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Folk Dance Federation of California, South, Inc.
DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET |
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After we got back from our trip to China, I wanted to write an article about some of our trip experiences. A beautiful thank you note from his wife Marge Gajicki with the sweet face of Bora, buried among the voluminous accumulated mail, change my mind. After looking at the memorial website and seeing how many people love Bora and wrote about him, I decided to join them and devote this column to my memories of Bora.
Even though I had not seen Bora for many years, I kept track of him through Marge and and their daughter Anna at the many festivals we attended.
I met Boris long ago during the 1970s at the height of popularity of Balkan dancing. In those days, young college students were not just dancing, but playing and singing the music, wearing the folk costumes, and hitchhiking through the Balkans to absorb and bring back the rich culture.
In San Diego, we would fill to overflowing capacity the big gym at UCSD and teach and dance. But the best dancing I still remember was in a small Quanset hut on a diesel hilltop in Encinitas. The lot was awaiting building approval for a large condominium development and one of the dancers lived in the house next door.
The whole Quanset hut would shake as we did our lively dances. To prevent the recorded player needle from dancing on the records as well, we had to suspend the player from strings attached to the roof.
This was not necessary whenever Bora came down from Long Beach to play for us. For those of us who were not able to travel to the Balkans, Bora's music transported us to a Serbian village we so yearned to be in.
Thank you Barbara!
We danced till all hours, and the only way my wife was able to get me finally to go home at two in the morning was to pull up the car to the door of the concert hut, shine the bright lights, and honk the car horn.
Those days are long gone, but the vivid memories remain strong in my mind. The "Tamo Dalenko" melody, so dear to Bora, keeps running through my mind with these slightly different words:
Tamo dalenko, blizu kraj Boga,
Ti si uvjek blizu, blizu u mom srcu.
Far away, close to God,
You are always close, close in my heart.
Printed in Folk Dance Scene, "DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET (39), November 2008.