired to even eat our supper. After months of training, and mastering the many dance routines, we started to prepare our costumes. I still have the long red sash I sewed on my daughter's sewing machine. One Sunday, Marcus did not show up and we went through our dances, valiantly saying to ourselves that we can do it even if Marcus does not show up. Our opportunity for glory vanished and the group fell apart as Marcus disappeared into thin air. I met Marcus, years later in Los Angeles, when he was playing the gadulka in Mitko Konstantinof's Bulgarian band.
I am not sure if it was before or after the breakup of Marcus's group that we heard that a Serbian teacher, Ciga Despotović was giving a class at UC Santa Cruz. We hopped into our car and drove the numerous curves up, only to realize that this was a master class, for which we definitely did not fit in. We joined anyway. One of the dances required that you tilt your head from shoulder shoulder as you hopped to the right and left. My wife and I did just that. However, on the wrong leg we bumped our heads hard emitting dull thud. I can still see Ciga's expression as he turned around to see what had happened.
Soon after that, we moved to Irvine, where our dancing continued and my folk dance rambling will continue as well as my next DW2LF articles.
Printed in Folk Dance Scene, "DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET (42), March 2009.