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

Meet Me

Hello! I’ve been debating for the last month or so, on whether to make a blog or not, and I finally did. Some of my friends say I have way too much time on my hands, but I don’t really! ^_^ This is where I’ll ramble about various things, from school to hobbies to other things that strike my fancy.

First of all, I’ll tell you a little about myself. I’m homeschooled girl and a senior this year. My last year of high school... *tears* Anyway, I’m really looking forward to getting away from home next year, even though I’ll probably be going to CollegeNextDoor. I’m hoping to double major in Speech Pathology and Spanish, with a minor (possibly) in English. Dunno. We’ll see what happens.

I have a bazillion and one hobbies. I won’t bore you with all of them, but here are a few of them:

Piano. I’m not the greatest at it, and I’ve only been playing for a couple years, but it is one of my favorite things to do. Especially when I’m feeling stressed, or bored, or excited, or... well you get the idea. My piano teacher is amazing because she lets me choose what I want to learn, and I’m not required to go through those oh-so-boring lesson books. If you’ve ever heard of unschooling, think of my way of learning piano as, unschooling piano.

Singing. It’s fun, but don’t try to get me to do a solo. I’ve done it before (in front of 1500+ people, I might add), but that was so nerve wracking, I don’t really want to repeat the experience (not to mention, my voice cracked *embarrassed*). Not for a long while. Of course, since I just joined a girl’s choir, there’s a very high likelihood that by the end of the year someone will have convinced me to sing a solo...

Acting. Mwhahaha. Acting is amazing. You get to be someone you aren’t, and can act completely crazy (if that’s your character) without getting strange looks. I’ve been random crowd people, random giggling girls, a soldier (Yes, you read that right. Me, a girl, as a guy soldier. I have pictures to prove it.), a crazy old aunt, and a know-it-all teacher/counselor. Not only do I act, but I write scripts occasionally too. To go along with acting, I also speak up front at times. My church is humongous (2,000-3,000 members), and I’ve been on stage there at least once a year, since I was in 5^th grade. Now, believe it or not, I have HUGE stage fright. I’m literally shaking while I’m up there (strangely though, not when I’m acting...) and so many times, I’m sure people can hear it in my voice. It’s getting better though, so maybe by the time I’m out of college I’ll be able to relax when I’m up front.

Dance. Jewish dancing to be exact. It’s uncommon, but awesome. I don’t really know how to describe it, but it is so much fun. I’ve been a regular member of the troop for the last two years, and we’ll dance at various events. Once it was after a special Jewish Church service, another time on the beach for our beginning of the year get together (the sunset was amazing), every year at the local Passion Play, and we’ll also teach one of the college’s religion classes dancing for a day. And for the record, I am not Jewish.

Writing. I love writing. I didn’t really know it until just over a year ago, and even then, I didn’t think I was any good at it. I found this event called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and not being one to pass up a challenge, signed up. For those of you who don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, it’s a challenge to write 50,000 words in a month. The month of November to be exact. That was the start of my writing. From there, it expanded. I hit the 50,000 words and surpassed it easily, giving myself “winner” status. Would you believe it, in the past 11 months, I’ve written two (non-related) books, both much longer than I had ever dreamed? English, which used to be my least favorite subject, became my favorite (mainly because after talking to my mom, my books count for A LOT of English credit). With November coming up, I’m getting ready to write the second book in my series. It is seriously turning into the highlight of my year.

Last but not least, and not really a hobby, I teach at a local club (think boy scouts/girl scouts/youth group). Along with a couple of adults and another teen, we teach one of the classes, about twenty-five sixth graders. I lovingly refer to them as MY sixth graders. They drive me up a wall sometimes, but I love them all the same. It definitely helped me make up my mind about becoming a teacher as a profession; I know I couldn’t deal with their shenanigans all the time. I helped with their class last year (MY fifth graders, then), and taught them a bunch of things, and directed them when we were upfront in my church. Can you say, nerve-wracking? I don’t know what’s all in store for this year, but I’m looking forward to it.

So yeah, that’s me, in a somewhat nut shell. Okay, not really. There’s a lot more, but I don’t want to bore you on the first post. And it’s a lot longer than I had originally hoped... Oh, well. ^_^

--StarLit