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Much of today (and really much of the weekend) was taken up by Boston Israeli Folkdane Festival related events: Saturday night was a well attended but rather mediocre dance party- there were tons of high school aged people, and unfortunately, one subset of them, I think the group for LA, had a tendeny to squeal about dances. It was nice to see that sort of enthusiasm (and it did show nicely in their performance today), but it was a bit annoying over all. And the programming/material played was a little eh, probably because so many people there did much more performance than recreational dancing. (I do wish the assorted day school and supplementary school dance groups would push the real thing- i.e. recreational dancing, more. It would be very nice to see some of those faces at regular sessions.) It was loud and crowded, but it was fun enough that I don't resent that we went, and had a few nice conversations.
Spent some time with Mom this morning, and we took a nice walk in the early afternoon. Then Dad and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zodiacmg showed up, and we headed off (and Dad drove, and zodiacmg navigated except for the way home from dinner- hurray for that). The lobby was a madhouse, but we headed in and sat down pretty quickly. The show itself was pretty good: a lot of reasonable choreography, some very good choreography, and some quite nice dancing. There were a few groups that lacked anything ressembling polish, and another few who looked more like planned chaos than like performance dancing. The costuming was unusually nice, I thought. I was amused to notice a few groups using costumes I recognized from the recent past- the same as last year for one group, and the same as a couple years ago, or maybe 3 years for the other. They worked though. I did think it was unfortunate that the tendency to shove guys into black pants and a vaguely similarly colored top to the rest of the group showed up too much this year. Especially tops that don't look specifically like women's tops, I feel that groups should just match if possible, unless there are reasonable numbers of both genders. But in a lot of the middle school and high school groups, there were a bunch of girls and one boy- it was unfortunate, especially for the group that did sort of almost-sexy choreography for one piece that really didn't suit men, let alone just-barely-pubescent-boys. (Suitability for only slightly older girls is a different issue for another time.) There was a somewhat higher rate of kippot as part of costumes as compared to last year. I was also surprised again at how many of the groups came from Schechter schools...
There was a bit of a lack of more traditionally styled pieces, and a bit of a surplus of modern type stuff. The group at the end did a very skilled hora, and it was really needed. I think that some of the sort of clumsy modern stuff done by the teenaged set might have worked better if it were a bit more traditional- that stuff is, I think, easier to carry off well. (Even if I am totally fine with the absence of any Hasidic styled pieces this year, which always strike me as a little ridiculous.)
It was weird being in the audience- I did miss the overtired exhileration of performing, and all the absurdities involved.
And That's who wasn't there, amidst all the out-of-town groups who came who usually don't (Madison, WI, LA, Chicago)- Shalhevet (the Columbia/Barnard/Lidst/JTS group). I wonder why not...
Spent some time with Mom this morning, and we took a nice walk in the early afternoon. Then Dad and
zodiacmg showed up, and we headed off (and Dad drove, and zodiacmg navigated except for the way home from dinner- hurray for that). The lobby was a madhouse, but we headed in and sat down pretty quickly. The show itself was pretty good: a lot of reasonable choreography, some very good choreography, and some quite nice dancing. There were a few groups that lacked anything ressembling polish, and another few who looked more like planned chaos than like performance dancing. The costuming was unusually nice, I thought. I was amused to notice a few groups using costumes I recognized from the recent past- the same as last year for one group, and the same as a couple years ago, or maybe 3 years for the other. They worked though. I did think it was unfortunate that the tendency to shove guys into black pants and a vaguely similarly colored top to the rest of the group showed up too much this year. Especially tops that don't look specifically like women's tops, I feel that groups should just match if possible, unless there are reasonable numbers of both genders. But in a lot of the middle school and high school groups, there were a bunch of girls and one boy- it was unfortunate, especially for the group that did sort of almost-sexy choreography for one piece that really didn't suit men, let alone just-barely-pubescent-boys. (Suitability for only slightly older girls is a different issue for another time.) There was a somewhat higher rate of kippot as part of costumes as compared to last year. I was also surprised again at how many of the groups came from Schechter schools... There was a bit of a lack of more traditionally styled pieces, and a bit of a surplus of modern type stuff. The group at the end did a very skilled hora, and it was really needed. I think that some of the sort of clumsy modern stuff done by the teenaged set might have worked better if it were a bit more traditional- that stuff is, I think, easier to carry off well. (Even if I am totally fine with the absence of any Hasidic styled pieces this year, which always strike me as a little ridiculous.)
It was weird being in the audience- I did miss the overtired exhileration of performing, and all the absurdities involved.
And That's who wasn't there, amidst all the out-of-town groups who came who usually don't (Madison, WI, LA, Chicago)- Shalhevet (the Columbia/Barnard/Lidst/JTS group). I wonder why not...