I sent an open invitation to other BSM (that's Berkeley Semesters in Mathematics) students over our Facebook group for Israeli Dancing tonight. Ben (who dances in Iowa) decided to come with. I arrived a few minutes before the Beginner's Class and was introduced to the building and to the markid, George (actually Yuri), a local dancer who happens to be the palest Hungarian in the world (alright, maybe just in Hungary). We started with "Anshei Hageshem" then continued to two dances that were new for me (one of which was something about a telephone which heavily featured a ringing phone and the one lyric "Hello?").
Now learning a dance in a different language is not actually so bad. I'm pretty used to following, so I was able to learn just by watching. In the mean time, I learned words like "right" and "left." The first word I recognized was "fly," which was used to describe the first step in "Anshei Hageshem."
At this point Ben left and I was left alone for the next 2.5 hours. Line dances for 30 minutes and then open dancing until 10:15 or so. The repertoire included a lot of dances that I know from Alonim ((J)CIT dances from the last 5 years or so) and some that I had never seen before (like the telephone one). The crowd maxed out at less about 30 and coasted at 10-15 most of the evening. There were some high school aged kids and one college student (thankfully they all speak English, along with the markid and an Israeli guy named Peter), but almost no men. Turns out that they do almost no partner dances here: there aren't enough men and the women/girls aren't accustomed to all that touching. As a result, they only played 3 partner dances.
Funny story: I didn't know partner dances 1 and 2, and was sitting talking to a girl when "Bosem Tzarfati" came on. My potential partner was already taken, but one of the high schoolers shoved her friend to me pretty forcefully:
Aloni: (extends hand) "Aloni"
Viki: (takes hand) "Viki"
Now she didn't know the dance, but she tried. After, one of her friends either said "Jaj de cuki" ("How cute")or "Jaj de ciki" ("How embarrassing"), but I'm not sure which.
I also forgot to take a change of shoes - dancing in boots is not very pleasant.
Anyway, I had a lot of fun and (as it's even easier to get to than at home) I think I'll be going fairly often. Finally I'm interacting with Hungarians, not just Americans on my program.
Webpages that may or may not be relevant:
Aloni, talk to the markid and introduce him to the idea of a rikudia.
ReplyDeleteSo cool! Sounds great that you're meeting and interacting with locals. Probably the best way to have a true Hungarian experience. See if you can get one of them to invite you over for a homecooked meal - yum!
ReplyDelete@Ima: They have camps here within Hungary (on their version of Lake Tahoe).
ReplyDelete@Gali: That's the master plan.
-I didn't realize I could comment with my google account :O.
ReplyDelete-You're looking for a family to spend Passover with, aren't you?