New Orleans International Folk Dancers
Friday, May 13, 2011
Tamzara
I wonder if I can capture this audio as MP3 file. Maybe CCIFD can do their Tamzara steps to this music!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Hora Nunilor Mari, Romania
Lita taught this last Thursday 1/20/11.
View Hora nunilor mari on YouTube
You may have to sit through a curious German language commercial for a few seconds. Hang in there!
Friday, January 14, 2011
International Folk Dance "hit parade"
Five years ago, I discovered that our juke box software iTunes was keeping a count of each dance we played to the end of the recording. I combined the data, and created a Hit Parade from about 80 weekly sessions of our group.
I published this "hit parade" of the 100 most-frequently-danced for that brief period. Ed and others have been doing maintenance on the files, identifying the more popular versions... which saves time when they are requested. Our library has a few or even dozens of choices for each dance; this pre-winnowing saves some searching time on Thursday evenings.
Compiling the list was tedious. All the spellings must be unique for each dance. There are known flaws in the system, but the results are still interesting and useful.
I can't recommend manual data massaging to anyone else, and I won't ever do it again... too tedious.
But software could do the job from data uploaded by many groups. Ultimately, there could be a juke-box 'ap' running on a tablet computer. We could learn something useful if we knew the top 100 folkdances done by other groups.
Here is a Hit Parade of the New Orleans dances, collected for about 80 evenings shortly after Katrina.
I published this "hit parade" of the 100 most-frequently-danced for that brief period. Ed and others have been doing maintenance on the files, identifying the more popular versions... which saves time when they are requested. Our library has a few or even dozens of choices for each dance; this pre-winnowing saves some searching time on Thursday evenings.
Compiling the list was tedious. All the spellings must be unique for each dance. There are known flaws in the system, but the results are still interesting and useful.
I can't recommend manual data massaging to anyone else, and I won't ever do it again... too tedious.
But software could do the job from data uploaded by many groups. Ultimately, there could be a juke-box 'ap' running on a tablet computer. We could learn something useful if we knew the top 100 folkdances done by other groups.
Here is a Hit Parade of the New Orleans dances, collected for about 80 evenings shortly after Katrina.
(coming soon)
Stapil Dobri, Bulgaria
Last Thursday's 1/13/11 teaching was by Lita. This dance was taught by Jaap Leegwater at the recent Texas Thanksgiving Camp.
The video is from YouTube, probably recorded at a California venue.
Brought to us from Texas Camp by Lita.
Brought to us from Texas Camp by Lita.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Joc In Patru, Romania
The name means "dance for four": two couples. The melody and song are like the dance, lovely.
Retaught at CCID 12/8/10.
Want to download the music and learn the words? You can find this dance and a lot more from the Balkan countries at http://www.dunav.org.il/. Think about burning CD's from the MP3 files at Dunav Org...
Here are the lyrics to Joc in Patru. See if you can sing along for a few lines to the dancing above.
Trandafir cu creanga-n apa,
Retaught at CCID 12/8/10.
Want to download the music and learn the words? You can find this dance and a lot more from the Balkan countries at http://www.dunav.org.il/. Think about burning CD's from the MP3 files at Dunav Org...
Here are the lyrics to Joc in Patru. See if you can sing along for a few lines to the dancing above.
Trandafir cu creanga-n apa,
Trandafir cu creanga-n apa,
Spune-i cucului sa taca,
Spune-i cucului sa taca.
Sa nu cante-asa frumos,
Sa nu cante-asa frumos,
Ca badita-i manios,
Ca badita-i manios.
Si mi-i tare-ngandurat,
Si mi-i tare-ngandurat,
De cand noi doi ne-am lasat,
De cand noi doi ne-am lasat.
Spune-i cucului sa taca,
Spune-i cucului sa taca.
Sa nu cante-asa frumos,
Sa nu cante-asa frumos,
Ca badita-i manios,
Ca badita-i manios.
Si mi-i tare-ngandurat,
Si mi-i tare-ngandurat,
De cand noi doi ne-am lasat,
De cand noi doi ne-am lasat.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Cotton Eyed Joe, U.S.
Danced as a mixer.
Search YouTube for "cotton eyed joe mixer" and you will get over 70 results. I watched a few dozen and picked a few you may wish to sample.
German in a cowboy hat teaches using 3 couples.
Line dancers from Germany.
Texas line-dancers.
A few hundred Japanese girls...
Dancing with the Stars show on ABC-TV.
Search YouTube for "cotton eyed joe mixer" and you will get over 70 results. I watched a few dozen and picked a few you may wish to sample.
German in a cowboy hat teaches using 3 couples.
Line dancers from Germany.
Texas line-dancers.
A few hundred Japanese girls...
Dancing with the Stars show on ABC-TV.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Dargason, England
The Newcastle English country dancers perform the dance of Dargason at a Renaissance pleasure faire. A very spirited dance performance.
Vonnie Brown taught a version of this dance to the Baton Rouge group. It was often requested when I danced there 30 years ago. CCIFD does it whenever we have four couples who are willing to tackle it.
This is one of the favorites of English Country Dancers that have been reconstructed from John Playford's "The English Dancing Master", first (1651) edition. Playford described the dance in 65 words. English country dancers have reconstructed at least 6 versions. See descriptions of some versions at "Articles and Letters Regarding Dargason".
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