New Adventure #14: Zweifachers, Breton, and Scottish Dance

I'm an avid dancer, as most people know, so I was delighted to get to try a number of new kinds of dance at the NEFFA folk festival recently:

The zweifacher is a German folk dance. It is danced by couples in a close position to allow for the quick waltz and pivot steps. Each dance has a set choreography that ranges from reasonably simple and easy to remember to quite complex. I happened to jump in for a complicated one and had a difficult time following, despite a skilled partner. It was really fun though!

Scottish country dance is a social dance performed in sets of 3 or more couples. It bears some resemblance to contra dance, but with an added element of precise footwork. I was more-or-less able to keep up with the figures, but my footwork needs some practice! I'm hoping to make it to the lessons and social dancing at Springstep soon.

Breton dancing is a folk dance originating in the French region of Brittany. It is performed as a group, with everyone joining hands or linking elbows (depending on the dance) and performing a short sequence of steps again and again while moving around the room. There was wonderful live bagpipe music. I just love bagpipes! Here's a short video:

New Adventure #3: Zumba

So, I have a new activity...again :-)

 

After many glowing recommendations, I finally tried a Zumba class. If you're not familiar, Zumba is an aerobic dance fitness class. An instructor leads the choreography, which draws on latin, hip-hop, Bollywood, martial arts, and belly dance styles, among others.

 

Check out this video (not the class I went to, just a good example):

 

There were 6 women in my class, including me. Two looked to be in their 20s, two in their 30s, and 1 in her 60s. The teacher was a happy, friendly girl about my age. Everyone was dressed in workout clothes (yoga pants, tank tops or tee-shirts) and sneakers.

 

I had no idea what a good workout it would be! The instructor played one song after another for the full hour with about 30 seconds break between songs to rest and get a drink of water. That's a lot of dancing! Each song had its own choreography that the instructor taught as we went. My instructor favored pop-top-40 kind of songs, with some latin and bollywood thrown in. We even danced to "Gangnam Style" :-)

 

I felt really silly at first trying to mimic the instructor, but I decided pretty quickly to just embrace the silliness and really get into it. The class built up from simple moves to complicated ones, so I had a chance to get the hang of it before the choreography got hard. It was awesome fun! I think lots of my contra friends would really enjoy it. It's similarly energetic, easy to pick up, and fun!

 

Anybody want to try it with me?