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Folk dance and friendship - The folk dance group from Zaragoza in Spain

It was a wonderful morning, sunny and warm and there we were, about twenty of us willing to do something really new: to learn folk dances from different countries. At that time, we could not imagine that sixteen years later we would continue dancing.

Our dance group was born within a cultural association, called 'Albada', which means “dawn” in the traditional language of our region in the north of Spain (Aragón). An association created at the beginning of the eighties, with our young Spanish democracy, with men and women who were looking forward to living in a new society, run by more human values, like friendship, justice or peace. We found out how performing traditional dances could help us in the process of building up this way of living. Nowadays, we live in a society where many people are use to playing a very passive role in their lives, to being spectators more than actors. It also happens with dances, which are performed in theatres, by professionals and people can take part only watching the dancers. But, in all countries there have been, folk dances, based on inherited tradition, danced by common people during social events, like weddings, births or harvesting. Performing this kind of folk dances is a means to give people a more active social role and to preserve traditions in a complex and modern world.

We perform mainly traditional dances from European countries, like Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, Austria, France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Serbia, Croatia, etc. But, we also dance folk dances from other countries, like Israel, Armenia or Turkey. Many of them are circle dances, but we perform line or couple dances, too. Some of them are performed to pray, like meditative dances, but many of them are danced, just to have fun or to celebrate some special events.

From the very beginning, we have had a lot of fun dancing, because we have done physical exercise and we have communicated with other people, touching each other and moving together. In addition, dancing has given us the great opportunity to know about other people and their culture, without speaking their mother tongue, using body and dance language. Dancing we meet other people, we get a closer relationship with them and we express our values. So, very often we perform folk dances in social activities organized by non governmental organizations. On these occasions we perform some dances, but the main aim is to teach simple dances as a means to encourage people to know more about other cultures, by dancing.

Currently, there are many people interested in this kind of dances all over Spain, motivated by Delia Señor and Javier Muela, our teachers. They started learning these dances in France about twenty years ago and since them they have not stopped teaching traditional dances in different places in Spain. Now, together with them, there are other folk dance teachers from different countries, like Israel, Bulgaria or Greece. But Delia and Javier are still the leader of this movement. They organize an international folk dance festival every year in Spain, with live music and with more than three thousand participants.

Although, our dance group have changed from when we started dancing we are still looking forward to dancing and meeting new people in Spain and abroad who share our experiences with. So we invite everybody, to visit our blog and to contact us tomasaba@unizar.es.

20 enero 2007

RUTA ORWELL (Alcubierre 13.01.07)

La excursión que hicimos con Jose Mª a las trincheras de la Guerra Civil en la Sierra de Alcubierre, fue muy interesante.

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