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From folk dancing to ballroom & latin
Between age 11 and 20, I spent many vacations and
week-ends at 'camp' with the BJN, the youth
organisation for the study of nature. After the
evening meal, we would sing and dance, 'kwelen' and
'hupsen'. We learned the melodies, the words of the
songs and the steps of the dances from each other.
Singing was often accompanied by guitar, dancing
with recorder or with music cassette. Most dances
originated in the Balkans, there was also Israeli
folk music, and other fast rhythms from Europe, like
the tarantella from Sicily, or the bourré from
France. We never did any of the clap-clap-clap,
stomp-stomp-stomp type of Flemish peasants' dances,
and we also abhorred the slow imitations that were
available on disk or cassette tape from official
folk dancing organisations. Don't expect anything
elegant: most of the time we danced in the rubber
boots that we used to go on excursion during the
day. It was just another pleasant way to burn some
more energy before getting into our sleeping bags in
the straw of a barn.
During my student years, we had 'thé-dansants' (at
night, not in the afternoon...) in dancings, most of
which were situated in the same street along the
Schelde river in the centre of Ghent. Any knowledge
of dancing steps was quite superfluous: we danced
slows, in couple, very close and not needing much
mouvement, and some kind of individual dance
expression on rock music. Some people might jive or
swing, but that was it.
When Touché came to Belgium, we thought it a pity
that we couldn't dance together. So we took a
dancing course, twice a week. In a very pleasant
atmosphere, without competition or stress, we
learned different ballroom & latin dances: chachacha✶, tango✶, salsa✶, quickstep, slow
walz, rumba, swing, jive, and something called
samba... It turned out that samba had nothing to do
with the Brazilian dance. It was some German
invention, the steps and moves chosen in such a way
as to mimick the swinging of the buttocks that is
typical for this dance. It's well known that
Europeans are too stiff to move their hips, so passes
had to be invented that will give the impression
that we're shaking our butt... The tango also had
been 'trafficked', and didn't resemble what you can
see on a tango film from Argentina. We weren't
learning the original dances, but the form that is
required at dancing competitions. After an accident
at the dance school, Touché colliding with a glass
door that caused a lot of pain and unpleasant
discussions about whose responsability the collision
was, our 'pique' for ballroom & latin stopped
abruptly, though we planned to continue our
favorites (salsa, tango, chachacha, swing...) in
another school. In autumn 2009, we took another
salsa dance course, but it didn't live up to our
expectations. Nevertheless, we still try to dance
together when the opportunity arises...
And sports, no sports? Well, what about chess? I
like to play chess, and card games like whist.
Aren't those sports too? I did five years of judo,
and still have some good reflexes when falling.
Besides that, I like badminton, but nothing
competitive. And petanque, or jeu de boules, does
that count as a sport? In the end, my physical
condition depends on walking -walks in nature in the
weekend and when we're on holidays- and biking
through and around town.
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