Raca
Associations---Serbia Lively Fun
Tapes Found On---Camp 95
Origin---Serbia
Choreographer---traditional
Notes
Line dance, arms in belt hold position,
The music starts quite slow and accelerates as the piece goes on.
At some point, you can start substituting light stamps for the lifts. The
hardest part of the dance is remembering where you are in it. During the
dance folk talk to one another in the attempt to make them forget their
steps.
This dance is sometimes referred to by circle dancers as the ëGossip
Danceî. The word ëgossipí, by the way, comes from the old Germanic for
ìGodís Siblingsî. This term was applied to the elder women of the community
who in circle kept the Sacred Time by telling the tales of the mountain,
the field, the people. If there was to be a child, for instance, they might
talk of how the childís motherís mother had been so fond of the elderberries
by the lower spring. Or of how the father worked with oak. Perhaps the
child will be as strong as oak and as sacred as the Elderberry. Keeping
the Sacred Time, the holy story - tellers of the people. The bishop - generals
of Old Europe were threatened by the power of these circles of women who
gided the people in the old ways. One way to take the power away
from these women was to denigrate them. They became ìjust old gossipsî.
|
