Jewish Dancing

‘Tis an amazing thing. And remarkably tiring and fun. A lot of time people can watch us dancing, and they’ll think, “Oh, that looks like fun. Not too much work.” Boy, are they wrong! You try running around dancing for twenty minutes straight, take a couple minute break for a mouthful of water, and then repeat. For two hours. If you need a work out, dancing is one of the most fun ways to do it.

Summer is killer when it comes to dancing though. During the winter, after practice, I’ll often go outside in just my t-shirt, and cool off in the 20˚ weather. During the summer, there is no cooling off, just the transition from one slightly air conditioned place, to the heat and humidity outside. It would be the perfect time for a swim, or a freezing cold shower, or something. Of course, during the winter, there’s always snow to compete with, but I can manage that.

Once a year, the local university hosts a Passion Play at Easter. For 8-10 hours you stand around in costume, waiting for the various rotations to go through. The Jewish Dancers are stationed in the marketplace, one of the busiest (and my personal favorite) places to be. The bread is amazing, and this last year, we even had a blacksmithing station.

With each rotation that goes through, we dance 2-3 songs. Kids from the market stalls join in, and sometimes we even get people from the crowd to join in as well. We’ll laugh with each other as we try to teach people the dances on the fly, laugh when we ourselves make mistakes, going the wrong direction, running into each other, and all in all, having a wonderful time together.

One of the best parts about it, is the kids from the marketplace that join in. It’s how I started, years and years ago. Eight years ago, when the first Passion Play was held, the Jewish Dancers were a new group. A couple of my friends and I were working in the marketplace, and between every rotation we’d go running off to the dancers and ask them to teach us the steps. For years, that was the only involvement my friends and I had with them, but we looked forward to it every year, want to show that we actually remembered the steps. They were always willing to help us, and even by the end of the first Passion Play, there was a group of us kids dancing with them. It went on like that every year.

The last few years, I’ve been a regular member of their group, going to practices once or twice a week, depending on my schedule, dancing with them at their other events, and finally, being an official member of the group dancing at the Passion Play. Even though most of the members of the group are considerably older than I am, I enjoy it a lot. Recently, I’ve been trying to get some of my friends to join the group regularly, and a couple of them have actually come.

Maybe we’ll lower the median age yet...

--Star Lit