As an individual learner, how can you incorporate and help the people around you to appreciate folkdancing? What will be your ways?
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Answer:
This is difficult to answer, mainly due to the fact that actual, real “folk dance”, as practiced by tribal or peasant peoples all over the world, is disappearing rapidly. There are simply no tribal/peasant groups left unaffected by the “modern” world and its communication, transportation, and money. There are remnants of folk traditions left and followed by aging small groups of people who have been “left behind”, or chosen to live their lives as such. Still, folk dance is important.
Folk dancing, as we see it today, is a particular recreational activity avidly followed by a small segment of Westernized people in Europe and the USA, with a sizeable number of Chinese followers (mainly from Taiwan), due mostly to classes and schools of dance that study and teach such dances. The number of people who folk dance is decreasing as time goes by, but that does not detract from folk dance and its music one iota. The importance lies elsewhere.
If you are an avid folk dancer, the milieu is its own reason; folk dance is a community of believers who form a tight-knit assemblage who reinforce each dancers belonging and the joy of discovering dances as they are taught - all you need is the interest. There are dance performing troupes worldwide who stage presentations of folk material and must be disciplined and guided by the same rigors as other forms of dance. Your interest could lead to performing in such groups.
But, let’s say you are not that interested - you wish to do jazz, musical theater, ballet. Folk dance is your admission to that world as well; the best reason is that folk music has such complex rhythms and meters that you will learn an astounding number of moves and steps that can only help you in other forms of dance. Western meters usually occur as either 2, 4, or 8 beat patterns. Folk music for dancing also uses 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, and 18 beat patterns that are also used in jazz and popular music when the authors and writers are exposed to them. Dance productions on stage often include such patterns. You will save yourself much pain and time if these are learned within a less judgemental environment, and folk dancing is that environment.
Of course, you can make it as rigorous or relaxing as your body and mind dictate, but learning various styles of dance- Slavic, Indian, Chinese, Latin, African - gives you the background to assimilate other styles easily. It is the introduction to dance I recommend.
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