EastERN EURoPE MIRUPAFSHIM!

We did it! If you've been keeping up with our online classes each week, following and singing along, we've just a whole season of classes together adventuring in Eastern Europe. We started at the heart of it all, in Russia, the most super of all super powers, where we danced the exhaustingly acrobatic kalinka. Next the Baltic states, where we sang with 30,000 Estonians, then to Belarus, where we celebrated summer by searching the forest for a flower that we knew never existed. In Ukraine we met the Hutsuls where we did some “wild dancing,” then to Czechia and Poland, where our polka dancing wasn't wild at all. Dancing the Hungarian csardas...somewhat less wild than the Hutsulka, more so than the Polka, but still great. After that, to the Balkans, where we wished each other “happy old new year!” to Romania where we counted to nine and danced the Cadaneasca, and to Bulgaria, where we indulged in five hundred years of history to be married. Last but not least we met the Jews and the Roma and snapped, clapped, hit our boots and danced in circles.  

Over the course of the last three months we celebrated with peoples who struggled for centuries through wars, famine and political strife. We didn't shy away from the sadness in the songs, yet we didn't lose ourselves in it either. Surviving, and doing it together, can unite us, intensely. As we sang in our Ukrainian springtime song, “Vesno Krasna,” “We have braved a bitter winter, we can conquer anything.”