This week we learn to dance the basic steps of Tango with our partners Marcelo Solis and Mimi Mehaouchi from Escuela de Tango de Buenos Aires (http://www.escuelatangoba.com).

In class this week we dance the Cueca, Chile's "national dance," with the help of Chilean dancer Orietta Sess. In our dance lesson video, Orietta invites other members of the Seattle-based Chilean dance group, Los Rebeldes de las Cueca, to demonstrate the moves she teaches -- Clap, Brush, and Tap! -- as they pair in to "roosters" and "chickens," cheerfully circling each other a they swirl white scarves.

This week in All Around This World’s livecast online classes we embark on a several month journey around Latin America. We will parade through Rio in a Samba bloco, adventure down the Amazon in a tip-prone canoe, play Garifuna drums to dance-away our sorrows and croon like Mexican mariachis. Join us!

This summer Jay is taking All Around This World on tour to India! Jay is currently teaching to kids and and playing concerts for families at schools in several Indian cities -- New Delhi, Indore, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Kanpur and Lucknow. Watch this space for Indian songs, dancing, food -- well, pictures of food -- and FUN!

Danish pop music has often been strong, and Denmark has often been a serious competitor in the Eurovision continent-wide song contest. Denmark has even won the main prize twice.

Danish folk ensembles may well feature the occasional accordion or guitar, but at the heart of Danish folk music there's always a  fiddle. Unlike fiddlers found in other Scandinavian countries, Danish fiddlers most often wield the Danish fiddle in bunches, and they fiddle fast and furious.

Danish folk music experienced a revival in the '70s, similar to the folk revival in the U.S., when contemporary artists revived and reinterpreted traditional songs, celebrating and simultaneously advancing ancient traditions.

When we say hip hop is everywhere, we mean everywhere. “Nuuk Posse” is one of Greenland’s most accomplished rap groups. They formed in 1985, have toured worldwide, and in 2004 were nominated for the distinction of “Messengers of Truth” by the United Nations. As we all do, thep rap in English, Danish and Greenlandic (Kalaallisut.)

In Greenland, Iceland and other far North countries the winters are darned cold, and with darned cold comes icy ponds that are right for fishin'. After eons of fishing in the cold the Inuit have figured out what to do to conquer the thick ice that sits between all of us and our very chilly fish.

In the middle of the summer far up north in Scandinavia the days grow longer and longer and people get ready for a party. Known in Sweden as ‘Midsommar,” this mid-summer holiday, celebrated some time between June 19th and 24th, marks the days of the year with the most daylight, the pagan celebration of the coming of summer and, not insignificantly, the beginning of the school vacation.

In Finland we must celebrate the legendary Lordi, winner in the name of Finland in 2006’s Eurovision song contest.

ABBA ABBA ABBA ABBA ABBA ABBA…

ABBA!

Enjoy the song “Fanitullen” as played on Norway’s most prominent traditional instrument, the Hardanger fiddle.

Norway's North Germanic folk music focuses on two kinds of songs -- kvad (ballads) and stev, which are poetic songs, most of which are several centuries old. Some researchers have concluded that stev originally accompanied dances, though related dances are long lost. If that makes you sad,  don't mope -- start your own new tradition by dancing along to the stev performed by in this video by Sondre Bratland and Kirsten Bråten Berg.

Mari Boine, who you'll see in this video, is Norway's best known Sami vocalist. Her otherworldly "joik" vocals and her outspoken support of the Sami people have made her a formidable artistic and political presence in Scandinavia.

Schlager” is a folk-based, often sentimental style of pop music, most popular in Central and Northern Europe, especially Germany, that came into its own in the 1950s and ’60s as a reaction to American rock. In some quarters Schlager merged with disco in the late ‘70s, and has become popular again as a retro-pop style in dance clubs. If there’s any Schlager singer who deserves some retro popularity it’s Heino.

Schuplattler a style of traditional Bavarian folk dancing in which dancers stomp their feet, clap their hands and slap the soles of their shoes (Schuhe), their thighs and their knees with their hands flat (platt). The dance is playful and acrobatic, full of colorful costumes, jumping, leaping, kicking and fun. There are over 150 local variants of the dance — each village seems to have its own — but everyone cherishes the chance to wear their drindls.

In the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, though Latin-language religious music was still all the rage in Germany, a number of aristocrats who traveled from court to court and had picked up music along the way began to compose and perform decidedly non-religious love songs. These performers, known as Minneseingers, eventually made way for middle-class craftsmen known as Meistersingers who studied music as their main profession.