Sara

Heyas,

well I was thinking earlier on- what kind of dances and things do we know/have practised which are from our own country, like folk dances. I thought it would be interesting to share.

For me, cause I'm English it would be Morris dancing/ Lambeth walk/ Mr Bevridges Maggot.

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...eridges+maggot
Mr Beveridge's maggot which was drilled into our heads at secondary school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5BjwlqD7CM
Lambeth walk-obviously Love this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2Ypl...elated&search=
Can't really say I'm a fan of morris dancing, but whatever floats your boat

If I can think of any more I'll post them too.

__________________
With a little bit of this and a little bit of that, now shake your bum.... :P

Moon

Actually I know very little about Dutch traditional dance (I'm not really interested in it, especially not the music), but this might be a good example of a folkloric dance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPB3HDN6okI

Another (very short) clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8TWOTqLxN4

Sara

Powerful stuff....

The lady in the back though can't half kick her leg in t'air

__________________
With a little bit of this and a little bit of that, now shake your bum.... :P

Moon

I wander if they're really Dutch people though, hahah. Maybe they're from a Dutch community from America or Australia (you know, the ones who still look like Dutch people from 100 years ago). Anyway, I've never heard of "tulip festival"

Shanazel

A large number of dances in the US were imported along with our ancestors. I belonged to a group that specialized in English country dances for a while and had a boyfriend in college who danced with a Serbo-Croatian group and a Baltic group and a Hungarian group- not bad for a kid whose ancestors came over from England. In Wyoming, I do like to go to the powwows to see the traditional Shoshone and Arapahoe dances. One of my students used to dance in these regularly and was quite well known, though she is not American Indian herself.

An interesting costume note: the fancy dancers at the powwows used to buy lids from snuff cans and twist them into little cones that they used to decorate their costumes. Gorgeous, cheap, and really neat sounding.

Oooh, yeah, and don't forget dancing around the maypole every year until I was in secondary school. I doubt those good Southern Baptist teachers realized their tender little students were celebrating the rebirth of spring by winding a phallac symbol in pastel ribbons... A lot of SBs back then did not allow their children to dance at all, but somehow, Maypole was different.

Mr Beveridge's maggot? What a ghastly name for such a pretty dance.

Moon

so where does linedance and squaredance originate? I thought that that was really American. The Netherlands have been world champion (if I say that to my boyfriend he's ashamed, lol)

TribalDancer

I understood that square dancing was an American adaptation of English Country Dancing.

Line Dancing, it depends on the line dance you mean. As I am sure you know, there are a lot of North African, Greek, and Slavic line dances that have been adapted in modern times...

Moon

You're right, I mean the line dance with the cowboy hats and boots

Sara

Square dancing looks a lot like some of our traditional dances, like the Barley Mow. Hm... Perhaps it's more Irish though...

__________________
With a little bit of this and a little bit of that, now shake your bum.... :P

Shanazel

Yeah, that's pretty popular in good old Wyoming, aka "How to shake cow patties off your boots without stabbing your neighbor with your spurs." I'm not a fan, but I suspect it is a lot more fun to do than to watch.