Community Dances - Tradition inspires invention

 

Encountering dance music of foreign countries and cultures, even of past centuries can be a wonderful motivation for generating a dance mood. The simple but appealing melodies of French Renaissance Branles and English Country Dances, the driving dynamics of American Square and Line Dances, the challenging unsquare rhythms of East- and South-European countries, invite a group to gather and experience a feeling of common movement and unity. 

Imitating specific steps and gestures of traditional dances and imbuing them with individual expression enable positive movement and social experience: A feeling of well-being in the own body fascilitates self-confidence and the need to enrich the group dance by putting effort into its succesful exertion.

Meeting  tradition is also a possible way of getting inspiration to develop individual creativity: A first encounter with the music makes feet move in free space, catching up with its dynamic and personal movement needs. Learning the dance can be supported by images, stories, space patterns, materials, rhythm and body work opening up to improvisation. Steps are acquired in a playful way and give the experience of success when connecting with partners in a circle, line, longways or square. Sometimes the desire to dissolve again the structures of a learned dance inspires a group to create a new choreography nourished by the former encounter with traditon.