|
Folk Dance Federation of California, South, Inc.
|
|
CLICK AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Danish folk dancing is above all social. That is, most of the steps are fairly easy so that people of all ages can participate – it's just that you need to know what order the steps or figures are in for a particular dance. It is also highly traditional. Early in the last century, a group of students from the University of Copenhagen formed a club to go around the Danish countryside and find elderly people who remembered the dances of their youth and to write them down. At the same time they collected from elderly village musicians copies of the handwritten sheet music that went with the dances. In this way, they preserved and published several hundred traditional dances in a series of over twenty pamphlets. It is these dances that form the core of Danish folk dance still today.
Because the waltz and the polka were particularly popular in the second half of the 19th century, many of the dances collected were based on waltz or polka. In fact, one Danish dance that was particularly popular in California in the 1940s, when I began dancing, included both the waltz and the polka: we knew it as Danish Masquerade. Another Danish dance we loved back then was Hornfiffen – a delightful Hornpipe – which got faster and faster each time through.
Like Masquerade and Hornfiffen, most Danish dances seem to be for couples, although the couples may dance in a ring or in sets. (The traditional chain-dance around the Christmas tree is an exception.) One interesting dance for two couples is Den Halve Kæde, literally "The Half Chain." The three figures (performed in the order 1, 2, 3, 3, 2, 1) include making a back basket which spins so fast that the ladies "fly." The figures are also always separated by a refrain consisting of the "chain" that gives the dance its name: a grand right and left, which, given that there are only four people, is very tight to do. The Danes accomplish it by swinging the moving arm up and over, much as in swimming the crawl!
Because Danish folk dances became essentially fossilized as a tradition with the publication of the descriptive pamphlets a century ago, I found you could go to folk dance groups in Denmark itself and fit right in. When I was working briefly at the Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen a few years ago, my colleagues decided to give me a treat by all going to one of the folk dance clubs together one evening. The people who ran it, knowing we were coming, made it a point to wear their costumes and newcomers joined in the easier set dances. Presently they said that the next dance had a very difficult step in it, so we should just relax and watch. To my surprise, it turned out to be Hornfiffen, done just exactly as I had learned it so long ago. When they saw me trying it over in the corner, they grabbed me into it, quite as surprised that I knew it as I was that it hadn't changed a bit in travelling all the way to California.
Solvang, right here in Southern California (between Santa Barbara and Santa Maria), is one place you can see some Danish folk dancing. Every year since 1936, Solvang has celebrated its Danish heritage with a festival called Danish Days. It used to be that there were lots of folk dance exhibitions during the weekend, but now the dancing seems to be done only for the Friday evening opening ceremonies. But whatever you do, don't miss the Æbleskiver breakfasts! Æbleskivers are sweet ball-shaped pastries, something like giant donut holes, baked in a special pan to give them that shape. In olden days, they had small slices (skiver) of apple (æble) baked inside; but now they generally don't. Instead, they have powdered sugar on top and are usually served with some kind of red jam: raspberry, strawberry, currant, or lingonberry. Yum!
Printed in Folk Dance Scene, June/July 2019